centers in the fourth grade classroom (Sept. 22)

This week at Valley was a 3 day school week because of the Buckwheat Festival. The Buckwheat Festival is a huge event to the people in Preston County. Many of the students are involved in the festival showing animals, school projects and in the parade. I will be attending the Buckwheat Festival on both Wednesday and Friday to enjoy it and see some of the students and their work. Since this week is a 3 day school week, my mentor teacher has decided that instead of starting new stories and information that we would just make it a review week and work on skills the students have not mastered yet, as well as integrate some fun centers. I thought that this was a great idea! I was asked to think of some fun stations that will help the students in areas that they are struggling in so I decided to look on my favorite site that really inspires me, Pinterest! I found a lot of really awesome ideas and created some of my own from the ideas I found. Below are the stations I created for this three day week. 1.) Subject/Predicate Fries: My students were really struggling with subjects and predicates, even after a re-teach so I decided to create a few stations to help them out.I only needed a few supplies to create this subject and predicate fries station. First off, I used yellow popsicle sticks to create the fries. I wrote subjects on some of the fries and predicates on the others. I stopped at Wendy's and asked for 3 Large fry boxes to put the "fries" into. I labeled the 3 boxes, mixed up fries, subject fries, and predicate fries. The idea was for the students to work in small groups and separate the popsicle sticks into the correct boxes. 2.) Shake-n-spell: Several of my students have difficulty with spelling and I have noticed that they are not doing so well on their spelling tests. I wanted to give them a fun way to practice their spelling so I created 2 shake-n-spell tubes. All it took were two sprinkle tubes, pom poms, plastic eyeballs, beads and small laminated spelling words. I simply mixed all of the items into the two tubes and put the cap on them. I then created a worksheet that went along with the tubes. The worksheet asked for the students to shake the tube, find a word, read it and write it in the first square. In the second square students were to rewrite the word and underline the vowels. The third square asked the students to rewrite the word in rainbow write. 3.) Subject Predicate Puzzle: As I said earlier my students really do not understand subjects and predicates so I thought of this classroom activity where students each get a laminated puzzle piece that either says subject or predicate. Each student must write what their puzzle piece is asking for with a dry erase marker. After students write on their puzzle piece I will start music. THey will walk around the room until music stops. Once it stops they must find someone next to them who has a match to the piece they have. Then they read their sentence they created to the whole class and we can discuss whether they created a complete sentence that has both a subject and predicate in it. I created a few other stations but I think these three will be my favorite =) Guess I will have to see what the kids think!

Action Research Design and Methodology Chap.3 Reflection

Chapter 3 provides a lot of pertinent information for doing research. It discusses data in great depth, which is very important when it comes to research. With out data there cannot be an action research project. Data is the main part of the project that provides evidence in order to prove the research. There are three broad types of action research data that is often associated with qualitative inquiry. 1.) Observations 2.) Interviews and 3.) Artifacts and documents Although data is needed to do research it can look different for each person. All three types of research data can be done differently, some people may take notes, create charts, logs, journals, interviews, video footage and surveys etc. For my action research I will be surveying and interviewing the students, observing them, taking video footage and logging information. I will use all of this data to break down what is going on, what is working, who and how is it affecting students. Data is often difficult for people, they are not sure what they are supposed to be looking for or how it will help them. Teachers may not even know it but they do research every day. They do research in order to direct their planning and make choices that best fit their students. Research also helps teachers to understand their students on a different level or see their students from a different perspective. Any changes made in the classroom was most likely made from data, such as observations of ones behavior or grades. The most important things to remember when doing research is to have a plan for the research, set up a schedule and have deadlines. Do things in pieces so that it doesn't become overwhelming. Doing research will not only help you as a teacher but also your students.

Teaching Reading: Lewis and Clark

Today was my second day of teaching Reading. This week they are reading Lewis and Clark and Me. Yesterday, we made a class KWL chart on Lewis and Clark. Most of the students were unfamiliar with using a KWL chart but they caught on pretty quickly. The students were very engaged in creating the chart. They shared what they knew about Lewis and Clark and things that they wondered. After creating the sections K and W on the chart I had the students preview the book, looking at the pictures and seeing if they had any other questions they wanted to put on the chart. We then read through the story, keeping the questions from the chart in mind. This KWL chart part of the lesson went very well but the reading, not so much. The students were constantly fidgeting, looking around the room, staring off in space, putting their heads down and even falling asleep, they were not following along. I was randomly calling on students to read and most of the time they had no idea where we were. It was becoming very frustrating so today I thought I wold try something new while we read. Today while we read I had the students stand up, face me and hold their books. I told the students that they sit all day so let’s stand while we read today. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not but it ended up working. Students were not falling asleep or fidgeting in their desk. I did have some students trying to lean on the desk with their elbows and sit on the desk but I just walked around and touched their shoulders asking them to not lean or sit on the desks, just stand. I do believe this helped with their focus and woke them up a little. Every student that I called on knew where we were and were paying attention. It was a short reading so they only stood for about 10 minutes at most. I prefer having the whole class stand because if I have students stand up individually when they are not following along or falling asleep it is possible that it would be embarrissing to the the students and I am not trying to embarress them, just simply get them to focus better. We continued reading Lewis and Clark and Me today and then when we finished the students worked on maps and making map legends. The students did very well with this lesson, followed directions and behaved. They were also being very creative with their map legends. We did not finish the map today but we will finish it tomorrow after we review.

