I have just completed my 3rd week of student teaching! It has been an amazing ride so far. My SP, supervising practitioner, and the students are absolutely amazing!
I am slowly teaching more and more of the subjects such as spelling, English, Reader's Workshop, and Math. One of the broadest subjects is reader's workshop. There is so much that goes into making it so spectacular. One of the most amazing aspects of this classroom's Reader's Workshop is that it is a formulated reading curriculum, but was created to fit the needs of the classroom to help them grow as readers. At the beginning of each Reader's Workshop there is a part that we call "Housekeeping," this gives the students time to write journal entries on the books they have read, track what types of books they are reading and where they were set, look for new books to put in their book bags, and for the teacher to do status of the class and see what progress they are making in their books. Honestly, I could go on and on about the layers that Reader's Workshop has.
Many of the other subjects have multiple layers as well. In my first week, trying to keep track of all of them seemed like a very daunting task. Even our morning work has so many parts, like morning yoga and keeping track of homework with stickers! Now, though, it has worked itself into almost being second nature, which is what I was hoping for! I still may forget parts, but every day is a new learning experience!
Lastly, I taught a math lesson that is part of my Teacher Work Sample (TWS) that went extremely well! In order to follow the Common Core, the 4th grade teachers get together to make a math curriculum that aligns with the standards, which I (and the other student teacher, my co-teacher) were part of. We had to adjust out fractions curriculum in order to have everything the Core requires. Yesterday's lesson was on decomposing fractions. I loved this lesson because it had layers, which I am learning a lot about! We started off with turning and talking about what we think decomposing means because we saw it the day prior on our pre-assessment. Some students "hit the nail on the head" while others were in the ballpark, which was great!
After we discussed, I used our document projector with shape tiles to try and represent what is going on in decomposition and had the students write on their white board slates what they think a hexagon (6/6) could be decomposed into (1/6+1/6+1/6...)
We followed our slate work with a video from Learnzillion.com to help give moving visual representation of decomposing.Half way through the video I did a comprehension check to see if the idea of decomposition is becoming clearer by asking for answers to a decomposition question and most of us were really getting it! After completion of the video, we completed a worksheet as a class (as I was writing their answers on my paper under the document projector) and then we did some more slate work for problems!
The class was really excited about decomposing fractions! Lastly, the students paired up to complete a worksheet with both fractions and mixed numbers. I told them to see me before moving onto the mixed number side to see if they were understanding it. While some students worked, I worked with another student 1-on-1 to make the concept concrete. When the students finished, I called on students to write their answers on the board and we went through each problem together.
I then transitioned our class into Reader's Workshop and read two chapters of our Interactive Read-Aloud, Snow Treasure, followed by an open response completed by the students.
It really was such a great day! I could go further on the day, but now I am sitting cozily because of the snow day!
Forever learning.
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