Oh my gosh! I FINALLY got to go back to the class I usually help out in after having observed in other classes for about 3 weeks. I missed these little first graders a ton...not that I didn't like the junior highers...I am just more comfortable in an elementary classroom. It was amazing to me at how much that had improved over the last couple of weeks. The majority of this class have learning problems (due to funding the school does this because they only have to pay for one aid....the teacher said she doesn't like it but can't do anything about it) so they have made GREAT strides under this teacher's instruction.
I was helping the teacher with some prep work and we were catching up. I told her that I was really nervous about eventually having a class similar to hers because I am not a special ed teacher and am not really getting the training to deal with some of these students. She said that I would do fine and that I would learn. I feel nervous about eventually making those decisions about what is good for these students. I know there are people in the school building who can help me....but its still scary that you can make a mistake. The teacher told me that even if you make mistakes its okay because you can always go back and teach it differently (like with guided reading you can always decide that a book is too challenging and give the student an easier one)
I don't think parents at times really understand how hard it is to be a teacher. I am grateful that I decided to go into this field because I think it will help me in raising my own children and being more understanding as a parent in my child's education.
So I went up to the Rockford area to visit my family this weekend and I went to their new church with them. While sitting in church they had a children's sermon. There were like 5 kids all under the age of probably 7 years of age. I was listening to the pastor talk to the kids and he started out by talking to the kids about tithing and he had $1 worth of change up on the altar and you could tell that he had completely lost like half of the kids because they didn't understand anything about money yet. Then he started reading directly out of the Bible. By this point none of the kids were really listening to what he had to say because he had totally went over their heads. Now I understand that a preacher is NOT by any means taught to teach children that young, but it was a very interesting scene for me to watch. I hope that in my classroom if I lose students, I will be able to tell and can quickly think on my feet and revamp the lesson so that they are interested and not lost.
As a future teacher I have really started to analyze the way teachers run their classrooms and what kind of activities they have their students doing. One thing that I really don't understand is group projects. I guess the thing that really frustrates me as a student is that you are either the person that is doing all the work in the group or you have to bite your tongue and let someone else make all of the decisions. There has to be some kind of way for a happy medium where everyone does their part and doesn't overtake the whole project.
The reason I have really begun to think about this is because in my english class we have to make a children's book on a controversial topic (which to me is a dumb idea anyway because if you have 4 students in a group there are going to be 4 different ideas on how the end product is going to look). In this group there is a girl that has a very strong personality. As a group we had come up with a rough draft of the story itself, we had agreed that we would have it finished by the end of the weekend using a wikispace (LOVE these....they make is soooo much easier to get together as a group outside of class). This girl took it upon herself to totally change the story and the words that we had used. The next class period I was honest with her and told her that we needed to cut out some of the words/sentences because it was way to long for a children's story. She then became very defensive and told me that I could be the editor of the story then. She would do the illustrations...this is frustrating because I have a machine that actually cuts shapes and letters out so it would have taken us a lot less time to do the illustrations. Again I had to bite my tongue because there needs to be some sort of compromise within the group to get things done. Okay, now that I am done venting....
So my question is how as a teacher do you get students to work well in groups together? I know that groups are done to help students learn to work with others, but if all that comes out of it is frustrations on all people involved is it really worth the time and effort? I mean even in this class we do weekly reflections on how things are going but I don't really think the teacher is able to help us through the conflicts (I know as college students we need to suck it up and be more mature, but I dont think that every group member has those feelings as well). I am not sure if as a teacher I will do many group projects because of my bad experiences with them.
We were talking in class today about read alouds and I after learning about this technique I realized that I have used some of the strategies we had talked about before. The one thing about read alouds that really struck me was the asking questions during reading. I found this interesting because the teacher I help out does this all the time with her students. I had picked this up from her and had used it with the students as well. I had used it and hadn't even realized that it was a read aloud strategy. This just reinforces to me that I really need to pay attention to my classes and really need to remember the things said because I will be using the strategies and information later on in my own classroom.
Along those same lines but with shared reading I really liked the QAR strategy that was used this morning. I think using this in a classroom would really help the students realize how exactly they are to be answering the questions and what to look for.
Also today I was finishing up my observations and realized that teaching has really changed in the few years I haven't been in middle school. When I was in 7th, 8th grade we were given a textbook to read and do the activities out of. Now more than ever before teachers have more resources and technology at their fingertips so they aren't really using the textbooks anymore. The teacher I was observing instead of using the textbooks she used regular books that the students could read for what she called "Brickyard 400". Each quarter the students need to read 400 pages total of a book and/or books that they choose and she okays. They then have to fill out a graphic organizer about the book and get credit for it. They are also given workbooks that have a list of vocabulary words from a story that they read and then they do several activities to reinforce those words in their brains. she does this to build their vocabulary and just looking through this workbook it seems like it is a good idea.
I learned alot today! I can't wait to be able to implement some of these things into my own classroom
http://krista.teacherlingo.com/archive/2008/11/04/need-help-with-lesson.aspx This author is also in school to become a teacher and I thought it would be a good idea to get together with her because she seems like she is at the same point I am. I offered to help her.
http://sms0354.teacherlingo.com/archive/2008/11/02/first-post.aspx This woman is a second year teacher in Illinois and is just starting her blog. She is a young teacher and might post some good ideas!
http://dragonlady328pt.teacherlingo.com/archive/2008/11/05/foldables-in-science.aspx This teacher has used the foldables from Dinah Zike (she actually went to a conference about them).
http://nadiaes.teacherlingo.com/archive/2008/11/09/realization.aspx Has to do with literacy and teaching reading and how it has become dreadful to her.
http://learner4life.teacherlingo.com/archive/2008/11/07/blog-1-when-is-there-time-to-sleep.aspx#comments This is Heather's Blog!