Week 5

On Monday I spent the morning preparing materials for my cooperating teacher and organizing the room to begin a new week before getting sick at school.  My teacher sent me home after planning the next day's lesson with me.  On Tuesday, I got the chance to observe the RtI teacher during a 30 minute intensive reading session with four students from my classroom.  The entire time the students were focused, working, and engaged.  The RtI room was an example of a classroom I really enjoyed being in, and I could tell the students enjoyed it too.  I like the small group aspect, but also the atmosphere of the room.  The RtI teacher gave a great amount of positive feedback.  Encouragement was continuous and she often called them to be leaders.  She explained to me later that she talked to them about being good readers and being good leaders often because they do not get as much of that kind of feedback in their regular classroom.  At the end before the students left to return to class, she made sure to tell them all individually one thing they did really well and one thing she wanted them to work on.  She does that each day before the students leave.  It was a great reminder to find ways to incorporate that atmosphere into a large classroom as well.

On Wednesday my cooperating teacher asked me to test all of our students on Fry's list of sight words, something CPS is now requiring to be tested on a weekly basis (which we learned at our professional development day a couple weeks ago).  I had each student read the words on the list until they missed ten words, then made folders for each student with a list of the first ten words they need to work on.  I couldn't help but think about how much work it would be for my cooperating teacher to implement and keep up with this task without my help.  We were talking today about how it will most likely affect their spelling grades as well, because they will most likely only study one of the lists each week.  I understand the benefit of learning sight words, especially for our emerging readers, but it's difficult to fit  so many different forms of testing into each school week without taking away from other areas of learning.

On Thursday we structured math a little differently than normal.  We tried incorporating math games for the second time this week during independent work for both grades.  Because we used one day to introduce the games, today the students played them successfully.  It was a great environment and gave my teacher and I encouragement in using them again.  The students were enjoying themselves, interacting with peers, and learning math concepts.  It was wonderful to observe.  Hopefully I'll incorporate that into my future planning!

On Friday my teacher and I planned afternoon activities to be interdisciplinary and to include application practice (IPTS 3L).  I enjoy Fridays because we stray from our normal routine and integrate social studies and science with our reading and math activities.  This week we accessed students' prior knowledge about house blueprints and invention designs (from all the literature we have been reading in the unit "Inventing Fun" for the past several weeks) and asked students to use different mediums to construct the blueprints of a house.  Students explored how shapes fit together by using pattern blocks, snap tiles, building blocks. cubes, and paper shapes to create blueprints for their dream house.  The students LOVED this activity and were enthusiastic about spending the afternoon working on it.  We then took pictures of everyone's blueprints and shared them with the class.  I'm looking forward to planning Fridays during my full time teaching!

Schmidt devotes an entire chapter to communication with parents.  Before reading the chapter I thought I had a solid foundation regarding communication with parents.  Things like making eye contact, setting boundaries, being clear in communication, and being intentional about positive communication were things I already knew.  Chapter 11, however, contained a great deal of relevant information, especially regarding parent-teacher conferences.  I like Schmidt's idea of focusing on enlightenment in communication with parents.  Having this goal drives the direction and procedure of communicating with parents.  Practical tips I noted were using bulleted points instead of full sentences when possible on news letters, including student work in newsletters, and including a rolling calendar on student newsletters.

The chapter also contained a great deal of relevant information about parent-teacher conferences.  The cultural considerations were helpful in beginning to consider my own students and how their home cultures may differ when it comes to communication.  I'm realizing that being knowledgeable about students' cultures but also observant whenever possible is important, noticing things like what a comfortable distance is for a conversation with students' parents and considering that parents have affective filters too.  I found the idea of having a parent preparation packet for conferences useful.  The questions included would be helpful, but I also wondered how many of the parents of my students would complete it.  I also appreciated tips like having an agenda and sending out thank-yous after conferences.  Overall, I feel like the chapter helped prepare me for conferences, but I also wondered how my ideas would play into my cooperating teacher's ideas and methods for conferences, which is something we'll have to discuss.