Mass Customized Learnings/ Bold Beginnings

My crazy week has come to an end! Here's a little recap for you!
Monday - Student teachers had a workshop today. There were several interesting topics that we discussed! We had an after school counselor from Lewiston come and teach us how to better relate and interact with our students to make learning more meaningful. The most informational part of the whole day was the presentation on mass customized learning. I've heard of the topic before, but I never had the opportunity to discuss how it worked in a real school system. It was really interesting to hear their daily structure/routine and how they begin their school year. It was something I would like to learn more about, because I can see some real potential in this system. I love how students get to learn at their level, so they aren't feeling left behind when they can't grasp certain concepts. I know that a lot of people aren't switching over because they're afraid that their scores will fall. However, the people who came to talk to us said that once they switched over their scores actually increased. This was due to them being able to go back in and fill all of the holes that some students had, which made it easier for them to deal with higher concepts.
Wednesday through Friday I was back in second grade! So great to see my old class! On Friday, I was able to do a lesson plan on bold beginnings. We started the lesson by reading the first page of Patricia Polacco's story Babushka Baba Yaga and then discussed if the beginning made us want to read more. We all agreed that we did! We shared what about her opening wanted us to keep reading. All the students had different reasons as to why her opening was so interesting, it was fun to hear them all! We then looked at an anchor chart about bold beginnings and different ways you can hook your reader.

 

After we went over the chart we looked a few examples. I read four openings from different books and students had to place them in their the good category or needs more work category. If it needed more work, then we brainstormed ways that students could make the opening more interesting. 

 

Then we learned about the "Try 3" method. We looked at our own writing and tried three bold beginning strategies to make it more interesting. Before we did it independently, we did one as a class- Here is was the students came up with!

We had lots of fun with this lesson! It was divided into three "mini lessons" throughout our daily 5 schedule!

I also wanted to take a second in this post to just post some pictures from our adverb mini unit- it lasted four days.  I wrote about the unit in one of my previous posts, but I didn't have pictures on my laptop to post at that time- SO here they are!

Here is our adverb anchor chart. After watching the Schoolhouse Rock adverb video, we went over this anchor chart and students added their own examples of adverbs to the chart!

The last day of the lesson, we made adverb trees. Students were given four different adverbs and were asked to make them into a sentence. They wrote their sentences on a leaf and we attached the leaves to a tree trunk! Here is one example of a finished product! They were all so cute and so good!

Fourth Grade/Second Grade Mashup!

     What a crazy couple of weeks! There was a snowday last Tuesday and a one hour delay on Wednesday. What a difference that makes.  Finally getting settled into my placement in fourth grade- such a great environment to be in! I just finished unit 10 in math focusing on reflections using mirrors.           Student's had such a fun time with this unit it was almost like we weren't even doing math! 
I have am subbing this week back in my second grade placement. Strange transition at first, but exciting to see how much I've progressed since the first time I was there! It was also good to know that I am able to switch back and forth and still be successful even when I have to sort of wing it. In second grade we have also started Unit 10 in math- although this one is about money. We started our first lesson in it today and it was a great success. Student's caught on so quickly, it made my job much easier. In Daily 5 we have been focusing on dictionary work and finding words. Students are given a work and they need to find it in the dictionary. They must include what page it's on, what part of speech it is, and its definition. However, tomorrow we are working on bold beginning for our writing. I have a fun set of lessons planned out, so I hope the kids enjoy it as much as I do! In spelling we are working on conjunctions. In social studies today students finished their Pysanky Eggs. They turned out beautiful- students were so creative with these. They all expressed their individual styles! 

I will update you on how the bold beginnings work out, as well as post some egg-cellent  eggs in my next post! 

Happy Thursday :)

Catch-up Post!!

It has been quite some time since I've been able to update! I had to get permission to upload pictures from parents and then I went on a trip to Georgia! I went to volunteer for a week at the Nature Conservancy in Moody Forest. It was such a great trip and I met so many wonderful people! Here is a group shot of us the first day we arrived!

Moving back to the subject of student teaching! As of this week I am no longer in second grade- I have moved upstairs to a 4th grade classroom! I was very lucky to have such a great first placement where I was able to learn and grow so much! I will miss Debbie and the kiddos, but I am excited to see what fourth grade will bring!

NOW, I need to try and catch you all up on all the wonderful activities we did while in second grade (stay with me this may take a while!) I'll start off with January and our Antarctic/Penguin unit. This was a unit that Debbie gave me complete control over! We read Mr. Poppers Penguins, did map work, research work, and so many fun penguin activities. Here are a few pictures.....

This was one of the first activities that we did! We made penguins by using paper plates and gluing on the penguin body parts. Students got to have fun making these while learning about penguin beaks, flippers, feet, etc. 

We made penguin books where students listed what they knew about penguins and what they wanted to know. After we read a book about penguins, students were able to fill in what new facts they had learned. They had so much fun sharing all their new penguin facts with their classmates! 

After a month long unit on penguins, we ended with one big final project-- Investigations! These are great because they align with so much of the common core and students LOVE doing them! They were actually excited when I told them we would be making them. This was their second time making investigations ( they had done one on Arctic animals) and their progress was amazing!! They completed planning in about half the time and put a lot more effort into finding interesting facts about their penguin! Here are a few examples!!

One of the things OTES is working on this year, is their writing program! We had students write a "How To" piece about S'mores (they even got to eat them!) We did a lot of practice before the final project could be created.

Starting out with how-to writing, we had students create an "expert list"so that they would easily have ideas on what they could write about. They created several how to pieces about topics including how to play their favorite sport, how to start a car, how to feed their pet, how to make a cake, and many, many other topics! FINALLY, they were able to write their S'more how to. Once they were done we used their writing to make our own s'mores- YUM! Here is their final work...

That is just a taste of what we did in second grade while I was there. My very last week, I had the whole class to myself! I have already posted the plan for that week, but now that it's over I can give some more details!

One subject I was super excited about teaching was our mini lessons! That week our focus was adverbs and we had so much fun learning about them! To start out we watched the School House Rock video called "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!" I was thrilled to see how much the students enjoyed that video- they kept asking to watch it again throughout the week. We did lots of practice with adverbs and at the end we create adverb trees! ( I do have pictures, they are just not yet on my computer yet) Each student had four adverbs that they had to make a sentence with. They wrote their sentences onto leaves and then we glued them onto a tree! They came out wonderful, so I will try and get pictures up soon! 

Moving onto Africa! Students have left Antarctica and moved onto Africa. We started off this unit by making a fun craft- African fly swatters. We discussed what they would be made out of if they were really in Africa, then we created our own! Here is the finished product.

Looking into science... we have been learning about our heart! I set up three heart centers for students to explore their own heart as, as well as to learn some new heart facts. After a read aloud, students broke into three groups and rotated between writing new heart facts, learning about the heart as a muscle, and listening to their heart beat at different levels of activity (resting, jumping, running in place). They really enjoyed being able to use real stethoscopes! 

OK, one last thing! On my very last day in second grade we had a very special visitor! Any guesses as to whoooo whoo it could be? OWLS! We were able to learn about owls that live in Maine and see a few owls ourselves! What a great way to end my first placement!