handwritten on December 4, 2014
During my takeover weeks, I had the opportunity to teach Social Studies once again. This particular unit dealt with landforms (mountains, volcanoes, valleys, The Grand Canyon, river, lakes and oceans.) We began the unit discussing the different landforms through real-life pictures found using google maps! Then, I introduced a partner-project that the students would be participating in. The partner pairs were each assigned to research a specific landform. I had hunted for 30-40 picture books that represented each individual landform we would be learning about in class. For two days, students were required to write down 8 different/unique facts about their landform to share with their...
handwritten on December 2, 2014
I am writing to remind myself that telling time must be the hardest concept to teach to a group of second grade students, or any student for that matter! It is amazing to think that, at the age of eight, students are now required to be able to tell time to the neart half hour, hour and quarter hour before Christmas! Surprisingly, my students are doing fairly well making progress with this skill, but it is certainly not easy! In addition to telling time to the hour, half hour and quarter hour, they must write the time using words as well as numbers! For example, I had to teach that 3:15 is also considered "quarter after 3" and 4:45 is quarter to five.
Overall, the mistakes...
handwritten on November 19, 2014
Three weeks ago, I began a Realistic Fiction Unit using the Benchmark Curriculum Series for Reading and Writing. I was unsure exactly how to start this unit, but I soon realized it would be quite the adventure. Although our Benchmark Series gives us mentor texts to use throughout each unit, I decided to abandom the mentor text and come up with some of my favorite Realistic Fiction books of all time. I began the unit with Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Many of my students loved this book and had also seen the movie, which added to their interest. Before reading the book, I introduced the term "Realistic Fiction" to my students as "something that could have...
handwritten on November 2, 2014
I do feel bad I have not written in quite some time! I cannot believe that October has ended and November has just begun. This, by far, has been the quickest fall I have ever encountered. I recently started a Picasso Geometry Unit (last week) and I am extremely excited about what is to come. I have now taken over the math block and will continue to take over a new subject each week until my student teaching placement is complete. My last day is December 23, 2014.
I began my geometry unit by introducing Pablo Picasso to my students. Pablo Picasso was one of the biggest artists during the Cubism movement! The first week, we practiced locating and naming shapes, sides and vertices by looking...
handwritten on September 7, 2014
A couple of months ago, I posted a creative writing piece about what I believed was the "things I know to be true" as a pre-professional teacher. Ironically, this past Friday, I experienced one of these "things," that I had written about previously. In my poem, I had always found the most important line to read "the students must know that teachers are students and, most importantly, people just like them." On Friday afternoon, I experienced what I'm sure many would label "silliness due to exhaustion." During the middle of a lesson, my mentor teacher and I were modeling how we wanted a specific activity to be run, and we began to laugh uncontrollably in the middle. Some may ask, well what...
