Category: Links

Date: May 4, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

As my field experience comes to an end, I have learned many new and interesting things that I can take with me within my teaching career from the students, my MT, and my professors. When coming into the classroom, I entered with two strengths. These strengths included the ability to connect with students instantly and the ability to make precise observations about a student’s behavior and learning ability based on their classroom demeanor. These skills are essential because making a connection with students allows me to have better classroom management for future teaching. Identifying or observing critical details about a student is also essential to my teaching career because being able to identify what students need to be successful in and out of the classroom.

When thinking about how I improved throughout the semester, I think about each time I stood in front of the classroom. Thinking of improvement, one can only improve with When thinking about how I improved throughout the semester, I think about each time I stood in front of the classroom. Thinking of improvement, one can only improve with practice and by accepting feedback and building off of it for the next experience to get better. One area I have improved in is getting students’ attention and assessing students using questioning. The reason I place both of these together as one improvement is that if I am unable to gather and keep the student focused and attention throughout a lesson, then they will not be able to answer any questions throughout the lesson that I ask that will allow me to assess their understanding of the content along the way. With the questioning, I also feel that I have improved with asking specific and content-related questions to students who are relatively quiet and withdrawn from classroom discussion in order first to assess what they have learned so far and, second, gather their input on the topic at hand so they are engaged within the lesson and not just sitting back and waiting for the same 3 to 4 students to answer and move the lesson along. The second area of improvement would be my ability to provide students with a sense of ownership. When beginning my journey as an educator, one of my main major mistakes would be to allow students to give up too easily and allowing them to half do work and say it is okay. As I continued as an educator, I started to provide students with a sense of ownership and letting them know that they are in charge of their own learning experience and that they are the only ones who can truly help themselves learn and become better. By giving students this sense of ownership and making it clear that they are also responsible for their learning, I find that many more students are participating, learning, showing improvement within academics and behavior and much more. While I am still guidign them, giving them this ownership allows me to focus less on the little things and more on getting the content across to each students in the best way possible.

There are 2 areas in which I believe that I still need work on: Verbal explanations and transitions. When teaching, I tend to continue without explaining why we are completing the lesson, how it is developmentally appropriate, why the students should know it, etc. By providing verbal explanations for learning, students, and other teachers, I will be able to clearly understand why the content I provide is essential to student development overall. When it comes to transitions, I still find myself struggling a bit to find developmentally appropriate transitions for students when activities and task are complete so they are not just sitting them doing nothing as time passes. By working on my transitions and focusing on what the students will be doing next and the smoothest way to get to that point, I am able to complete a task and successful move students from one area to another with minimal issues. As I begin to focus on my field experience and student teaching, I will begin to include these concepts more often in my teaching so I can become more familiar with them for future use.

My most fun experience can not simply be described as one specific event. Overall, my entire encounter at my field experience was enjoyable and rememberable. I would say one of the most fun experience I had would have to be the consecutive lessons I did a the beginning of the semester. When beginning my field experience, the second week, in order to prepare for my grade lesson plan that was upcoming, I prepared a mini science lesson about the sun, moon, and stars in which the students made constellations, followed by the science lesson plan about the moon phases, then followed by the Dr. Mae C. Jemison social studies lesson plan. This was loads of fun because it was interesting to see how the student recalled information about space and the general topic week after week; this let me know that the students did indeed learn something from me within this timeframe about space and the people who go to space.

My most challenging experience I would have to say is controlling how to respond to certian situations. As I continued to complete my field experience hours, some situations that occured seemed to be well outside of my scope of knowledge and overall ability. This was challenging because many times when coming into the classroom, the students would ask me things or make statements to which I am unsure of how to respond due to my nature as a simple student observer/teacher.

The best lesson I believe that I taught was my first literacy lesson plan. While this was not my favorite lesson, it was however, the best lesson I taught based off the assessment from the students and the students focus and attention to the lesson. The reason I believe this was my best lesson was also becuase with the lesson plan, the field experience location provided a curriculum in which I was able to identify what kind of literacy lesson was already in place and I was able to adjust accordingly off of this.

