Student Teaching Blog

This week we had to begin reviewing with fractions again. Throughout this whole week we have had to re teach and do numerous worksheets to further teach fractions. I had a small group at the back table for the ones really struggling and had the rest of the class moving on. This worked by having those students then continue to play the fraction games and further their practice with each other. The ones at the back table benefited from the small group and hands on approach. This relates to task 3 Planning for Differentiation. Reading for non fiction cause and effect has been going very well so far. They had to work on their own this whole week and were very successful. Some students would ask to see the book immediately without thinking about the main idea, and I made them think for a while before I gave them text support. They will now be able to use non fiction cause and effect for their reader responses. Writing has ended this week with writing introductions for their headings. Th...

This week started out with going over fractions again. This was very challenging for most of the students the prior week and having a weekend break from it did not help that. I understand how important it is to reinforce that they should always be practicing math facts, even when at home. I had to do a reteach lesson and give many worksheets for practice before moving forward with making equivalent fractions. This made me think and realize that not everything always goes to plan and to not get upset about that. A lesson may take extra days of practice and reteach before the students all understand it. There is no sense in moving on to the next lesson if they aren't understanding the basics. Once we were ready to move on, my lesson on making those fractions went well for the most part. There seemed to be much less confusion on this lesson. The students got mostly confused on when there was more than one fraction in a problem to make equivalent, but we found a solution of covering th...

This week in math we started fractions. The students were very confused on this lesson. Me and my cooperating teacher decided a reteach lesson was needed. We had a lot of worksheets for practice and made them raise their hand to check it before they we ready to move on to the next one. On Friday we continued with more worksheets for practice and had the students who finished and understood well to help the struggling students. This relates to Standard 3 Planning for Differentiated Instruction because some students needed extra attention and we knew that from the previous days and notes we took. This helped us target those students to have another students helping 1 on 1 as well as the teacher checking for accuracy. Fractions is on the Paarc Test so we are trying to get these in as much as we can before spring break begins. Reading has gone very well for cause and effect. We have done all fiction books so far and they have showed success for them. They began working in groups and the ...

This week the class started to learn how to use the online version of the PARCC test. This is new to the elementary grades this year, so they had to learn all the tools. This seems very complicated for them and a lot of work. The PARCC test is something I have learned about throughout Trinity, but to actually see the example tests verifies how hard this test can be. I assisted with the students as the teacher showed what to do on her computer on the board. During reading I am learning how to do the small groups. This relates to Standard 1 Teaching Diverse Students, because the students are split into their groups by their reading level. My teacher has allowed me to watch her do a few and this week I am starting to take that over. We just began these because the DRA testing has ended. I went to the 3rd grade DRA meeting, which was very informative. I like how the teachers and the reading specialists/ELL teachers all work together to come up with solutions/interventions for the childre...