Whew!!! What a week it has been. Between school work and student work, I feel that I have not had a chance to stop and catch my breath.
This week for me had been quite stressful because I had to turn in my unit plan... I bet I scrapped my plan 4 times before I could finish it. Note to self teaching (planning) pre-k is harder than it looks.
In other news, our school was on lock down both days I was there last week. Experiencing it from a teacher's stand point is much differnt than from a student stand point. By this I mean instead of just following directions and procedures set down by the teacher, I had to implement what the prinicpal wanted. Fielding questions was some what difficult because honestly I was never sure what was going to come out of their mouths. One child told me it was not fair to keep them in from outside because they needed their recess... mind you these children are four and five. Needless to say I was astonished. To say that I was ready to leave on Friday is an understatement. I was absolutely, positively wiped out at 2:30pm when we took them out to their buses.
One thing I do wonder is,do all teachers go thru training for these events? I know in my school there was confusion about what constitutes a soft vs. hard lock down... I think some sort of print out or something would be beneficial for each teacher to have to refer to. Other than that I think that keeping communication between teacher and administration is important and maybe not have so much on the announcements to freak students out. This week has been one that I will remember... hopefully I will learn from it as well...
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
It's All in a Days Work....
Wow what a break we had... I really enjoyed my two weeks away from UGA. The week at Fowler Drive was amazing. I thought spending two days a week was a lot but it is nothing compared to a week. This past week I learned more about my students than I have the entire semester. One experience I will never forget is during center time, the students from my class made their own parade of instruments and played them as they walked together around the room. That moment was the sweetest one I believe I have ever seen. It was touching to see all of the students getting along and playing nicely.
As for literature in my classroom this week, we talked about the circus and what can found in a circus. During center time my teacher encouraged her students to create thier own circus in the art center. The application was nice because at the end of centers, she had each child come up and tell about their circus. Some students had their circus so figured out they could tell you what color clothing thier clowns would wear and what you could find to snack on at their circus. My class has so much creativity that it is really inspiring to work with these students and I consider myself lucky to be apart of it.
Onto the book, chapter 12 spoke about topics for writing workshops. Since I am in a pre-k classroom things are a little different than in the first grade classroom I was in last time. My example comes from my first grade classroom and not pre-k for me. In first grade my teacher gave them topics to write about but in giving them topics they were allowed to pick from three each time. The three topics that were given also were always related. For example: write about your favorite pet, tell me about a pet that you would like to own, or write about and describe your pets favorite toy. As the year goes on the topics build on each other and go from information to persuasive and so on.
What she warned me about was the idea of publishing and making a book. She was rooked into trying the book idea out on her class but unfortunately go stuck with an early date: October instead of January or February. In trying to complete the book some of her lessons had to be rushed a bit and I noticed that her students seemed to be stressed. Instead of writing and learning about animals for fun to make a new informational piece. It became her is your animal, you have one day to research it, one day to draft, one day to revise and one day to rewrite. While this sounds like a lot of time to an adult, in student world with only 45 minutes to one hour of work time in Language Arts this was not a lot of time. As the days went on the students levels of anxiety seemed to rise as students were becoming more grouchy. Needless to say I was glad when everything was finished a week later and things could go back to normal. I think in school timing is everything and it would have almost been better to pass up the oportunity to make the formal book. Instead I believe it would have been my class I would have taken that opportunity to make my own collection of students work and made copies for everyone in the class. I would have waited until I felt students were ready to take on such an extensive project instead of rushing it. This is only my opinion however and at all the students made it through it. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger right?????
As for literature in my classroom this week, we talked about the circus and what can found in a circus. During center time my teacher encouraged her students to create thier own circus in the art center. The application was nice because at the end of centers, she had each child come up and tell about their circus. Some students had their circus so figured out they could tell you what color clothing thier clowns would wear and what you could find to snack on at their circus. My class has so much creativity that it is really inspiring to work with these students and I consider myself lucky to be apart of it.
Onto the book, chapter 12 spoke about topics for writing workshops. Since I am in a pre-k classroom things are a little different than in the first grade classroom I was in last time. My example comes from my first grade classroom and not pre-k for me. In first grade my teacher gave them topics to write about but in giving them topics they were allowed to pick from three each time. The three topics that were given also were always related. For example: write about your favorite pet, tell me about a pet that you would like to own, or write about and describe your pets favorite toy. As the year goes on the topics build on each other and go from information to persuasive and so on.
What she warned me about was the idea of publishing and making a book. She was rooked into trying the book idea out on her class but unfortunately go stuck with an early date: October instead of January or February. In trying to complete the book some of her lessons had to be rushed a bit and I noticed that her students seemed to be stressed. Instead of writing and learning about animals for fun to make a new informational piece. It became her is your animal, you have one day to research it, one day to draft, one day to revise and one day to rewrite. While this sounds like a lot of time to an adult, in student world with only 45 minutes to one hour of work time in Language Arts this was not a lot of time. As the days went on the students levels of anxiety seemed to rise as students were becoming more grouchy. Needless to say I was glad when everything was finished a week later and things could go back to normal. I think in school timing is everything and it would have almost been better to pass up the oportunity to make the formal book. Instead I believe it would have been my class I would have taken that opportunity to make my own collection of students work and made copies for everyone in the class. I would have waited until I felt students were ready to take on such an extensive project instead of rushing it. This is only my opinion however and at all the students made it through it. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger right?????
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