Geometry

This week in class we talked about geometry and folded a square-piece of paper, having to use proofs not just what we saw to explain what we did. While I reviewed geometry last year to take the WEST-B test, it has been 12 years sine I took geometry in high school, and I didn't know the material like I thought I would. This proves to me that I really need to review and re-teach myself the material before I even begin to teach a lesson, especially a lesson like this with the paper.

In my kindergarten main placement we begin math with a "math minute". All the kids sit together on the carpet and the teacher reads out a math problem and they turn to their friend on the carpet and tell them the answer. On Thursday the question was a geometry question and it made me think about class. The kids had to describe a shape to their partner. They couldn't say the name or the name of shape that it is similar to. For example, "the shape I'm thinking of has four corners and all the sides are the same length". The students were doing it, and I watched and listened to them think about what they know about each shape. This made me think about Van Hiele's five steps. These five and six year olds were in the first step working their way to the second step. If as a kindergarten teacher, I can lay a strong foundation, the teachers after me can continue to build and by the time the students are in high school, they'll comfortably be in step four, "deduction".

In class we talked about having students keep a journal to express their emotions, feelings and thoughts about math. I'm wondering would you as the teacher correct math errors in the journal, or leave them as a place for students to freely write whatever they feel, whether it's matematically correct or not?

Finding symmetry with a Mira

Today was the first time I had used a Mira to find symmetry. I was surprised to hear that it has been around for years! When we were drawing the boy on the swing everyone at my table was laughing and couldn't believe the boy's image was being projected onto the swing. It's funny how such simple technology can be fun and really educational. I wish my school had had this when I was leaning geometry.

Another think we talked about today that I hadn't thought about was gathering the extra manipulatives that are lying around in your school and use them! I've seen closets like these at schools I've been in, valuable resources people have forgotten about.

This quarter we have been using Gapminder.org. What would be the youngest grade you'd introduce a website like this into a classroom?

Project 1: Analysis of Student Writing

Analysis

This analysis is based on one sample of Sarah's (pseudonym) writing, a short-story draft of a girl and her dog who can talk for a day. Additionally, we conducted a 25-word spelling inventory.

Ownership and Meaning of the Piece

Sarah displayed great ownership for her fantasy story, “The Day My Dog Talked” and quickly offered to read it to us. In the story, when Sarah is awaken by her mother for school, she is shocked to learn that her dog “Ruby” can talk. When she arrives at school, for pet day, Ruby begins talking and creates a chain of humorous events. Sarah told us she thinks of herself as a good writer and enjoys writing both at school and at home. She mostly writes fantasies with talking animals, especially werewolves.

Six Traits Assessment

When looking at the ideas in the short story, it is apparent that Sarah has drawn from her own knowledge and experiences. She made herself the main character, her mom is in the beginning and ending of the story, and she has a dog of her own. The story is six pages and while it is titled, “The Day My Dog Talked” she has several events occurring throughout the day. If she eliminated the last event, which doesn’t fit as well as the first three, then she could expand the others and eliminate potential questions from the reader.

Organizationally, the story has a clear introduction and conclusion. The day begins with Sarah waking up to her dog talking and she falls asleep to her dog barking. The story transitions smoothly from the morning to school, but then begins to lose the fluidity when it transition from school to home. The title accurately describes the story, although; it’s not unique or original. It’s an obvious restatement of the prompt (NWREL, 1992).

As the main character of her own story, Sarah talks about herself in the first person, making the voice of the story personal. She also uses natural and engaging language when expressing dialog between herself and other characters, such as when the cat said, “Where’s the bathroom in this place?” In the story when Sarah is at home with her mom she reveals personal details; however, when she’s at school and on her way home the story avoids risk and she loses her natural language (NWREL, 1992).

The short story is written as though Sarah is telling the story, “I rolled out of bed… My mom yelled”. For this reason the word choice is adequate and familiar, with sporadic striking words and phrases where Sarah paints a picture for the reader, such as “sarcastically” and “she took me the wrist and dragged me to her office”.