There are three things that I learned from my mentor teacher/cooperating teacher that helped me along the way. The first thing I learned is that patience goes a long way. When observing my MT/CT she never seemed to get upset or frustrated with the students, she always kept a level head and addressed whatever issues she had head on. By doing this, students were able to see that she was fun and caring yet she set boundaries and expectations in which the students tried to subconsciously stay within through out the day. The second thing would be to always have a possible attitude. While having a positice attitude can sometimes be a lot of work, by showing the students that there is always something positive that comes form certain situations in which the students can acknowledge and address rather than a negative mindset or outlook on certain things which could ruin a lot. The last thing that I learned from my MT/CT would be to folloe my teacher gut. By this I mean that there were many times that I found myself second guessing and stressing about how something might go wrong or get messed up or wont be helpful and my MT/CT told me to do it and it worked perfectly. By following my first mind and not second gussing myself, there could be great accomplishments that happen.

Throughout this overall experience, there are three things that I learned about myself as a teacher. The first thing I learned was that if I stop worrying about every last detial of everything, I could be phenomenal within the classroom. When teahcing and getting in front of the students, everything felt completley natural to a point that somehow I felt as if I had been doing it for a very long time. Another thing that I learned about myself is that I get excited when the students are having fun learning. My overall personality can be explained as goofy and funny and I find that I can simply be myself within the classroom and students will still be happy to learn from me because I like to make learning fun. The last thing I learned about myslef would be that I have a love and hate relationship with set cirruculums. I personally feel that during my field experience there were times when the lessons that were precreated through the cirriculum did not grasp the students attention as much as the lessons that I created did.

While being at my field experience location, there are several things that I learned about the students within my classroom placement. One very major thing that I learned is that every student is simply and completely, unique. Even without a physical description, I feel that I could identify students from my field class just by their personalities and what they say within the classroom. The students personalities and the layout of the classroom seemed to work perfectly together as it built on a safe learning environment for the studnets. As an educator, the teaching field is constantly innovating and changing right before our very eyes. There are three things that I would say that I noticed about the educational field based off of my experiences. The first thing would be the environment in which the schools present. When walking through the school at my field experience location, it seems that all the classroom were arranged for students of almost all grade levels, the colors and the shapes used to decorated the halls and main areas were vibrant and welcoming, and in ever classroom, the class is set up in a way that allows students to support on another while also being assessed by the teacher from anywhere in the classroom. Another thing that I learned about the educational field would be that everything is fast paced. This means that when it comes to teaching lessons and making sure that students are on task, an educator can not afford to spend three to four days on one thing, this is a waste of time and resources. The last thing I learned about the educational field is that resources are everywhere. While there might be something that I don’t understand there are other teachers, staff, textbooks, etc. that are available for the benefit of the teachers.

While teaching, observing, and participating within my field experience location, there are many things I did that I enjoyed, many things I did yet I wish I had not, many things I had not done in which I hoped I did, and more. When I think deeply, there are a few things that I would have done differently if I were given the chance to do so. One thing I would have done would be to be more confident in teaching and addressing students. When I began my field experience, I happened to have a class in which the MT/CT had already set clear boundaries and expectations within the classroom so students could understand what is expected of them throughout there time in the class.

Overall, now that I look back at my experience within this semester and what I accomplished within the field experience location I was placed in, I would say that there are a few things that I do look forward to as a new semester we’re to begin. The first thing would be the new students and staff I would encounter during student teaching. As I said before, each student is completely unique, this means that they each have their own personality and way of learning and developing which allows me to find out exactly how the group of students work together and how they work as individuals. Another thing would be overall experience I gain from being in the classroom everyday; this alone is a different encounter than I have experience with only being in the classroom for a few hours or one day at the most. While I do look forward to my student teaching experience, I am also anxious about a few things. One thing I am anxious about is the fact that I may make mistakes. While we are all human, my goal is to provide a quality education to the students within the classroom. In conclusion, my field experience and methods have helped me learn a lot about myself and my goals as an individual and an educator. I simply can not wait until student teaching! This isn’t a simple goodbye so, until next time friends

