Grading Papers

My teacher has been out for a few days for her wedding. Because of this she had tons of grading that needed to be done along with many other catch up work. When we came in today she seemed very stressed out so I asked if there was anything I could do to help. She said that the only thing she really needed was grading. So Angela and I sat down and started to grade papers while the students did their daily reading. I was fortunate enough to grade a set of papers that dealt with reading comprehension. I was shocked at how many students missed the answers. One of the questions asked a question that the answer was word for word in the text. Even though this information was easy to obtain many of the students did not put the right answer. In fact the students would randomly copy any sentence out of the text into the section. This really bothered me so I talked to our teacher about it. She told me that often times the kids don't even read the text or the questions so they just write down anything that looks important to them. She also informed me that as a class they would be working on reading comprehension and other mistakes from their worksheet. I don't feel like this is her fault or anyone else's fault but that students at the age are already conditioned to rush through their work so that they can get to the next activity. I feel that testing does this to students. When they take the end of grade test they are often told to finish as quickly as possible so that they can be sure to finish all of the questions. I feel that this is yet another downfall of teaching to a test and of state testing in general.

Bridge to Terabithia

My fifth graders are reading the Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. When I first started reading it I was once again surprised at how much children at this age know about the world. Some of the things that this book says really surprised me. For example the main character Jesse has a crush on his music teacher. This crush is describe in great detail. Also at one point in the story the author talks about one of the characters being pushed around by her father and how the whole school is talking about it. I know that children deal with these things in real life but it still surprises me that the author talks about it in the novel.
The other thing I wanted to talk about was the movie. I watched it after I finished the book today. I hope that children do not only watch the movie and not read the book because they are missing out on so much if this happens. I love the fact that children's books are becoming movies but I am afraid that children will stray away from reading because they think they can get the same things from books. I worry about this in our digital technological world.
Overall I like the book and the movie but as two separate things. Each had different things happen in them even though the story was the same in each. I would strongly suggest that students read the book before they see the movie but if they don't then they will at least enjoy a good story.

Pracitum Visit

On Saturday my Practicum teacher got married. And because of this we had a substitute teacher working with our class. Our teacher left worksheets for our class to do. Three of the worksheets wanted the students to read a passage and then answer questions. I beleive this is just practice for the EOG but the kids seemed bored. Some of them had trouble stay in their seat and doing their work. Also some of the questions seemed really hard to me. I didn't know the answer to one. It was about the main point, but it gave choices and I didn't feel that the main point was any of the choices and all of my kids put a different choice. Not one choice was picked more than the others. This worries me about the EOG. I want these kids to do a good job and they are all smart but I know as well as everyone else in the education world that that doesn't mean anything when it comes down to No Child Left Behind. Overall I feel like my students will do great in their schooling careers but I do not like EOG's at all!!

Guided Reading Lesson

Three things I liked about my Guided Reading Lesson are;

1. The kids knew how to do a KWL chart
2. The kids responded to my questions
   
3. I felt like I was well prepared.

One thing I did not like;

• Some of the kids really struggled with what they should write on their KWL charts and I felt like I ran out of time for those kids to finish.

Overall the kids did really well on their charts. When I looked over them all of the kids had all the criteria that I gave them and they had well thought out statement on their charts.

Word Lesson

Three things I liked about my word lesson were:

1. The kids had seemed to really enjoy the lesson
   
2. The kids came up with more words than I did
   
3. I learned more about children's spelling and reading skills.
   

One thing I did not like was:

• My double sided letters were messed up. For example the W and e on the back instead of w.

I already wrote about my word lesson but I did not put three positives and three negatives up. Overall I felt like my lesson went really well. I learned a lot about being in front of the class, writing on the board, and helping students out.

Lesson Plans

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to teach both my word lesson and my guided reading. They both went extremely well!!! The kids really enjoyed them and the teacher said I did a great job.
My word lesson used one of their spelling words for a making words lesson. I made letters to hand out to the class and had them raise their hands and tell me all the two letter words, three letter words and so on until they had to use all their letters. Some children had trouble finding the special word but I gave them the clue that it was on their weekly spelling list. They then all rushed to get out their spelling lists and tried to use their letters to spell their spelling words. I feel that this forced them to look at their spelling words and how they were spelled without making them think about doing spelling work. I heard one little boy say to his friend" that was so much fun I wish we could do it again" which made me feel really good because I feel like they really learned something.
My guided reading used a KWL chart with the chapter book that they are reading right now. I had questions already written down on my copy of the chart so that if I couldn't get response about the things they had learned or wanted to learn I could ask them direct questions that would lead them to the answer I had in mind. This lesson went very smoothly. The teacher commented on how well I manged the class time and how well I was prepared which made me feel like I did a good job and the kids all had really good KWL charts. In fact while I graded them I could only take one point off of three students. I told them they had to have 5 things in each section and two children had wrong facts written down and the other wrote the same learned thing down twice. I think this shows that the students comprehended the text really well.
Overall I feel like my lessons went really well and I am looking forward to teaching more lessons to this group of children!

Hatchet reading and QIWK Assessment

My second day at practicum went really well. I am really enjoy my kids. On Wednesdays I sat with a group of four students while they read chapter 6 from Hatchet. All of my group did really well with the reading section that they had. The only thing that surprised me was the fact that they struggled so much with answering the question that the teacher had assigned. The question was.."Why do you think it was Okay for Brain to eat the berries if the birds ate the berries?" The group wanted to answer the the question "because the birds ate the berries".The first problem with this answer is that it is not a sentence. The second problem is that answer doesn't answer the question it just restates part of the question. When I explained this to the group they looked at me like I was crazy. Finally after about 5 minutes of discussion we decided that a better answer would be. because the birds could fly so they weren't sick". Its not perfect and I was starting to help them write a complete sentence their teacher said it was time for them to go to their math class.
I feel that these kids know how to write a complete sentence they just don't do it. If it was my class I would not except work that was not written in a complete sentence because I feel that it is important for the kids to know that work needs to be the best they can do. When they go to middle school the teachers will expect them to write papers and have complete sentences.
The other important literary item that happened on Wednesday was that Angela and I did our QIWK assessment. After looking over the test for the first time today I was surprised to find that many of our kids did not miss any of the words. Some of our kids did struggle but overall they did really well. I think that the formal analysis will be a lot of fun to do.
Overall I am really enjoying myself and learning a lot in my classroom. I am also teaching my lessons on Monday morning which is making me nervous but my teacher said my lessons looked great and that the thought they will work well.