This past field experience was one that was more relaxed than others. We spent a portion of the time outdoors on the playground during their bonus recess time. This at first seemed irrelevant to things inside the classroom, but I began to notice who each of the students were hanging around out on the playground, as well as what kinds of things they did while outside. It was interesting to see that the playground was almost exactly divided in half; boys on one side playing soccer, and girls on the other side on the equipment. I took the time to notice how my kidwatching student was interacting with the other students. She seemed to be laughing and playing along with a big group of girls all of whom were interacting with the other sixth grade teacher. This was good to see that she was being with friends, and having a nice time.

In class we began working on our digital stories. Our group decided to create a digital story based around "how to make a pb&j sandwich." I will be interested to see how all of these turn out. I attempted to create one in W200 last year, however, I became frustrated with Window's Movie Maker, and hastily rushed through. Needless to say, I did not do very well on the project. Hopefully this time I will do better.

November 10th class and Field Experience

During my November 10th field experience, I struggled with helping a student with his grammar. I felt very bad, and disappointed in myself that I could be a great help to him, because I did not know the material myself. His teacher said that he had been asking if someone could help him with his grammar for a while, so I took him in the hall with his worksheet. When he would ask specific questions about sentence structure etc. I did not know how to answer his questions. I did the best that I could, and hoped that he got something out of it. This was sort of discouraging, however I realized that there are going to be things that I simply do not know as a teacher. I know that before I teach certain material, I will be going over it, and will be better prepared, but this was just one thing that I could not be as beneficial with.

I am excited to work on a published piece. I think that it is a great idea for students to do something like this, because it allows them to work hard on something, and then feel the accomplishment of seeing it finished and polished. This can give students motivation, because they know they are creating good, and valuable work. They will feel proud to have written and made something that looks great. I think it will be fun to choose something of my own to create this way as well.

Kidwatching Interview

This past field experience, I interviewed my "Kidwatching kid" about her experiences with reading, and writing, and how things such as her family, peers, interests, and self-views came into play for those two things. I really enjoyed this! It gave me a chance to get to know her, and really see things in her perspective. She eventually really opened up to me, more than I thought she might, but I gained a lot of helpful insight to her views on literature. Many of the things she told me were very much like what we have been learning in regards to making literature appealing for students. With that being said, she mentioned things such as really enjoying reading and writing when it is a choice made by her, rather than required. She loved reading fiction and graphic novels, anything that allows her to use her imagination. She said she really loves writing, but only if it allows her to be creative, she does not enjoy writing prompts assigned by the teacher. She enjoys writing in her writers notebook, because she can simply get all of her ideas out without having to be so stringent on editing. All of this I found really interesting, because it was things that I had been learning about in class, and it was being proven in front of my eyes!

The MGRP visuals I found to be great! I was very impressed with all of the posters of those in our class. Not only was I impressed with the visuals and different genres, but simply the topic itself. I thought it was great to see what people felt passionate about in order to create this rather large project. I loved seeing the creativity in the posters, and the creativity of the genres, i enjoyed asking questions, because many of the students seemed to have a really great knowledge of their subject, so it was great to learn about such a wide variety of seemingly random topics.

Activities with poetry

I loved the poetry projects we were able to create during last class! I loved taking time to be creative, using so many different materials, words, and thoughts, all based around poetry. When it was time to share, I actually did not want to stop working. It is not often that I get to use my creativity, so sometimes it feels like a burden, however when time to do things such as that is built in with other things, it is SO great! I really think that those types of projects are a great thing to use in the classroom, both with poetry and other types of literature, or perhaps even science or history. Art and music can be integrated into any subject if you simply get creative. I really enjoyed the station using magazine clippings of words to create a poem. This was neat, because it reminded me of the story the whales that we read out of order (in either this class, or 340), in the sense that all of the words were taken out of what each author had put them in, to create something new and different, but completely legitimate.

This is not necessarily directed at this class, although I am attending an IPS school this Friday for my E300 field experience. I am very much looking forward to this, because I have never been in a urban school setting. I feel that this will give me a more diverse look at schools and education, which will only benefit me as a future teacher.

This past week at University, we worked one on one with the fourth grade students for their Writing Workshop. This was great! Although the room was a little crowded, we got to see what this was like in an actual elementary classroom. We were able to also see how creative some of the students could be, and ask questions of the teacher facilitating this. It was wonderful to hear that the children were not corrected on spelling or grammar when writing in these notebooks. These were used purely for the enjoyment and creativity of writing, which I feel makes them really enjoy it. Pushing the students to brainstorm many different ideas is an important aspect of this workshop, because it allows the students to expand their thinking a little bit, without any restrictions. It also allows them to maybe go back and use some of the ideas that they came up with earlier, but chose not to expand on. It was good to see the students excited about writing, and having fun with creating stories.

In class on Wednesday, while working with the newspaper genres and creating our own based on our MGRP, I got some really good ideas for my own project! It was awesome to see what everyone came up with. It allowed me to see the term 'genre' in a more concrete way, because I was actually sort of struggling with what five I would do. Now that I have more ideas, I can use those and apply them to my topic. It was great!

Reflection

In this week's field experience, I was placed in another teachers classroom because of schedule conflict from ISTEP. The room I was in had an exceptional teacher. I was only in that room for roughly an hour, but I could already tell this was a teacher I would want to model myself after. She was laid back, but firm, fun, but serious. I could tell that she wanted the kids to succeed, but she didn't want to 'scare' them into doing so. I feel that it was beneficial to be in that room, if only for a short while, because it allowed me to see that there are teachers like that out there, and that I can be one of them. It is something to mold myself after, while still being true and unique to myself and my own beliefs. It is important to not only realize that every student learns in a different way, but that every teacher also teaches in a different way.