Date: April 27, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

During this week of fun teaching experiences, I completed my last a final field experience lesson. As the day began as normal, I started with informing my teaching and the students about my departure from the class as of next week so there would be no surprises. As the students came in, they completed their normal everyday bellringer and I checked to ensure the students answered the question in full sentences, with proper punctuation, and with logical answers. After the students completed their bellringer, I began my math lesson plan. The math lesson revolved solely on the cirriculum provided by the school with revision that I made tho ensure I was able to assess the students as individuals. The lesson covered counting to 120 in unit form. When the lesson began, I started wiht asking students engaging question to assess their prior knowledge on unit form and numbers as high as 120. The questions I asked in order to engage the students in deeper thinking was questions such as, “Does anyone know what a place value is?”,”Can anyone seperate this number into tens and ones place?”, “Does everyone agree with the responses?”. By asking these questions, I am able to see from the beginning of the lesson what the students already know and what students still need assistance.

As the lesson continued, I continued to ask the students engaging questions so I am able to assess the students as individuals and as a whole group. When the independent practice or the assessment portion of the lesson plan began, it became clear that the students had a general idea of what was expected of them and how they were to complete the given assignment. From this lesson all the students except one fully grasped the concept of deconstructing and reconstructing numbers as high as 120 in unit form.

Overall, this weeks’ lesson went fairly well and I beleive the studnets’ learning improved based on the lesson I taught. Also as the rest of the class continued, the students were well behaved as I conducted to literacy and the centers for the rest of the day after lunch. During the centers activities, the MT had me assist students in creating fingerprint flowers to prepare for the upcoming Mother’s Day. After completing the fingerpting pedals, pictures of the students faces were used to place in the center of the flower. So far everything is going well, next blog post will be an update of my last day at my field experience location, hopefully it is an interesting update. Until next time friends!

Date: April 17, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

During this week’s class we did several different interesting things in and out of the classroom. As the day began, we started with our usual bellringer. Instead of our normal class schedule, students were to have an assembly that Big Run Wolf Ranch presented animals in. They presented different forms of animals to the students within the assembly real animals in which the students were given a visual representation with interesting facts. The assembly was completely engaging and interesting as the students were given an opportunity to ask and answer questions about the animals as they were presented.

While the assembly was completely captivating, after it concluded, we continued with our regularly scheduled lessons. During the month of March, the students completed a poll or survey in which they voted on whether or not it would snow in the month of April. With it snowing on the day before, students were able to complete a snow day center after their regular math lesson. During the snow day center, the students were able to draw and craft their own snowmen with colorful and unique scarves. The students also went to the library toward the end of the day. Once in the library students were able to return the books they had borrowed the week before and if they did not bring back their books then they were unable to checkout books yet they could still read while they were there. For leaving the library, the librarian did a read aloud with the students of a boo of their choosing.

Overall, today was interested and there were not a lot of inclass activities other than the centers in which the students were able to make their snowmen. During this activity, I was able to give the students instructions about how to complete their snowman and cut them out to create their crafts. When instructing the students, other than ensuring the students were able to understand the instructions, I had to ensure that they had the materials they needed and understood how to use the materials properly. I first passed out the materials so the students were able to look at them. If I were to change something I would stress to the students that they are to wait for instructions before doing anything. By doing this, the students would be able to properly complete the activity within a timely manner and without being confused as much. Hopefully next week I could implement this into my lesson plan in order to make sure that every detail is explained throughly for students understand and better assessment possibilities. Until next time friends!

