Michelle's+Practicum+Blog


 * September 14, 2011**

Expectations of 1st graders:
- 5-6 years of age - Since I havent been in a classroom with first graders yet, I want to see how their level of intelligence, being mature, and understanding of a classroom is compared to four year olds. - I want to see how they interact with their teacher(s) and peers and how they are in a "real" classroom emvironment. - My goal for this practicum experience is to have a better understanding of first graders with their literacy and pre-writing skills. Also, I want to help these children expand their horizon and creativity through learning.

"By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn." -Latin Proverb

==== ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍"It is a happy talent to know how to play" ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ --Ralph Waldo Emerson


 * September 20, 2011: What are your initial thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the classroom environment you are in? What are the children like? What are you first impressions to the class schedule, curriculm, and room arrangement?**

Today was my first day of my practicum. I went from 8-1, in which I thought I was crazy! Haha! Only because first graders at this time have SOOOO much energy. When I arrived there was only one girl in the classroom. From the moment I walked in I knew she was going to be a handful. She told me her name, asked me mine, told me what she likes to do in her spare time, and what she was building with legos at the time....all in a 2 minute span!! All the other students came in and it began to get louder and louder and louder!

I have to admit though, I love the environment.‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ I love being out of the pre-k/daycare stage and love being in a classroom like this first grade one. It makes me realize more and more that I want to be a teacher. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ The children, like I said, are crazy! But crazy in a good way! These children have such a personality that is different from being in pre-k or kindergarten. I can tell that they have matured and realize what they can and cannot do in the classroom.

I go to my practicum every Tuesday and on this day, the first graders go to French and Art. My head teacher and I had walked them to French and it was so cute hearing them say Bonjour. My head teacher asked the children a lot about Art and how certain things relate to Art. We are reading Tomie dePaola's "The Art Lesson" and a few activities are dealing with art. My mind has been really cranking thinking of SOOO many different activities I could do with them. Today we put a box of 24 crayons in ABC order and some kids had difficulty with it, especially when it came to the blue's (blue, blue-green, blue-violet). I tried to explain where the letters fall in the alphabet. It really made me think of different ABC games. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍I have to say...i am LOVING every second of being up there. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Needless to say, I want a classroom of children over the age of 6, haha! I love infants and toddlers but I know for a fact this is what I want in life! I love the environment, the children, and just everything that comes with it. I cant wait to go back and see what I can teach them!

"Teaching creates all other professions." ~Unknown Author

Before I even begin to explain these kids, I witnessed the funniest thing one of the children said. This past week we reading another Tomie dePaola book called Strega Nona. This book is about a grandmother and it is set in Italy. One of my students used to live in Switzerland and she immediately knew exactly where it was located in relation to Italy. Mrs. Reinbold pointed to another place on the map and she said what is this? Without hesitation the child screamed, "AUSTRALIA!!" I giggled a little big because he got the AUST part right. She told him that he was close then he screamed, "ALASKA!!" Again, I giggled because he knew exactly where Alaska is on the map. Eventually Mrs. Reinbold told him it was Austria and he said that is what he meant‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍. I just love that no matter what is going on, these children make me giggle insid ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍e.
 * October 4, 2011: What are you doing to get to know the children in the classroom? What do you know about them now? What are they interested in?**

This is the book that we read this week called Strega Nona, taking place in Italy.

Week by week I get to know what these children are like during the class, recess, lunch, and who they really are. I am finding more and more as they continue to tell me. I know a few of the children have older brothers and sisters and what they like to do in their free time. I know some of the boys really like football and mostly all the girls like jump rope. (This is because I have to play jump rope during recess every week :) ) The one day, a little boy came up to me and said, "Miss Michelle..I just wanted to let you know that my mom's name is Michelle too." I thought it was great that he had the courage, to come up to (because he is VERY shy) and tell me that. Then he continued to tell me what his mom does and then told me about his dad. We just stood there and talked about his family for a little bit. I am really liking the fact these children are not afraid to ask me for help. The one day in class they were writing in their journals about what they want to be when they grow up. At one point during this all i heard was "Miss Michelle can you help me? Miss Michelle I need help! Miss Michelle when your done helping *Tommy can you help me? " ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍I felt very important to these children. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

During few time or even when they do activities I will walk around the classroom watching them problem solve and how to figure out the answer. As I am doing so I will sit down with each group and we will talk a little about each one of them so I can get to know them a little better. I am also finding how they are with their fine motor, gross motor, and cognitive skills. This helps me better when I have to plan my lesson and helps design better activities for the children who need a little help in any of those areas. This week was a good week.‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Again, like I said last time, I am soooo happy I am where I am. These children are truly the best kids I have worked with. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book." --Unknown

To start off, the week went sooooo WELL! I got to teach my first lesson this week and plan activities around it. I had to read, "The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush" to finish up Tomie dePaola. The children were so excited for this book and predicted everything that would happen in the page by page, it really got their imagination going. After we read this book our first activity I planned out was‍‍‍‍‍‍ indian head dresses ‍‍‍‍‍‍. Each child got to color on their head dress and could make their own name. Some of the names were: "He-Who-Likes-His-Dad" "She-Who-Likes-Taylor-Swift" and of course "‍‍‍‍‍‍She-Who-Likes-Diamonds-And-Cheerleading ‍‍‍‍‍‍" hahah. They got to decorate it their head dress with feathers, and of course, that was a hit! After we finished our head dresses, we did stations of other activites. ‍‍‍‍‍‍This consisted of sand paper letters, shaving cream words, matching letters and pictures, and playdough letters. ‍‍‍‍‍‍
 * October 14, 2011: Is there a child who is particularly challenging? What are the child's behaviors like? How do you think the curriculum helps or hinders his self control? What are some things you might try to help the child develop self control?**

To answer the question of if there is child who is particularly challenging, the answer is yes. However, it is not one particular child, it is a few. A few children have sensory issues (i.e touching the shaving cream) and some have fine motor skills that DEFINITELY need work on. ‍‍‍‍‍‍The reason why I think these two particular is because some children did not like touching the shaving cream AT ALL. They thought it was too messy and too "gross." Now, for first graders, you would think they would want to touch this shaving cream. ‍‍‍‍‍‍ Also, I have been observing every time I am there their fine motor skills dealing with writing. Particularly there is three children who really need help with their fine motor skills.

