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ECS 301
Reflection Eight: The Giving Tree
Today was my last Wednesday at Davin Elementary School. I must say that it was a lot of fun to go and hang out with all the kids. I will definitely miss going to school every Wednesday to hang out with the kids.
Today I decided to do a lesson on The Giving Tree. My target was questioning, and my main goal was to give the students prompting questions if I thought they were struggling to find the answers to my questions about the story, we dove into the meaning, metaphors and themes in the story. Throughout my entire lesson I feel as my students really enjoyed the activity and my videos that I showed the students. Some things that went well in my lesson include the differentiation that I included. I decided to allow the students to pick between two different activities. They could write me two paragraphs based on how they are giving, and how you could give to others in the future. Or they could draw their giving tree and put examples of non-materialistic gifts and materialistic gifts that they have given creatively on their tree, as well as ways that they can give in the future.
Some struggles with that I had with this lesson is focusing on one main goal connected directly to the outcome. I feel as I needed to break down the lesson into two lessons. For example, I would create one strictly focusing on the English language arts components, and another lesson focusing on the health component of giving and why giving is important.
Overall I had an awesome experience at Davin School. I have gained many relationships with the students. Working with my co-op teacher Mrs. Schapansky is very rewarding she has gave me excellent feedback that I am able to carry with me into my three-week block. I must say every Wednesday has allowed me to put the knowledge I have learned in class to use and I can begin to see some practicality in what we are learning. I am very excited to go back and continue with my learning in March, however, I feel as I will be stopping by Davin throughout my next semester to get additional teaching practice before my three-week block.
Fifth Lesson: Lesson Plan & Target Sheet
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Fourth Lesson: Lesson Plan
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Third Lesson: Lesson Plan and Target Sheet
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Second Lesson: Lesson Plan & Target Sheet
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Lesson One: Lesson Plan & Target Sheet Feedback
Reflection Six: Digital Footprint
Throughout my time in the classroom today has been the best day I have had. Despite me having my lesson plan go through my head all night resulting in myself receiving a subpar sleep. I hope this goes away with time. Despite my terrible sleep, my co-op teacher said I did a great job on my lesson and it was probably my best lesson yet.
I started off my lesson by teaching the grade 8s when I, the teacher, says “Sharkbait”, the students have to reply in a deep voice “Ooo Ha ha!”, (from Finding Nemo) I not only made my co-op teacher laugh, but the students also really enjoyed that as well. Today we focused on digital footprint and Internet safety. I opened the class with talking about what it means to be a digital citizen and showing a video on what a digital footprint is. The students were all engaged in my lesson. In my development portion of my lesson students were to look over the online information of two fictional characters, and choose the best person to host the TV show based on their honestly and how they work with others. After the groups have decided on who they would hire for their host position they had to explain to the class their choice and why. The catch is neither of the candidates would be well suited for the job as they both have some fairly bad negative qualities. This was going to be the shocking trick in my lesson, but one of the groups beat me to it and told the class that neither Jason and Linda should get the job because, I quote, “they are both terrible human beings.”
In my closure I had an awesome rap video that deals with oversharing in social media. The kids loved this rap song as it really related to them. My co-op also loved the rap video. The only major negative thing today I would have to say would be my time management. I thought that my lesson would take 50 minutes to an hour, but it took an hour and a half.
Today I think I have decided that I am really glad I choose to follow a career in teaching because of the relationship building that is being made between teacher and student. It is great knowing that I will be doing something I enjoy everyday. Its hard to believe I only have two Wednesdays left in the classroom until March.
Reflection Five: Cyberbullying
My cyberbullying lesson went over very well on Wednesday. Students were engaged and I feel as the management target for the week was met for the most part. I decided to use the give me five method and the students responded very well to it. My lesson I found was fairly easy to plan. I am interested in technology so it made it easy for me to plan something that I like. To hook my students I wanted them to tell me what the positive and negatives of technology were. I also asked what social media sites they used. The students really got into it and had me writing like crazy.
I put my students into groups; the students were to analyze cyberbullying case studies. In their groups they had to tell me what the situation was, how to fix the situation, what a bystander could do, and whom the victim could approach. I think that many of the students liked looking at these case studies because I based them around their own interests and tried to make them as real as possible. To be honest I hated doing case studies in school, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible. I’m glad I didn’t because many of the students were engaged. I plan on continuing on with this lesson focusing on digital identity and digital footprint next week.
One thing I would continue to work on is my classroom management techniques. The give me five technique worked all right for the first half of the class, and then I began to lose the students. What are other teachers using for attention getters that I can try in the classroom?
Reflection Four: Math as Art
Today I taught my first math lesson. I came to class very excited today because I knew the students would have a positive reaction to the activity. I taught tessellations. For those of you who do not know what tessellations are any patterns made up of repeating shapes that cover a surface completely without overlapping or leaving any gaps. I asked the students to tell me some examples of different kind of tessellations that they see every day. I got many awesome answers including the pattern of my plaid shirt I was wearing.
In my development I really focused on giving directions, as this was a major part of my activity that I was doing. I gave directions in multiple ways including speaking, writing directions on the board, and asking students to clarify my instructions. However, there was still some confusion. One thing that I could have done differently is to physically show the students how to create their index card sketching tool for their tessellations. (How to cut it, how to tape it etc.). I made sure to constantly ask my students if they needed help and or clarification. When the students were creating their drawings I went around each table and asked them what type of transformation did they use. This way I could go to each group and talk about transformations with them I found that this method was very effective.
Overall the students really enjoyed creating their own tessellations. It made me feel good that they continued to want to work on their work even after the class was over. However, I think my closure could have been a lot stronger. The class felt like an art class, so I think I could have reinforced why we were doing tessellations in math class in the closure.