Date: April 13, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

For this weeks’ field experience, I taught my second literacy lesson plan. As the day began, I greeted the students per usual. after greeting the class we began with the bell ringer and quickly moved on to math. For my literacy lesson, the students were reviewing their vowel teams. With vowel teams the students we looking at the sound ai, ay, oi, oy, aw, and au. With a lesson such as this, students were quick to acknowledge that the vowel teams sounded similar. This lead to deeper thinking questions that I had to ask students. As the lesson began, I first asked the students if they knew what vowel teams were. From what the students learned so far in the week, they had reviewed what vowel teams were; because this seemed to be a review this allowed an excellent opportunity to connect this current lesson to the previous lesson in order to activate the students’ prior knowledge of the given topic. The students were able to tell me exactly what vowel teams were and they also had a general idea of how to identify them regardless of their ability to sound the same.

Within this lesson, I feel that many different things could have went a little bit different as my lesson went on. While the students did seem engaged, when the whiteboards began to come out students got somewhat of side track in which they played with the boards instead of doing what was asked of them. In order to regain focus on the activity, I circled the classroom and asked the students to create their 5 frame. Once I stated the expectations students seemed to be much more focused on the lesson than playing with their materials. By circling the classroom more often while also still presenting the content allows the students to focus more on the content and what they are doing. As the lesson continued, I found that students became more excited to learn about the vowel teams due to how I presented the materials and how the lesson proceeded. When it come to guided practice, the students seemed to get excited as we began the dice and worksheet activity. They seemed excited when we were going to roll the dice because they wanted to know which number they would land on and which words they would be deconstructing next. Overall, I believe this literacy lesson was successful.

My goal for my final lesson is to be able to manage and conduct to classroom with no assistance from the MT. While for the last few weeks I have been teaching the students lessons (the entirety of the day) and guiding some instruction, the general goal is to conduct the entire lesson and majority of the day with the instructor as only a simple a reference. Until next time friends!

Date: March 30, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

Hello everyone, today was another amazing and interesting day within my field experience classroom! For this class, I attempted to complete the day while being completely active ever second I could including within dropping the students off and walking with them to the class. As the day began, I went into the classroom and began with the bellringer. After the bellringer, I began to teach the math lesson in which I began to practice for when I would teach my math lesson to the students. The students were learning about fractions. The metaphor used within the math lesson was about pizzas. When teaching the students, I tried to make the lesson connect as much as possible to the students learning and everyday lives so they have a better understanding of the content. When reading the questions I would say something like, “Mrs. Dare and I have a large pizza, how would you cut or divide the pizza so that we each had equal parts?” Then the students would use their whiteboards to draw out an image of their pizza and how they divided it. Once all the students held up their whiteboards, I would call on a student to show their board and explain why they cut or divided their pizza in the way that they did. If a student cut their pizza diagonally and another did it horizontally, I would ask them both to show their boards and then ask the class, “Is there a difference within the way A cut their pizza versus how B cut their pizza? Does it change how much pizza each person gets?” After asking this, I would discuss the answer with the students.

As the math lesson continues, I gave the student interesting facts about me so they are more motivated to answer the questions while also making it more challenging. For example, when talking about dividing a pizza in 4 ways, I said, “Now this one may be tough friends. If I have 4 brothers, and I want to share the pizza I bought equally between my 4 brothers. How would I do that friends?” I then gave the students a few minutes to draw it out on their whiteboard then after they finished I asked a student to share. With this method, I was able to gather a better understanding of what the students understood able creating parts farther than halves. After asking this question, I noticed one student gave an interesting answer. The student said, “If you have 4 brothers, can you slice the pizza in 5 ways so you and your 4 brothers can each have an equal piece?” When the student asked this, this lead to another discussion and I asked the students what it would look like if I were to cut the pizza in even parts for 5 people. From this lesson, the students learned a lot about the fractions and dividing items from wholes into parts.

Overall, today’s lesson was successful and the students gained a lot of experience from their own questioning and discussions. The students were especially active within their lessons today and seemed to have a nice time taking part in their math discussions. In conclusion, the lesson was fun and interesting but per usual there are always things that can be done to make the lesson better. I will use what I have done for this week’s observation and participation in order to guide my teaching experiences for the future. Until next time friends!

