Successful day- November 22

I went over some of the difficult parts of the math test with our push-in class. The students had a hard time making statements of comparisons from a bar graph because we had practiced asking the questions so much. I asked them some of the same questions and taught them how to answer them with a statement. Then we went over Venn diagrams and the key words that gave clues as to which parts were being compared. Some key words are inclusive and require information from more than one part of the diagram. Other key words indicate only one part is to be considered. The teacher said I did a great job with speaking up and asking good questions. It was a good impromptu lesson. The students gave good answers and seemed to understand it better.

In Language Arts, I was teaching again. I was pretty excited about this lesson. This was another pronouns lesson introducing the possessive. We reviewed subject and object pronouns first (although I could have skipped a bit of those slides because they got those concepts). They really caught on to most of the possessives after a few examples of sentences with subject or object pronouns in those places. I made a special example of “ours” and “theirs” and explained it after one question confused a couple students on the worksheet. My professor liked several of the things I did with the lesson, especially pointing out the two they had trouble with and identifying the difference. Lastly, I had written a first person account of the First Thanksgiving. At set points in the story, there were two options for the pronoun that would fit in the sentence and they were to circle the correct one. They did so well!

Perfectionism- Nov. 16

I am a perfectionist with an incredible memory for details and rules. I like for things to be right, and I frequently think "right" equals "my way."The hardest part of helping teach this class is watching the teacher go over the examples. Sometimes she accidentally gives the students bad information. Today in subject and verb discussions, the phrase in question was "Wool from goats..." The teacher told them the subject was goats when it was actually wool because the subject cannot be in a prepositional phrase. The subject cannot be in a prepositional phrase. She also doesn't include the helping verb as part of the total verb. They are all little things that may be corrected by future teachers, but it is so hard for me not to keep correcting her. I know that to keep correcting her would harm her credibility to the students. I just have a hard time letting her give incorrect feedback, even infrequently.

After some feedback from teachers, it appears this is not a huge matter. I can make sure I teach more (as I should in lab anyway) and teach it the right way. I can also dismiss most of it because I will not be in the class long, and the students will move on to other teachers anyway.

Lab Experience- Nov 7

One thing I have really noticed today is the time limit. In a regular classroom, the teacher can stretch or shorten a lesson as need and start on the next one or fill time with enrichment. As a push-in and pull-out teacher, we have to fit the entire lesson within a certain amount of time and any extra has to flow into the next day. Interest has to be built up again and the basics reviewed. I barely finished the math worksheet with my group before I had to leave the push-in class, and some of the second grade language arts students needed additional explanations of some words they didn't know just to complete their work. The time limit is one potential obstacle that ESOL teachers have to consider in planning and executing their lessons.

Predictable Routines in the Classroom

In our ESOL Methods class, we study several things that help us guide the students toward success. Some of these things are not even content; rather, they are procedures and routines that are consistently used with the students and allow them to participate in the classroom no matter what their language proficiency. Here is a graphic organizer presenting some of them.

Things you don't Learn about Teaching in College

Top Ten with David Letterman... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lulUvYfRl_c
Things that could be a little scary or make one apprehensive about teaching. Most of these didn't bother me. I am a little apprehensive about the last two, the principal's office and the superintendent. Especially since the superintendent in my county was my high school principal! That could definitely be a little scary. How prepared can you be to have a visit (or worse, an observation) from the top man?
Honestly, it may not be that bad. We have about four observations per month in our labs.
The other thing that makes me apprehensive about starting to teach is wondering how prepared I will be to start teaching. Will my classroom really be ready? Will there be that one thing I forgot or overlooked that I really need?
We'll see!!

Lab Experience- Week 1

I am pretty excited about this month and my opportunity to be in a classroom, learning and teaching. So far, I have met the second graders we pull out for Language Arts. I have also identified a few of the ESL students in third grade math. We push-in for that class so they are not separate. It is pretty easy to see where we are in teaching the curriculum and the vocabulary of each lesson. The teacher reviews at the beginning of each class then scaffolds the new information for the day. She does it in a different way each day too. Yesterday we only used chart paper. Today we used the ActivBoard. With another student as well as myself and the teacher, we are well able to focus instruction on one or two students each. I have enjoyed my first two days in this class. It didn't take much observing to acclimate to the teacher's style and process.
I also get to see my first graders from the beginning of the year very frequently. I have stepped in during reading time and observed and answered a couple questions at times. I like seeing the progress they have made since I left their class after the first week.

WebQuest

I was introduced to Web Quests last year. They can be so fun! They are very well set up for discovery learning. In one of my classes, I had to write my own Web Quest. My topic was the lunar tides.
Recently, I added some specifications on the Teacher's Page for instruction to ESL students. These specifications are made at a developing language proficiency level.

This is the link to my Web Quest:
http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=92942