Sarah’s ability to use conventions and sentence fluency is difficult to accurately assess since the work we saw was a first draft. However, based on this draft the sentences are varied and constructed correctly; although, the story could benefit from the use of connecting words and phrases, such as “however” and “therefore”. Since this was a rough draft there were editing marks from her teacher, correcting a few misspelled words and helping Sarah with sentence structure. The grammar and punctuation is used correctly overall, and it is apparent that they have been working on writing dialog in class with the use of quotations and comas. She attempts paragraphing, but most of them run together and she’s only beginning a new paragraph when she starts a new page, this has been corrected by her teacher, but she could benefit from additional practice with paragraphs.

Spelling

In “The Day My Dog Talked”, there are several spelling errors. Most of the errors are vowel patterns, especially diphthongs, including “ea” and “ou”. For example, “scremed” for screamed and “arond” for around. In addition, there were two homophone errors, “there” for their and “herd” for heard. In the spelling inventory Sarah missed seven of the last eight words. With “cattle” and “ripen”, she spelled them “catle” and “ripen”, either doubling or not doubling the consonant and with “cellar” and “favor” she spelled them “celler” and “faver” missing the long vowel. “Fortunate” and “pleasure” were spelled phonetically, “pleasher” and “forchanit”, and “civilized” was spelled “sivilized” missing the base word civil. The last word “opposition”, spelled “apasishion” shows that Sarah was guessing at how to spell the word and we encouraged her to try her best. Toward the end of inventory, Sarah spelled the words left to right without recognizing the patterns of letters working together to represent sounds (Templeton & Morris, 1999, p. 105). After comparing the spelling inventory with the errors from the short story, Sarah would benefit from additional help with vowel patterns.

Lesson Plan

Objective:

Student will be able to sort words according to diphthong patterns and by words that sound and look alike.

Standard:

EALR 3.3.2 Spells words appropriate for the grade level accurately.

Material:

One set of words cut into easily, manipulative rectangles.

Instructional strategies:

This lesson is designed for one-on-one work with Sarah. The words chosen for this activity were taken from Sarah’s short story. These are words she is comfortable with and will be a mixture of words she spelled correctly and incorrectly in the story. In addition, the sort will include words that look and sound familiar to the spelling errors, so she will begin to see patterns.

I will start the activity by explaining to Sarah what a word sort is and how we’re going to use this activity to work on the vowel patterns “ea” and “ou”. After this introduction I will hand her the set of words and give her a minute to read over the words and familiarize herself with them.

Once she has spread the words out on the table, I’ll ask her to sort the words into groupings that sound alike in the middle.

After she has finished her sort, we’ll discuss the groupings she’s created and what the sound is that makes the words similar. Having her see the vowel pattern similarities between the words that she uses on a regular basis.

I will ask her to sort the words a second time by grouping the words that look and sound alike.

We will discuss just like after the first sort.

Assessment:

Teacher will informally assess student’s ability to sort words by diphthongs and by words that sound and look similar, by looking at the groupings Sarah creates during the two sorts.

ITouch and Differentiated Instruction

In my kindergarten main placement there are several students who would benefit from having an ITouch for differentiated instruction; however, the three students I choose for this post are two ELL students and a student with developing motor skills.

A: Is an ELL student with a very low verbal skills even in his native language of Spanish.

Other Hispanic ELL students try to speak Spanish with him in class and he is withdrawn. He is one of the youngest students in our class with an August birthday, which in kindergarten makes a difference. With his young age, very low language skills and little to know preparation for kindergarten, such as colors, shapes and holding a pencil or scissors he has qualified for extra help at school. Twice a day A goes and works with a specialist.

The Touch could give A get the extra help he needs in class, with colors, shapes, letters and sounds. And since his parents are Non-English speakers, using an app like Dragon Dictation that can translate into Spanish and would allow them to read the notes and extra activities A is given when working with the specialists.

E: Is a student who is similar to a student I worked with last year when I was volunteering in a kindergarten class. The student last year had just missed qualifying for extra help with the school's Occupational Therapist for handwriting, including stroking from the bottom and pushing harder with the pencil. E is like this student in that his letter formation is poor and when writing he doesn't apply enough pressure, his writing is very light and difficult to read.

