handwritten on August 30, 2013
This semester I have the honor and privilege of working with the Kindergarten Team of the Carnegie Mellon Children's School as part of my pre-student teaching practicum requirement. Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend three days of curriculum development at Carnegie Mellon. Not only was I impressed by the diversity of teachers, but I was impressed by the willingness of the teachers to collaborate and move as one unit. The first day, the staff discussed their budget plans as well as safety policies and methods. A Carnegie Mellon Campus office attended one of the seminars to discuss the importance of childhood safety and the changes they were making to the Carnegie Mellon Children’s...
handwritten on July 29, 2013
I cannot believe that this summer has come to an end. This week was probably one of the most emotional weeks of my entire life. This week we continued our discussion about racism and also discussed the metaphors and similes that can be hidden within the lyrics of a simple pop tune.
My favorite lesson I taught this week was probably the racism and writing day as well as the letter-writing day. On Monday I decided it would be in our best interest to spend fifteen minutes finishing up the slavery stations from Friday and then discuss the definition of Prejudice, Racism and Color Blindness. The students were surprised that there are many individuals in this world who have come to the conclusion...
handwritten on July 22, 2013
After talking to my director during our final conference together, we both came to the conclusion that the students were becoming tired of drilling the mechanics of writing. We talked about ways to make the last two weeks of class academically challenging but also personally fulfilling.
On Monday, we spent a day talking about the importance of social change through a Ted Talk about body posture and body language. Afterwards, I rearranged the classroom into a half circle and lead my very first Socratic Seminar. There were three specific rules: everyone had to contribute at least once, they were not allowed to talk over each other and they had to be respectful of each other’s opinions....
handwritten on July 15, 2013
This week marked the home-stretch of our personal narrative essays. On Monday we spent the day reviewing the importance of dialogue and how to use quotations properly. I admit that I probably should have spent at least two days going over this in detail. However, after 40 minutes, I could tell that my students could not take any more dialogue examples and thus, I decided to move on to the topic of imagery.
On Tuesday, we spent all day as artists in the classroom. We explored the simile, the metaphor, personification, alliteration and the different senses. During the second half of class the students rotated through four different stations. One of the stations involved having them reach into...
handwritten on July 8, 2013
This week was absolutely exhausting due to the fact that we finally taught a full five days! The beginning of this week started off somewhat shaky. The students are becoming more comfortable with each other and so talking in between transitions within the classroom has become my main challenge. I had to physically move a student’s desk one day so that she was forced to pay attention to the lesson instead of choosing to talk to her friend. Moving name tags around twenty or thirty minutes before class starts has become a routine.
Unfortunately, I have come to realize that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect classroom combination.’ At the same time, I have come to realize that I actually...