Blog 2: Thinking about research - Aug 23rd

I have been trying to think about what it is that I want to do my research on this year and I believe today I finally have an idea that I feel passionate about. I strongly believe in integrating movement and music into the classroom as much as possible. I also know from looking at my current fourth graders West test scores from last year, that as a whole, they are really struggling on the west test. I want to help them improve their grades in the classroom and on the tests that they take. The fourth graders schedule is one subject after the next with no breaks in between. I have noticed several students loosing focus after two subjects and many of them start to put their heads on the tables and fall asleep. I have read that movement in the classroom improves students’ learning and improves their thinking, helps them to focus, so I want to test this and see how well it really works. My ideas are to implement classical conditioning by introducing several different songs, from different genres to the students. Once the students become a bit familiar with the different songs I will connect them to a certain action in the classroom and explain what I expect of the students when they hear a particular song. For example, I would play “operate” and they would know once they hear it that they are to clear their desk and get ready for the next subject. I am hoping that eventually I will not have to tell students what to do but instead just play a song and they will do it.

EDUC 600- Chapter 2 Reflection

Chapter 2 discusses a lot of important information especially about how to actually use what you learn in your education courses and apply it to your PDS classrooms. When I think back to all of the education courses I have taken at WVU I realize how much I have learned including facts, methods, strategies etc. When it comes to research I often struggle with forming the research question. This chapter has a lot of useful information that can be applied when thinking and creating your research question. It gives great detail about the many sections that make up the research inquiry. One section that I believe many of us really struggle with is finding reliable, accurate sources to use. The first place I always think of when looking up information is to do it on the internet, although the internet isn't always the best place. As this chapter explains, it can be difficult to find reliable and accurate sources but it also shows you how to modify your search in order to find some reliable sources. One source that has been a lot of help to me has been the WVU Library online. I have found several articles and books that helped me with my previous research.

First week of fourth grade!!!!

This was my first week in the 4th grade classroom. It started off with 2 staff development days, which consisted of a lot of meetings that really opened my eyes to all of the decisions teachers actually have a say in. The third day was used to get the classroom ready for the children and figure out the scheduling details. Valley has had a lot of changes since last year, we hired a new principal and our school day is an hour longer this year, students start school at 7:50 and are released at 3:15. By the fourth day I was very anxious to finally meet the 25 little fourth graders that I would be spending this semester with. The students finally arriving to the classroom was very exciting, especially because when I first came to Valley I started with two second grade classes, I then moved into a third grade classroom that consisted of a mix of the two second grade classes that I previously had. I am now in the fourth grade with some of the same students that I started off with. It has been really interesting to see the students grow over the past two years and I am looking forward to what this semester has in store. I have learned so much from being with the Valley faculty and the students. The students that I have had over the past two years were really happy to see me and have me apart of their classroom again. All of the changes that I mentioned above brought upon many questions that were still in the process of being answered the day before school started. It seemed to be a bit hectic for the faculty but the first day for students went very well. In attempt to make the end of the day pick up/busses to run more smoothly several faculty members and myself tagged children as they were getting dropped off at the "kiss and drop". We tagged the children by asking guardians what the plan was for arrival in the a.m. and departure in the p.m.. If the child was supposed to go on a bus we wrote down the bus number on the sticker, if the child was supposed to be picked up we wrote pick up and then put the sticker on the child's shirt. They were to were the sticker all day so that at the end of the day teachers and bus drivers were aware of where the child was supposed to be going. Over all, I believe the tagging really did help to make the end of the day go more smoothly but there was still a little bit of chaos. Being apart of this first week of preparing has been a wonderful learning experience that I am happy to have been apart of.

Celebration Reflection

Last Friday all of the Benedum students had to attend the Celebration of Inquiry Seminar at Lakeview. At this seminar all of the Interns present their research and findings. It is always very interesting to listen to but this year I found it very helpful for me and my current research. One of the presentations I listened to was on sight words and if visuals or kinesthetic activities help them recall their sight words. This presentation was very helpful to me because it is exactly what my research is on this semester. The presenter had really great and creative activities that I thought my students would have enjoyed as well. For one of her activities she created "angry birds" but in real life out of toilet paper rolls. She had sight words written on them and the students had to knock over the toilet paper rolls that had that sight word on it. I thought this was such a great idea and the students would be intrigued by it since it is just like the angry bird game that is on phones. I believe it really helped that many of the students knew how to play already and could relate to it. She also had activities like sight word twister, bean bag hoop throw and leap frog. Listening to her presentation and hearing about the activities she used it really opened my eyes to what I could create for my students. Another one of the presentations that I listened to was on sign language being used in a Kindergarten classroom. This was incredibly interesting to me and I was amazed to hear about how well her students responded to it and picked it up. The presenter told us about one of her students who never spoke to anyone in school or around people from her school but after teaching sign language to them this student began to communicate by using sign language. Her communication was still very little but it is a great start. The presenter also said she never thought that this particular student was participating and learning the sign language but when she recorded her students and her teaching them she saw in the video that the student was participating, she was doing the signs behind her back so that no one could see. I think that this is an incredible story and it shows that we should not assume that a student isn't learning because they may have their own way or be to shy to show their participation. I took a lot of notes this year at the celebration so that next year when I go to create mine I have an idea of what others did.