By: Shaylee Marr

Date: March 23, 2023

Today was yet another amazing day at my field experience location. Per usual, the day began with a bellringer. After the bellringer, the students schedule somewhat changed around due to the lesson I had to teach. The day went pretty normal and the events were casual. The students began their day with math. After the students finished their math lesson, I took them to gym class. Once I had picked up the students from gym class, they went to lunch.

After the students returned from lunch, we soon began to to focus on our literacy lesson. Today was the day that I had to complete my literacy lesson that is graded. For this lesson, I focused on phonograms, mainly the ILD and IND phonograms. First I began with phoneme deletion that allowed the students to focus on the deletion or the removal of a phoneme from the complete word. After having the students repeat the word, delete a phoneme, and recreate the word, I was able to begin with the main focus. For starters, I asked the students if they know what a phonogram was and how to identify one. We also discussed the gestures that were used in order to identify phonograms. Whenever I mentioned the phonograms to the students or presented them on the board, I showed the students the phonogram gesture to engage in repetitive behavior. Once the students were able to grasp the concept of the phonogram gesture, we continued to practice for better understanding.

For assessment, I had the students complete 2 different individual assignments. The first, was for them to read the given passage “I Can’t Find My Hat” that includes ILD and IND phonograms. To begin, I had the students read the passage individually and underline the words that have the ILD and IND endings. I gave them about 5 to 7 minutes ot complete this task. Once the students were done, I told them to categorize the words under either the ILD or IND boxes at the bottom of the page. I gave the students a few more minutes to do this. After they were done, I read the passage to the students sentence by sentence and I would periodically stop in order to ask the students if the sentence had one of the phonograms we were looking for. I continued this process until all the words were placed in the correct category. Once the students finished, I had the give me their papers and I gave each of them a piece of dotted line paper and asked them to make 2 sentences: one using a ILD phonogram and one using a IND phonogram. During this time, I had 2 students who I felt needed more help in identify ILD and IND phonograms and creating complete sentences to a small group in the back to help with differentiation of instruction. I had the students identify a ILD and IND word from the word bank we used within the passage and create their own sentences using the word. One aspect I would say that I need work non is the closing transitions. While I was helping the students create their own sentences in the back, many of the other students were done and they began to walk up to me and their MT. If I am to do something like this again, I would want to create a transition for the students to begin something else while waiting.

Overall, the lesson was fun and interesting but per usual there are always things that can be done that can make it better. I will use what I have done for this lesson, to better my future lesson, I can not wait until I teach again. Until next time friends!

Date: March 9, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

Today was another amazing day at my field experience location. Per usual, the day began with the students coming into the classroom and completing their bellringer. This weeks’ bellringer asked the students how they believed people got sick. Many students did have a general idea of how people got sick and began their sentences with “People get sick from . . .” The exciting part was that most of the day, I seemed to lead the classroom. From the beginning of the day when the bellringer was presented until the end when the students left, I pretty much lead the class with lessons and instruction.

To begin with my day of instruction, I lead with the the literacy lesson. The students repeated the word after I said it and replaced certain letters as necessary to make new sounds. Next, I took the students to gym, where they played bowling with their groups. After retrieving them from the gym, we came back where the students from both my MT and another teacher’s classroom did word recognition. With this, the teacher places the words on the smartboard using slides and the students read them as the slide changes and continuously gets faster with each set of slides. After this, the students went to lunch. After returning from lunch, we began with the math lesson. The math lesson consisted of the students using word problems and breaking them down in order to complete the task.

