First Post!

I'm really looking forward to going to Summerville Elementary this thursday.  The field classes always excite me because what we learn and experience in them is the closest thing to what we actually will be doing once we graduate from the program and get a job teaching in a school.  Of all the fields, this one is the one I have been most excited about.  Often I feel we write this very elaborate, "cute" lesson plans.  In reality I don't think our teaching day will be made up of lessons like this.  I'm excited to teach what the actual teacher will be teaching and to get the opportunity to use some of the curriculum texts that the district is using.  I think this field will give us a better understanding of how the day flows at school versus the other fields where we primarily observed the morning meeting and the reading block.  Last semester I was at Drayton Hall and had a wonderful cooperating teacher who was anxious to share her knowledge with us.  I'm hoping for the same this semester!  I'm also interested in trying out some of the techniques that we are reading about in the Lemov text book.  

The technique I think will be most intuitive for me to implement in my classroom is format matters.  I am hoping to teach Kindergarten or first grade.  Children at this age are still at the very beginning stage of this writing.  Consistently correcting their format errors and re-teaching  skills that students are having difficulty with will hopefully get the students to a point where the correct format becomes automatic to them when they are writing.  I have also often seen children at this age mix up their tenses, omit words, etc. when they are speaking.  Requiring my students to answer and speak to me in complete sentences will help them with their "voice" and will give me opportunities to correct them and explain their errors (when appropriate).  No Opt Out may be the most difficult technique for me to implement in my early childhood classroom.  Not trying will not be an option for the students in my classroom. If they genuinely don't know the answer, I don't want to make them feel "stupid" or insecure about sharing their point of view in fear that what they have to say is not what the teacher wants to hear.  I like the idea that a student doesn't have the option to not answer or participate, but I think this technique might have to be slightly adjusted for early childhood.