Post Numero 5

50 Must Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers
http://www.teachingtips.com/blog/2008/06/30/50-must-read-up-and-coming-blogs-by-teachers/

I found it hard to find blogs that are current and updated! Also, there were many more middle and high school teacher blogs than elementary school - especially for math and science.

http://www.tandalay.com/peforchildren/
I like PE For Children. It has many different opinions and ideas coming together in one space. There are links to articles as well as lesson and activity ideas. It is an open community, so I can create an account and post my thoughts and ideas as well.


http://teacherscount.wordpress.com/
This blog is interesting to see a different side of teaching. From what I read it is the more personal side of teaching - including the students' personal lives and the teacher's. It also includes tips of how to deal with the different situations.

http://mathnexus.wwu.edu/
Though not a blog, this is a fun math website that is updated consistently. It has fun facts, problems of the week and activities to do with students of all ages.

4th post!!!

"Now that you are nearing the end of your first quarter of your internship, what has been your biggest surprise about being in the classroom and working with students?"

This may be just because it was so recent, but I was surprised by Parent Teacher Conferences. I was lucky enough to see a whole afternoon and night of conferences. It was a valuable experience to see a veteran teacher go through conferences with parents. It was interesting how some parents asked lots of specific questions, "How can I help him in his reading?" and some parents ask little or no questions at all.


It also was interesting to see how long the ELL program takes to pull out students! We had a student who only speaks Spanish and yet it took upwards of 4 weeks before he was pulled out at all. That was just interesting, the politics involved. Because of this there was a student in our room for a month who we could not fully communicate with - it was good to see what we could do and what we couldn't do for this student.

I've been surprised at how small Bellingham is for it's schools in numbers. Vancouver has so many schools and districts that small things surprise me. Like nurses at a school one day a week.

Bellingham School District
Elementary 14
Middle 4
High 4
Total: 22

Evergreen School District (my old district)
Elementary 21
Middle 6
High 5
Alternative 4
Total: 36

Vancouver School District
Elementary 21
Middle 6
High 6
Total: 33



http://www.bham.wednet.edu/schools/schools.htm
http://portalsso.vansd.org/portal/page?_pageid=153,178877&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
http://www.egreen.wednet.edu/Schools/Pages/Default.aspx

#3 - Teaching, Reflecting & Reteaching

Consider a lesson you have taught the first week of November, with an eye toward reteaching or extending your lesson for particular groups of students.

The prompt has four parts:

(1) Learning target: list the short term learning target/objective of the lesson, along with a short description of the learning experiences section of your lesson plan.

Students will experience traditions and customs in China with a read aloud and discussion questions. The students will give examples of customs and traditions from the book.

This is a read aloud called The Dragon Prince. The students will hear multiple customs in the story from China including: Bride Price, Visiting families, and Bowing. The discussion questions to go along with these customs are:

Custom pg 3: Bride price – A bride price is a gift given from the groom to the bride or her family. In some cultures, there is a dowry instead. A dowry is a gift from the bride’s family to the husband. In China and in this book, we see a bride price. The dragon is offering the father’s life as a gift to marry his daughter. Usually the gift is money or property.

Custom pg 15: “it is the custom … brides may visit their families after they marry.” Here we see that in China it is custom that the bride visits her family after she is married.

Custom pg 17: Why do you think Seven bowed to her father? He’s not a king, just a farmer. Could this be a custom? It is a custom. In our culture we shake hands or hug to show friendship. In China it is a custom for the daughter to bow to her father as a show of respect.

We ended with a discussion of what customs and traditions are.

(2) Evidence: describe what students did or said to let you know whether you were successful in meeting this goal (what evidence led you to this conclusion?)

The students were engaged in the discussion during the story and at the end after the story. They gave examples they had heard from the story remembering the "visiting family" and "bowing like shaking hands". The students were able to connect with the story throughout with the prompts. I asked how many students would hug their family if they hadn't seen them in a long time such as a week - and most of them enthusiastically raised their hands. The students were also able to give many self created definitions of a tradition. "something you do with your family" and "something you do every year" are some responses I heard.

(3) Reteach: describe how you could/will reteach the lesson for students who may need extra support beyond what you offered in the lesson.

When I reteach this lesson in the future I will cut out some of the long descriptions. The students attention wandered during the story. It is quite long for 1st graders. I will also stop half way through the story to have a short discussion or activity - possibly having them move to a different spot. This will help the students stay focused for the whole story.

(4) Extend: describe how you could/will extend the lesson for students who successfully met your expectations (i.e., how will you help students build on what they've already mastered?).

I will be having the students discuss their own traditions with their families. The students will draw a picture and their family will write the tradition for the student to share with the class.


As with our last prompt, visit a colleague's blog a few days after the prompts are due -- offer some friendly feedback about their ideas for reteaching and extending their lesson.

More work to do even more work!

I have decided to take a class during my full time internship. This decision was not made lightly.
As of now I will graduate with a BA in Elementary Mathematics Education. I have already taken the Mathematics West-E and so only need one more class to receive a mathematics endorsement which will make me qualified to teach math 4-12.

This spring is the only time I can take this class for many reasons.

And so, I find myself working hard to write a petition and gather reference letters so that I may work even harder this coming spring! I know I can do it, but the irony of the situation cannot escape me.

Sometimes, in order to work harder later you must work harder now!

10/9 Responce

Interns: You've been in your internship classroom since late August, assisting your Classroom Teacher in launching the school year. For your first blog post describe, briefly, one strong conviction about teaching that you brought to the classroom that has changed considerably during this time. What changed, and why is this a sign of personal growth?

When I came into the classroom I thought it would work best if everything was planned out. As the first few weeks have passed I have seen that it can work without everything being planed. It can even be a blessing in the first grade. You rarely get through everything in a day or even an hour that you thought you would!