Greg Mortenson...inspirational

Last night, my husband and I met up for dinner after seeing Greg Mortenson speak. I told him a little bit about his background and the amazing accomplishments he has made. It got us talking about what Mr. Mortenson closed his speech with... What mark are we making on the world?

My husband is a public defender and while he was in law school is was very active with the crisis ministry on meeting street. To my knowledge, the law school requires everyone to do a certain number of hours in the field doing work such as this. I am in graduate school helping to teach students in public school, many of which live in poverty. Both our careers are service jobs helping those in need. Before teaching, I worked at an Advertising Agency who one day a year had who ever wanted to go out to a site and help build a house for someone in need through United Way. I jumped at the chance to get out of the office and to do some manuel labor.

Despite this, I feel we need to do something, not because its our job or an excuse to get out of the office, but because we feel very passionately about a cause, such as education. We started talking about some ideas and are really going to try and volunteer in our community. With the mid-term elections just finishing up, it makes me think about all the people, myself included, who "bitch" about the economy, education, health care, etc, but who really are not out in the community physically trying to do something about it. We might start small, helping out at a soup kitchen around the holidays or adopt a family to give Christmas gifts too. My hope is that the satisfaction we get out of helping others will drive us to want to do more.

This weeks field...

Marisa taught her last lesson this week. While helping and observing her, I was reminded of a very important aspect of being a teacher, particularly a kindergarten teacher, and that is... thinking on your toes.

She had the class broken into centers. I worked at a table with students who each had a bag of cheerios and a number card. They were to read the number on their card and count out that number of cherios. We did this several times and I consciously gave each student single and double digit numbers. After about 7 minutes of this I could sense the children knew what they were doing and were loosing interest. I leaned over into a bucket near me to grab a white board. We started writing the numbers and talking about the different properties (i.e. an 8 is like an s that's closed...Lydia). I also had them do some addition and subtraction, asking them questions such as "if you have 7 cheerios and you want 10, how many more do you need?" Most were able to do this and were happily surprised when I told them "do you know that right now your doing addition and subtraction! " I was also reminded that we need to set high standards for our students and give them the encouragement and scaffolding to think beyond what they think they can. Marisa's lesson ended early and she came up with an activity using a pocket chart and numbers.

A little boy in one of my groups is an ESL student. It was clearly visible that his language was acting as a barrier in learning his numbers. Also, rather than knowing them from recognition, he would look at the number line and count up from one. I tried to work with him more closely and I also had his classmates help him. When he didn't know a number, I would ask the 3-4 other students, what number is this? Then I would turn to Andres and ask him what number is this, and he would repeat what his friends just said. When I first read this technique in Lemov, I thought that it would make a student feel insecure and "called out", but that was not the case. I kept the pace of doing this moving quickly which I also think helped. I think its important to teach students that their classmates can also act as teachers and support when they have confusion.

Final Lesson Taught

This morning I taught my final lesson on phonemic awareness and the letter Ff. I was happily surprised that the students were extremly well behaved, especially for it being the day after Halloween. Mrs. Hearn, the teachers aid, told me that this particular class gets incredibly chatting in the afternoon, around the time that we usually come. I really enjoyed teaching the phonics lesson where I had the students identify the beginning sound in words I said orally. I tried to call on all students at least once which was challenging with 27 students, but from those that I did call on, it was very obvious who struggled with this and who could easily attest to the sound. When I asked for the beginning sound, the students often told me the letter. It's great that they could tell me the letter, but they have to distinguish between sound and letter. I was consistently having to remind them of this, but by the end of the whole group lesson, they seemed to have gotten it.

I worked in small reading groups with the children reading their My Ff Book. First I worked with the lowest students in the class, which includes 3 ESL learners. I enjoyed working with them to decode unknown words and consistently reminding them to use their reading hand and finger to ensure that they read each word on the page and in the appropriate order. The children usually have to circle the letter that the book is about, for example all the B's in their My Bb Book. I had them circle all of the F's and underline the words in the book that began with F. I am really glad I added this on because many still have confusion between a word and a letter. Being able to break paragraphs into sentences, sentences into words, and words into letters is a skill that children need to have. I also got to work with the highest students in the class. It was pretty intersting to see how large the gap is. They could easily read all the pages in the book and they were also writing extra words with their pictures, such as the color that they were using to color in their pictures. This lesson definitely reminded me of the importance of differentiating your teaching techniques.

I really enjoyed reading Chapter 10 of the Grant book. Alot of the chapter discussed that the family and the community are the child's first teacher. We have discussed how many parents don't know how to work with their children to enhane skills they are being taught at school. I think its so important to educate your parents on small things they can do at home that are fun activites for both the child and parent. Some examples might be talking about your favorite part of the day during dinner, or having the child work on counting by setting the table. Because the community and family are the child's first teacher, we as teachers need to know as much as we can about them since they effect what the child is like.