Week Eight

On Monday there was an ISE day, and we got to sit in on the meetings with the principal, superintendent, and counselors. Kallie presented to the teachers on Google docs. I thought she did an excellent job! During the meetings, I learned a little bit about grant writing and the website donorschoose.org, where teachers can post project ideas online. Individuals can then pick projects that they want to help fund. This is an awesome website to help teachers who are underfunded (which is probably most of them!).

This week, we discussed folk tales, tall tales, and fairy tales. I read The Paper Bag Princess aloud to the students. We talked about how this story didn't follow the normal elements of a fairy tale. We also talked about idioms and figurative language. I encouraged the students to see if they could add some idioms to their stories.

This week the students also did WV Writes, previously called Writing Road Map. They did a pretty good job with focusing on the assignment. However, I don't really like this program because I don't think it scores properly. Some kids that I know are good writers were scoring twos and threes, while students who were poorer writers (some didn't even write about the topic!) were scoring higher. I think it's a useful tool for teaching kids how to pay attention to what is expected of them as they write. They can see that they need to include certain things to get a higher score. However, I do not feel it is an accurate measure of students' writing abilities.

Week Seven

This week the students were reading a story about Roberto Clemente. He died while trying to get supplies to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. This past summer I went to Costa Rica, which is right below Nicaragua, so I created a PowerPoint that introduced the story and also included some of the pictures I took in Costa Rica. It really got the kids interested in the story, and I think it helped them get an idea of the setting. One student commented on how we went from baseball to Costa Rica. It was an opportunity to discuss personal connection with a story and reader response. I talked about how I could relate to the story because of my trip this past summer. Then, students were just about bursting to talk about their own stories. I love how enthusiastic they are to share with the class; however, they can get out of hand quickly if I don't stay on top of things.

The "chatter" that occurs during discussion is one issue I have been struggling with. The students excitement to share makes them impatient while others are talking. They can also just be flat out rude...whispering to their neighbors and talking out of turn. One strategy my mentor teacher and I have implemented is to take a minute off of their recess time for each minute I have to wait while they get quiet. This seems to be highly effective. All I have to do is glance at the clock, and a student will cry out "She's looking at the clock guys!" After which, the students quiet down almost immediately.

Week Six

I've been teaching Language Arts pretty much every day for about two weeks now. I am having so much fun! I taught a lesson on prefixes, suffixes, and roots on Monday, and I found this rap song to play for the students. They really got into it! Some of them were even singing along by the 3rd time I played it (they kept begging to listen again). They told me that I needed to tell all the other preservice teachers about this rap whenever I had class at WVU again. It was funny, but most importantly, they were learning. One student was thinking out loud and put the prefix "hemo" with the suffix "phobia" to get "hemophobia". He then connected that to his cousin who fainted whenever he saw blood. I think that lesson really clicked with this student.

We also started writing Monster Stories this week. The students were so excited about creating their own monsters. I did an activity on writing descriptively by including details from the 5 senses. We filled up the entire chalk board with words. They took about 40 minutes on Friday just to write, and, to my surprise, nearly every student was writing the entire time! This was really one of the first big writing assignments they'd had all year, and they did a fantastic job. I sat down and wrote along with them. I think modeling for the students helped them really get excited about writing. Enthusiasm is contagious. However, I did notice a few students wanted to change their monsters after looking at mine. I don't want them to change their ideas to match mine. I told them to keep their monsters and that there would be time to share ideas during peer review next week. I'm pretty excited to see how their stories turn out!

Week Five

A word I hear a lot during the teacher meetings for the 5th grade is frustration--the frustration of trying to get students to read and, therefore, improve their reading. They desparately want to help their students succeed, but no matter what they try, they can't get them involved or motivated. I think this is a common problem for schools everywhere. My teacher allows students to use their study guides on tests in Social Studies, and they still get the wrong answer. They just won't take the time to find the answers. Many students don't get support or encouragement from home to do well in school. Lack of parent involvement and excessive absences only add to the problem of students' apathetic attitudes toward school.

A main concern is that students just do not read. This year students are supposed to read 25 books independently under the STAR reader program. During a team meeting this week, one teacher stated, "I know I need to teach differently but I don't know how." I think this is a frustration felt by many teachers. From all of these factors, I finally decided that my Action Research project will be on using different activities and methods to increase student motivation for independent reading. One activity that immediately sprang to my mind was Book Talks. We learned about these in a C&I course. They are kind of like a preview of a book that students give to encourage the rest of the class to read that particular book. I'd like to develop some sort of chart to measure if students are more likely to read a book that was reviewed by a fellow classmate. If anything, I'm hoping that this inquiry project can produce some new methods of encouraging students to read.

Week Four

This week I was able to participate in AIMSweb training for two days. AIMSweb is a program for grades 1-8 that measures student reading and comprehension through oral reading assessments. I learned how to administer and score the assessments and how to enter the information into the software. I also learned a lot about setting goals and progress monitoring. TCMS will be using this program to assist the measurement of the students in 1st period reteach. Teachers divided students into either reteach or enrichment groups based on WestTest scores, reading comprehension tests, and teacher observation. In the 5th grade, 5 teachers are teaching reteach. With room for only 8 kids in each class, the list had to be narrowed down to 40 kids. However, they is a chance this list will change when the program actually gets underway.

Although the training presented a lot of valuable and interesting information, many of the teachers were frustrated because they can't even begin to use it yet. The server is still down at the school, making it impossible to use AIMSweb or even check out library books. Technology can be a fabulous learning tool...when it's working. It can be very complicated to integrate technology when the school has a lack of resources or if those resources aren't available or aren't functioning.

Another grievance I overheard was that AIMSweb measures student progress but doesn't give any techniques for how teachers can help the students improve. If there were more focus on the intervention and less on the measurement, it might have been more beneficial for me.

Week Three

One of the biggest issues I'm noticing is absences; five students were absent one day. This issue isn't just limited to the 5th grade. The other interns and I attended a community presentation on the alarming dropout rate in Taylor County. They are 2nd in West Virginia for highest number of dropouts. The judge who presented stated that it starts with absences in the lower grades, and students get the mindset that school isn't important. The teachers and community are pulling together to implement programs to stop this problem. I'm hoping that I can help in any way by focusing on student motivation to attend school in the class I'm working with.

I'm still thinking about my action research project, but I like the idea of using cooperative learning somehow. The students in my morning class are always wanting to work together and help each other with work. They have offered to explain directions to a neighbor when I'm helping another student. I think these students could benefit from cooperative learning and group work. In my afternoon class, the students seem a little more hesitant to work with each other, but this class struggles the most with absences. I might look into the motivational aspect to encourage these kids to attend school.

Week Two

During this week, I learned a lot about collaboration from observing the 5th grade teachers' team meetings. The teachers had to work on slimming down the list of students in the Reteach classes to 40. They discussed various techniques, like using Word Lists to determine placement. The teachers also had to work on the R&R program at the school and figure out what to write in the letter to parents. Other topics included fundraisers, field trips, and rewards for the R&R program.

I've noticed that a lot of the students in my afternoon class ask for help on their work. I'm glad to help them when they are struggling, but I'm also afraid that I'm becoming a crutch for them. Many times all I do is read the directions back to them, and then they say, "Oh, now I got it." I want them to take the time to try it themselves before I help them.

My mentor teacher and I have been working on a seating chart for the students. The morning class has been behaving well, but the afternoon class is having difficulty with talking and off-task behavior. I've been teaching a little bit in the afternoon from my mentor teacher's lesson plans, and I think one of my weaknesses is classroom management. I'm hoping to learn some new classroom management techniques from my mentor teacher.