Fifteenth Day of Second Grade
Fifteenth Day of Second Grade
Students were given a worksheet with several word problems and were put together in partners to finish the worksheet. This was the first time that I saw the students using counting discs as manipulatives. I think this was the students' first time using them because many students commented on how cool they looked. It appeared that students working together wee not, in reality, working together. Rather, one student was doing the work and the other student was just following their lead. These problems were more creative than other word problems completed in the class. They required the children to figure out their own math strategies. I think it would have been beneficial for the students to all get together and discuss how they got their answers. As discussed in the readings, math needs to be more social and for children to see each other's viewpoints. These students need to create and defend their answers, or to be confronted with conflicting answers in order to arise to increased math knowledge. What's the point in giving students these creative problems if they merely write down answers and then get a grade slapped onto it?
Even though the early childhood grades have committed to using the Daily 5 literacy program, my mentor teacher is still teaching from a grade-wide reading textbook with corresponding worksheets. I think so much more can be done with these students that will get them motivated and increase their reading comprehension and fluency. I think precious time is wasted on filling out worksheets and engaging in whole-class readings. However, I did like that my mentor had the children draw their own crystal balls to use as a visual cue for predicting in stories. I wonder if/when students will start making text-to-self connections, text-to-text connections, and text-to-world connections. This is what will get students thinking and motivated.
The students have been getting very rambunctious after lunch and this has been spilling over into the afternoon lessons. The mentor teacher and I thought it would be a good idea to have a class meeting to discuss this issue. Having children construct their own ideas of what went wrong and how it can be fixed gives them a sense of control and agency in their environment. It is important to give as much power as possible to the students in one's class. They must self-regulate instead of us (the teacher) imposing our authority. I think more class meetings like this need to occur in the classroom. At first, my mentor said that she should start using the Clip Up/Clip Down Behavior Chart more often, but I said that's not going to work in the long run. Students quickly lose interest in regard to whether or not they are being asked to clip up or clip down. The more the children feel in control of their environment, the more self-regulated they will become. But, it is the teacher's responsibility to create a space for her students to voice concerns in the class and to have the students think of solutions. The mentor provided a solution for the loudness in the hall issue, even though I think she should have fielded more solutions from students. Although, I think this is a great stepping stone for getting the mentor to sit down and have more class meeting. My only suggestion: I would try to have class meetings in a big circle instead of just all sitting at the rug. That way everyone can see everybody in the class.
I reminded the students of the title for our sign language book that we voted on last week. Since we have all been working so hard on the class book, I figured I would play another sign language game. Sign Language Telephone. I wanted the students to try and create sentences to use during the game. For the students to create sentences, I had to teacher a couple new words: like, don't like, love, and want. I had one of the students teach the word 'awesome' in order to shift the focus away from me as the all-knowing sign language expert. I want the students to see themselves as experts, as well. After I taught each word, the students would get very excited and start chatting. Therefore, it became hard to teach more words because the class would get disrupted and the words felt disjointed. I think I need to talk with the students more about how we should be acting when we learn new words (silent, practicing the words to ourselves after I show them, ready to listen to the next word). I had 3 student volunteers come up to help me explicitly model how to play Sign Language Telephone. I think this was extremely helpful and I had the others watching let me know if we were doing things correctly. I then called on 6 students to be the line leaders for their Sign Language Telephone groups. I specifically called on several students that I considered advanced, several I considered in need of support, and one that has shown his lack of interest in sign language. The game portion of the lesson went very well. The students were quiet and worked with each other to play the game by the rules we had just discussed. Afterwards, we all sat back down on the rug and asked how the game went. I wanted to bring some closure to the activity. Students got to discuss what they liked and what was difficult about the game. Everyone agreed that this was a game we could play again in class. My mentor teacher and I discussed the fact that many students just need to play around more with the language. They truly have been learning so many new signs! For this reason, my next sign language lesson is going to be more choice-driven. I want to give students many different activity options and have them choose what they would like to engage in for that time period. I suppose this would be like having sign language centers.