I do not think that E would need or qualify for help with the an OT; however, I do think extra help with the Touch could help him develop his motor skills. Using an app that helps him form letters and have to apply pressure the screen with his finger to form the shapes of the letters will help E develop the motor skills necessary for writing. An example of this is I Write Words. This app has students trace letters in the correct formation, if traced incorrectly or too lightly, the shape will not appear on the screen.

D: Is a student who is also an ELL but his language skills are higher than A's; however, he has very low self-esteem. He gives up easily, and won't participate unless he has to. He gives up because he still struggles with his letters and counting from 1-20 and doesn't want to fail.

As part of our math curriculum we use a "penny chart". This chart also includes nickels and dimes, helping students skip count by 5's and 10's and it is also used for addition and subtraction. An app that can be used to help D with his counting and math is Coin Math. This app could be used as a supplement to the curriculum and give D the extra help with counting coins and doing math with money. Having this extra help on his own with his own Touch can help him gain self esteem and overcome his fear of failure.

Algebra Tiles

I usually feel the same way about the manipulates we use in class. I can take them or leave them. As a kid, I didn't learn math using manipulatives, so using them is unnatural and I tend to get frustrated. However, today when we started using the algebra tiles to demonstrate FOIL, I was amazed at how clear the concept was to me. It made perfect sense, and I could see how using the tiles and transitioning from the tiles to the box/grid to FOIL would gives students the concrete understanding instead of just expecting them to accept and memorize FOIL.

One question I had about the tiles, is that I can see how they're used with simple problems, but I'm wondering as a teacher would you use them with more difficult problems? Or would you not have students move on to more difficult problems until they've mastered the concept with the tiles on the easier problems?

While we were using the tiles and other manipulatives today, I was thinking about the ways they could be used in both my kindergarten main placement, as well is in my third grade dyad placement. In kindergarten we have a penny, nickel and dime chart. Students are learning to skip count and understand that 5 pennies equal a nickel. In third grade dyad placement, the students were working on place value, having the kids play a game like the poker chip example would really help some of the kids who need a more of a concrete example.

A quote I left with today was," manipulatives build understanding and make connections".

Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say

This week in class we read the article, "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say", by Steven Reinhart. I loved this article. Reinhart gives every teacher the tools and techniques needed to implement a student-focused style into any classroom. While I was reading, I thought of Allison last quarter. She modeled this style of teaching and demonstrated being patient and asking good questions. At first I was little unsure of this style because I had expected her to lecture and tell us if our answer's were right or wrong like every other math teacher I've had.

After reading this article and attending class, I've learned the importance of everyone participating. For example, in the article, Reinhart stressed the importance of asking questions to the whole group. I never thought about how when you ask a question to just one person, the rest of the class checks-out because it is an unspoken suggestion that the other students no longer have to think. However, while I completely agree with Reinhart, I wonder, if as a teacher you let your students know that you never take just one answer, would this keep the students thinking?

Teaching about bees

This week my dyad partner and I finished teaching our last lesson in our unit on bees. Next week our students are writing their own skits from a bee's perspective for the performance assessments. In class on Thursday we asked the students what bee activity they liked best from the unit. It was great to hear them all list the different activities my partner and I created and listen to them give the reasons why it was their favorite. I felt so proud; I couldn't stop smiling.

My partner and I feel so fortunate that we've had a mentor teacher who has given us so much freedom. She gave us the topic, but allowed us to create almost 10 lessons for the entire unit, with her help. Every Wednesday and Thursday she gave us her prep time and helped us develop our lesson ideas into plans.

Our mentor teacher told us that during the student-lead conferences, the students proudly told their parents everything they've done in the bee unit and how it's been one of their favorite thing so far in third grade.

Through out the unit, every lesson was an activity- from learning the bee dance (the way bees communicate) to designing our own scientifically-correct bees out of sculpting clay. A retired teacher who volunteers in the classroom twice a week told my partner and I after the bee dance, that we were so brave to teach an activity like that, and that she didn't try an activity like that until she'd been teaching for five years! This made us feel good.

I'm going to miss my dyad placement. I have learned and grown so much as a pre-service teacher. I feel lucky that I was placed in a choice-community school where I could see educators teaching the way we're learning to teach in our program.