The Month of March has been a great month. I was
able to teach three phonics lessons so far, assess my students, work with a
small group and work 1 on 1 with a student who is very behind. In the beginning of the month during morning
centers, I pulled each student back to my desk to test them on their sight words
for my teacher. Each week they get four new sight words. For the students that
have not been able to complete the previous weeks words, I went back and asked
them the prior words as well. I had two students today check off their whole
list of sight words for the year!
I taught the letters u,q, and z in phonics this
month and for the hour following my lesson, I had each student come back one by
one to my desk so I could assess them. For my lowest learner in the class, I
used differentiation for her assessment. This is NCPTS 4 Teachers Facilitate
Learning for Their Students under Teachers plan instruction appropriate for
their students. I knew that a student of mine could not complete the task I was asking
the other students to do, so I changed the assessment for her to meet her needs. I
still had her write the uppercase and lowercase letters, but then instead of
asking her the other two questions, I got a white board and told her we were
going to practice writing her name because she doesn’t know how to spell her
name still. She looked at me and said “how do you know I don’t know how to
write my name?” I reminded her that she told me before and she said “oh yeah, I
do need a lot of practice. She said "I need to get out of school as soon as I
can so I can start working and collect money because my daddy doesn’t have a
lot of money.” This broke my heart. She was so excited that someone took the
time to help her practice. She got out of her seat and gave me a huge hug and
said “thank you so much for helping me, I wish my nannie was like you” then she
said “If I can find paper at home I’ll practice writing my name at home too.” I
was about in tears and I told her that I would send her home with lined paper
and write a note to her grandmother and dad and ask them to help her practice
her name. I told her to bring it back to me so I can see how much she learned.
This relates directly to NCPTS 2, Teachers Establish a Respectful Environment
for a Diverse Population of Students under Teachers provide an environment in
which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults and
Teachers work collaboratively with the families and significant adults in the
lives of their students. During this time, the student and I were able to form
a relationship that has continued to grow. I also involved her parent/guardian
so they can help with the success of her as well. Every Monday and Wednesday I
pull her back to my desk to work on writing her name and recognizing letters so
she can grow. She begs to come work with me and asks if she can stay the whole
time with me. It has been a blessing to have the privilege to work with her and
to see how happy she gets just because someone cares about her. Which leads me
into tweets that I have re-tweeted this month.
I follow Amy
Fast on Twitter on a weekly basis because she has a lot of rich knowledge and
wisdom when it comes to students. Two of my favorites are below. It is our job as teachers to invest in our children and make them feel loved and accepted. We need to follow NCPTS 4 Teachers Facilitate Learning for Their Students under Teachers plan instruction appropriate for their students. We need to recognize the students who are struggling and ask ourselves why and what we can do to ignite that passion in them so they enjoy learning. If we love our students and show them it is possible to succeed, they will have more energy and excitement for learning. This was proven to me with the student in my classroom that I have been working with. She knows she is behind the rest of the students in the class and because of that, she does not like school and does not want to be there. However, when I am working with her, she lights up and is
A PLN I was able to get plugged in with is called the THC Teaching channel. This is an awesome network for teachers and soon to be teachers to be on. You can go to the website and there is a box that says "what are you looking for." You can then type in anything you are curious about grades K-12. This time I typed in "Classroom management during centers" because that is something I believe I could improve on. I think it takes a long time for my class to transition between centers and I wanted to learn ways to make it more efficient. It is hard with kindergarten because like the teacher said in the video, you can't just write directions on the board for kids to follow like you can in 5th grade, so there is a lot of talking and question asking going on. A way that he was able to improve his center transitions was he turns off the lights to get students attention to stop talking. When they stop talking, he would have them sing a song to start transition so they don’t waste time and he then directed students where to rotate to next. Another thing he does in his classroom is he has a bin labeled sharpened and broken pencils. That way if the students break a pencil, they can just put it in the broken bin and get a sharpened one so they are not wasting time sharpening them which takes away from their learning. The video I watched about center management and the Teaching channel website are below.
With the information I have learned from working with my student, in my future classroom I will be sure to pick out the students who are struggling and don't think they can do it and find a way to make them feel special. Whether that be working with them one on one during center time, talking to them during lunch or recess, I will find a way to make them feel loved and accepted. I will also use the teachers ideas of turning the lights off to get the students attention and rotating to their next centers quietly and efficiently in my future classroom. I want to make the most of my time and believe that these types of transitions will be beneficial in doing so.
For my outside learning, I wanted to focus on creating a class culture where students learn to embrace one anothers' differences. As I was doing my research, I came across a video called "Educating Peter." It is a 30 minute video but was definitely worth the watch. Peter is a child with special needs and instead of isolating him to his own classroom, they kept him in the classroom and the children eventually learned to adapt and to help Peter with his every day tasks. Peter will never be at the academic level of his peers, but he sure did feel loved, accepted, and special which is the main reason to his success in the classroom. The video is below
Another source I found in my research was a website called "How to create a Welcoming Classroom Environment." This website focuses on how to include your ELL students. A lot of foreign students feel uncomfortable and have a hard time adjusting to the culture in the classroom. It is important that we invite their culture into the classroom and make them feel welcomed and important. Another idea is to assign them a partner to help assist them with work and translations if they are confused about something. There are many ideas to help your students embrace their culture and feel comfortable in the classroom. The website is also below.