This what the children had to do with the shaving cream.

This is the book that I read to the children. Basically, for when I plan more lessons, I am going to try to base some of them on fine motor skills. I think this will not only help the kids who need it but also improve all the kids fine motor skills. Each week I am having more and more fun. I sometimes wish I could come here than my other observations haha (shhh dont tell :) ) ‍‍‍‍‍‍"Be all that you can be. Find your future--as a teacher." ‍‍‍‍‍‍  --Madeline Fuchs Holzer

These past two weeks have been extremely busy and good in the first grade room. Last week I taught the whole class time after morning meet. In a way, I was supppperr nervous! But I was so excited at the same time. First, the children had to use his or her senses to describe the characteristics of a pumpkin. Each child got to hold the pumpkin and give adjectives for me to write on the board. After we had a bunch of describing words each child got sloppy copy paper. This sloppy copy paper was to write to sentences. The sentences said, "The pumpkin is __." The children had to write two sentences to describe the pumpkin. I went around to check if their sentences were complete. Each child then had to draw their own pumpkin and write their sentences on the pumpkin. After doing that they drew a stem and cut their pumpkins out. It was a hit!!
 * November 1st, 2011:**

The next thing the class did was read a story. The story I read this week was "The Pumpkin Book." This book, I have to say, was informative, creative, and interesting, all in one! It taught the children how a pumpkin grows, how to carve a pumpkin, halloween, the history of halloween, and where pumpkins come from. The children loved it! After we read it each child told me what they were being for Halloween, of course! We went back to our desks and each child had a packet of pumpkins. We made this packet on how a pumpkin grows and then showed the step by step process by illustrating it. These activities took my two hours or longer to do with the children! I have to say that it was good that I had this opportunity to work like this with them.

I have been trying to get pictures of my children each week, but Mrs. Reinbold is not sure which children are allowed to have

his or her picture taken without school having the pictures. SOOO hopefully next week I will have some good pictures up

of my kids!! Rae Ann I cant thank you

enough for putting me where you have me!

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

--Henry Adams

November 16th, 2011 This is my last week with my kids :( tear, i know! Tomorrow is my last practicum and yesterday was an interesting day, to say the least. During morning work I worked with a few kids. One child said he needed help, but it was obviously was just a push in the right direction because he knew what he was doing. Another girl got the concept pretty good but struggled a bit. But I just had one girl that was absoultely not understanding ANYTHING! I understood now what it is like to be in a situation with a student and them not understanding anything and as the teacher you have to start from scratch. During this we had to figure out how many nickels and pennies it takes to equal 28 cents. I had real change in front of her to count up. At first I asked her how many cents does a nickel make. She said five. Then i asked about the penny and she said one. I put a few nickels out and told her to count them up. She said 5, 10, 20, 35...and I simply asked if she was counting by fives. We counted together and she could do it. She said 30 cents was too much so we took away one of the nickels. We tried counting them again and she said 5..10..20..35..so we counted them together and we got a total of 25 cents. I told her to add one penny and she said that the amount of change we had was 46 cents when adding 25 + 1. I finally got her to count in ones but this was by far the MOST challenging activity I had to do with my group of students. Also during morning work we had to count back by 10's. The same girl I worked with during the change activity needed help with this. She could completely count back by ten's but couldnt figure out what two numbers they were. For example, she said 90, 80, 70, then 60 and asked what two numbers that made up 60. I told her six and zero. She continued to asked what two number made up all the 10's except the number ten. We talked about Veteran's Day because they did on Friday and Monday. We went over to Mrs. Filak's room and described what a solider is. The children said brave, strong, and all these describe words and wrote a sentence and made solider drawings. It was amazing to hear these children talked about their dads, cousins, and grandfathers who were fighting for our country and have brave they were. These children who had family were so honored to have them in their family. Tomorrow I will post pictures from my practicum and talk about what I did. I cant wait to see what tomorrow has in store for me.

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." --Benjamin Franklin

November 29, 2011

Today was my last and final practicum. It was a CRAZYYYY day. Mrs. Filak's classroom was combined with Mrs. Reinbold's classroom and let me tell you, CRAZY! We did morning work by putting words into alphabetical order. Some students had difficulity doing this as others finished quickly. After that students got to decide what they wanted to do. Everyone either drew pictures or read books. The students are putting on a play called the Gingerbread Man and they watched another school perform it. I looks like its gonna be a good show, and I really want to go tot it. After watching the play we read a story about Dr. Seuss and his life basically. The students were really enthralled with this story. Its going to be so sad to not go to this classroom anymore.

This is one of my student's doing the calendar for the day

This child is doing his morning work by putting words in ABC order

This is Mrs. Reinbold and one of the silliest girls in the class!

 I hope that my time spent at the Campus School really made a difference in these children's life. I got to know each child as if I was their actual teacher. I wouldnt have had it any other way.