I am also excited about our research paper for this class, because I have chosen to write about a country. The country that I choose will hopefully be the country I will do a portion of my student teaching in. I am fairly certain that I will participate in the cultural immersions project in the spring of 2012, and I am very excited about that. It will be very interesting to see how educational systems are run in other cultures and countries.

Reflection

After my third time at field experience, myself and the other two IU students, were finally able to interact more with the students. Although it was simply milling around the room, making ourselves available to answer questions, it was great to be able to be thinking like a teacher. I was able to brainstorm and guide students by asking them questions about what they wanted to convey in their own papers. This was interesting to me, because rather than telling them what was right and what was wrong, I asked them questions on what they wanted, and how they would go about doing that. It was not an easy task for myself, because I do not have a great knowledgeable background on the history of Ancient Greeks. I had to put a lot of thought into what sort of ideas I was giving the students, because I wanted to make sure they were beneficial and legitimate.

Reflecting on my teaching experiences in our class, I feel that it is much more difficult to teach to a group of peers your own age, as opposed to children at an elementary age. When teaching to peers, I feel that there is a thought that they will not gain anything by what the student is teaching, when in fact it is done to benefit the person teaching the lesson. This is what we have to realize as students working to become teachers. The purpose of the lessons we teach in class, are not to provide information to our peers, but to better ourselves and allow us to gain insight on what it will be like in our future classrooms.

Week 4 class

During our craft lesson of yesterday's class, I found it really helpful that we were using the skills that we had learned, and relating them to an actual book. I am really enjoying this whole cluster, because we are learning about, and creating actual lesson plans that relate straight back to certain things (specifically books). These are tangible things that will be able to help us in our classrooms, rather than just concepts that have been helpful in past classrooms. In other courses in my time at IU, I have read stories, and memoirs of successful methods used by somewhat famous teachers, but this does not give me practice in these instances, only information. The fact that we are now using these methods to create out own, and present to small groups of students in our own classes, seems incredibly useful to all of us as future teachers.

There is one term that I have heard many times this semester that I have found very interesting. The term 'read like a writer' is something that I had never thought of before, but feel could be a great aspect to incorporate in our classrooms. When I feel I am reading something as a writer, I am analyzing a piece, and breaking it apart as to why the writer wrote it as he or she did. This can be interesting to do with students, because it could give one an insight on how the students are viewing the piece. It could be used as a way of assessment for critical analyzation by your students.

First Field Experience

Today was our first day of field experience at University Elementary! It was such a great first day despite the early start time of eight am. Because I was placed in a 2nd grade classroom at University last year, I requested 4-6th grade this time around in order to create a little variation. I was so incredibly impressed with the 6th grade classroom I was placed in. I was in the gifted room, and to be completely honest, I felt slightly intimidated by their ability levels. Today was simply an observation day in our classroom, and I enjoyed this very much. It was interesting not only to see the students and how they worked in an educational point of view, but also from a social standpoint. Last semester I took an interpersonal communication class, in which we spend a lot of time observing and analyzing many different social interactions and situations. It was so neat to be able to use those skills in the classroom today, because a class of 6th graders is something that I have not been around in so long. All around the students were just very impressive.

2nd Week thoughts

Today was our second class of the E 339 course. Today's class was great, because it allowed us to be creative and share about ourselves. I feel that sharing personal information with your peers, allows people to latch on to commonalities, and therefore feel comfortable in a classroom setting, and hopefully even an out of class setting. Our writer's notebook decoration, was a time to sort of work freely and let our minds wander because many of us are loaded down with first week assignments. It was a nice break in the day, while still being in class. Also we were able to share personal interests with our peers, which I feel opens so many doors. It allows people to say or think things such as "me too!" or "I agree". I feel that this brings students in the class closer together, because it allows them to relate on a level that is not centered around classroom ideas. Because of this, it allows all of us to become more comfortable discussing classroom ideas when the time comes for in class discussion.

On another note, I also enjoyed the discussion about spelling. Allyson and I agreed that this had been a subject that we had not yet learned about in our college courses. Spelling seems like such a simple task, almost a 'no-brainer' now, because of technology and our ability to ask others. I did not realize however, that I did not know any ways or methods to teach this to young children. It is a difficult topic, because as much as we want them to spell things correctly, we have to praise them for attempting to spell, and for putting forth the effort. These are things that we went into in today's class, and I feel like I really took something away from that.

After the first E 339 class, I will say that three hours was not nearly as frightening as I had imagined. I enjoyed the first sessions of all of my classes and look forward to this semester. I have never blogged before (w 200 being the exception), and so it is slightly confusing, and foreign to me. I hope that this experience will help me to become used to blogging, and grow to enjoy it. Reflections on today's class session: I am anxious to see how the writer's journal will turn out. I am wondering if I will grow to really enjoy it, or if I will simply think of it as another assignment. I have never kept a continuous journal of any type before, but I always seem to have a lot going on in my life, and in my head, so a way to get those thoughts out might be useful. I am also slightly apprehensive about this language arts cluster in general, because it seems to (obviously) focus a lot on reading and writing, two things that require a lot of time and effort for me in particular. Reading has never been a strong point of mine, because my mind wanders so much, it takes me triple the amount of time to read something. Hopefully because it is the main staple in each of the classes, the repetition will allow me to become better at it, and more comfortable sharing my ideas with multiple people.