Once the students were finished with their normally daily task from the curriculum, we began the social studies lesson I had planned. The social studies lesson was essentially a continuation and closure of the 3 day lessons I had planned and led the students in over the las few weeks. To begin, we talked about the sun, the moon, and the star. For the second lesson, we discussed the moon phase. Finally, for the social studies connection, we discussed Dr. Mae C. Jemison, the first African American woman in space. When I began the lesson, the students seemed excited to be doing something so different like learning about a real life astronaut such as Dr. Jemison. The students were also excited to sit on the carpet and listen to the read aloud activity about the biography of Dr. Jemison’s life. When reading the story to the students, they asked engaging questions and also answered comprehension questions during the read aloud. After the read aloud activity, I talked gave the students instructions about how to complete the works sheet. At the bottom of the work sheet, the students were given a set of expectations to follow such as completing their sentences with a punctuation mark, beginning the sentence with a capital letter, and ensuring the words were spaced out properly. After explaining these expectations to the students, they were each able to produce three sentences using facts that represent Mae Jemison’s life achievements and color the image of her at the top of the paper.

Overall, from this lesson, I feel that it was an amazing closure to this lesson. I enjoyed finding new and interesting ways to connect the lesson together using different content and subject area while also still making it interesting for the students. The students also seemed so amazed especially when they were able to see an authentic image of Dr. Jemison in real life to give them some idea of what she looked like and who she was within history. I feel that I did a good job with relaying the information to the students and ensuring they understood what was expected of them throughout the lesson. Next week, since I will be on spring break, I will not be uploading but look forward to an update the following week. See you all next time!

Date: February 23, 2023

By: Shaylee Marr

Today was another amazing day at my field experience location. As the day began, I greeted the students as they came into the classroom and the bellringer began. The bellringer for the day asked the students a question that requires them to use their imagination and critical thinking skills. The bellringer question was, “Why do you think zebras have stripes?” Many of the students had interesting answers such as, “Zebra have stripes because they want to look like oreos.” With these answers, my job was partly to check and see if the student had a capital letter at the beginning of their sentence, they had punctuation at the end of the sentence, and that they used the correct format that was provided to them.

As the day continued, I also taught a lesson similar to the one I did last week. When doing the lesson with the students, the topic was the moon and the different phases of the moon. This science lesson consisted of a drag and drop activity, an oreo assessment activity, and a jeopardy group activity. I enjoyed teaching this lesson to the students and it seemed that the students enjoyed it too. To begin, I acknowledged last week’s lesson and made a connection to the prior knowledge that the students had about the moon to continue from. After making this connection, I began to ask students questions about what they knew, their ideas about certain aspects, their understanding of what phases were, etc. After asking engaging higher level thinking questions, I introduced the different phases to the students and explained tha tthere were 8 main moon phases and described the different characteristics of each. After doing this, the students were interested. I then began witht he drag and drop activity for the students to complete as a whole to ensure that they had an idea of what each moon phase was called and the characteristics that allow them to identify each one.

As the drag and drop activity continued, I had a student come to the board and she pointed at the incorrect moon phase. Instead of saying, “That’s wrong try again.” I used questions in order to guide her in the correct direction. I asked her questions like, “How do you know that is the correct answer?”,”What are the characteristics that lets you know this belongs in the 7th spot?”, etc. After doing this, I was able to gain a better understanding of what the children thought about the moon phases and how they identified them. Once this was completed, I took the time to carefully explain the rest of the other activities with the oreos and jeopardy. The assessment came from the oreo activity in which the students modeled their own moon phase using an oreo. I left the moon phase slide on the smartboard as a reference for the students who may still not understand the content as well.

When doing this lesson and interacting with the students, I enjoyed myself a lot and so did the students. From this lesson, I feel that I was able to deliver the content as necessary to the students so they were able to understand what was being taught. I also feel that throughout the lesson I could have done a better job at asking more higher level thinking questions to the students so they could use more critical thinking skills as well as managing the class a little more. I say this because when it came to the oreo activity, many of the students’ main focus was to eat the oreos instead of do the activity but after careful explaining they completed the activity and still had a small snack after. I simply can not wait until next week to complete my second lesson within the classroom in order to fix any minor errors I might have made when teaching before in order to become a better teacher. I can not wait until next week when I am able to practice more, until next time!