MaritaUndergraduate
Exceptional Education |
MaritaUndergraduate
Exceptional Education |
This week, we had Monday off from school. Tuesday, the students had the day off but the teachers had an ‘inset’ day. This is similar to a professional development day. We were sent an itinerary for the day on Friday last week. This included staff meetings, planning time, and lunch. Tuesday morning was filled with staff meetings. The PYP coordinator was not in so my mentor teacher hosted the staff meeting. All the early years and primary years teachers came to the classroom. We discussed finalizing an order for next year's school supplies, a school wide math fluency workshop, Seesaw (like google classroom or blackboard), and any issues the teachers and students are currently experiencing. The order list for next year's school supplies was very interesting to sit in on. Each teacher had a long list of supplies they would like in the classroom to help teach, however, by the end of the discussion all the teachers decided that more playground equipment and outdoor toys would be the best use of school resources. Many of the teachers do break duty and see how bored the kids can be. The outdoor play area is very nice but it is small and has minimal playground equipment. When all the PYP is outside the area gets very crowded and arguments break out regularly. The teachers think if they had more to do they would end up arguing less. We had another meeting where a high school math teacher was proposing a math fluency program that would be used for all PYP. The program was called Numeracy Ninjas. In this program students would complete a weekly fluency worksheet where they would earn belts for getting correct answers. I found this to be a very interesting conversation to hear what the second grade teacher had to say versus the sixth grade teacher had to say. They both had different questions and concerns regarding their students and their developmental level of those students. By the end of the discussion the teachers were able to agree on how they will use this program for all students at all grade levels. Finding a program that can be used for both second grade and sixth grade is not easy but these teachers were able to work together to make the program work. There are many pros and cons to the IB system and one of these pros is the collaboration between teachers. This system requires a lot of teacher collaboration, which depending on your staff, can be extremely beneficial and productive but also a huge source of tension between the staff. In this case, the teacher did not all see eye to eye on the Numeracy Ninjas. However, the staff did not argue with each other over the program, they asked questions and made modifications to the program so all the teachers and students benefit from the program. I have sat in on staff meetings that resulted in verbal fights and others that were completely unproductive because no one wants to work together. This was one of the first times I have seen a staff meeting where the teachers' productivity solved their problem. I have been teaching the money unit in math. On Wednesday I taught a lesson titled ‘calculating with money’ where students had to find the total and the difference between different amounts of money. The math program had the students doing the subtraction with a method I was not familiar with and also did not understand the meaning behind the method. When I was trying to teach the method I really struggled with explaining in a way that was easy for the students to understand. After the lesson I felt I had bombed it and so had the students. We did not understand each other. I asked my mentor teacher to explain the method to me. She gave the logic behind why the math program was asking the students to solve the problem using this particular method. After her explanation I felt I could have taught the lesson more effectively. What I learned from this was, if I do not understand a lesson provided to me in full then I will not be able to effectively teach and explain the learning to students. My mentor teacher, being very understanding, simply suggested I do a reteach tomorrow on this skill. She explained that even she still has to do reteaches because not every lesson is going to make sense for all the students. I created some review questions in the explicit instruction format with a question I did thinking aloud, a problem we solved together as a class, and a couple problems students solved on their whiteboards independently. The students ended up really liking the reteach and many were excited they understood and asked to do more questions. I asked the students to give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down to rate how they were feeling about this topic. Every student gave me a thumbs up and I felt much better about my teaching. The students really love my animal stickers and the notes I leave them. They have started leaving each other these notes or asking me to give one to someone who was kind to them. I have leveled up my notes by bringing in my ‘zoo’ to class. I explained to them that they could tell me when someone did something outstanding and I would make them a letter. On Friday, one student had a birthday. His father is a teacher at the school and they come in with two trays loaded with giant pastries for his classmates. The kids' eyes lit up when they saw the giant pastries. However, after they started eating, they realized there was no way they could eat the entire pastry. They were absolutely huge pastries so we ended up cutting them in half to the size of a normal pastry. One of my favorite things about elementary teaching is celebrating birthdays and holidays. The whole class made sure the birthday boy felt very special by letting him lead the lines, pick the game they play at break, and sing happy birthday at lunch. I really enjoyed the way the students celebrated their classmate, even if he is a classmate that often causes trouble in class. There is a lot of fun with birthday celebrations in elementary school. You can do little things like give out stickers or write the students name on the board for their birthday and the students will be ecstatic and feel so important. The same student who had the birthday hid a mystery motivator in my computer when I was not looking. I found this extremely kind. This weekend my teacher was away on a mini trip with some of the other teachers for a race some of the teachers were running in. She asked me to look after her cat while she was away. She has a very eclectic cat named Eleana. We had a great weekend together playing and getting a lot of pets. Enjoy these photos of her. On Saturday during the day, my host mom took me to a BBQ out in the country where her fiancé lives. I truly could not tell you where we were, but it was absolutely beautiful. We had Italian BBQ, which was very good but it's hard to beat an American BBQ…
After that, we visited a nearby city and walked around the vineyards behind the fiancé's house. It was a beautiful evening.
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AuthorHi! I'm Marita Miller an exceptional education student at Buffalo State student teaching in Siena Italy. Follow my journey! Archives
May 2023
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