Miss Read 's Dice

Hi everyone! Today I had to do my second peer teaching. I did a lesson on probability. I don't want to bore you with the minute-by-minute details like I usually do, so I'll give you the short version... it involved a pretend raffle, and a dice game. I did want to show you the giant dice I made, though! At first I was going to buy some large dice from a local teacher supply store, but when I got there I found out they only sold large dice in packages of six, for $20.00. So I went to my usual stomping grounds, Dollar Tree! I bought two small, cube-shaped gift boxes. I took them home and wrapped them in regular white printer paper, and then used my Do-A-Dot Markers to make the dots! Finally, I covered them in shipping tape (also from Dollar Tree) to make them shiny and keep the paper from ripping. Wallah! Giant novelty dice I can use forever and ever!

In other news, I just got back from my class about teaching children with "perceptual disorders" (otherwise known as learning disabilities and mild autism) and I am founding out I am getting an A!!!
I also got two links you might find useful in some way. The first is a video of a boy explaining what it feels like to have dyscalculia. He's British so it may be a little hard to understand if you're from the USA, But he's so funny, and he describes it very well, in a way that would be inspirational to other kids with learning disorders. Here's the video...





The next is a video about how to do multiplication, lattice style. Its kind of a cool way to do multiple digit multiplication. A cool trick to show kids, if they are having difficulty with regular multiplication! 



So, that's it for now! I hope everyone is having a great week so far! 

Miss Read Teaches Again!

Today I taught my second lesson plan. Again, I was given a chapter out of the teacher’s edition of the math book, so I basically knew exactly what materials I’d be teaching. But this time I had a little more freedom to plan it how I wanted to. The lesson was on estimating money.

            I started out by telling them a true story of how, at Six Flags, there was a game where a lady would try to estimate your age by looking at you. If she guessed wrong, you’d get a prize. When the lady tried to estimate my age, she guessed way wrong, so I got a prize! I then gave the students the chance to estimate my age. First, I reminded them that estimating was not a wild guess… they’d have to make smart guesses and use the information they had. The students guessed anywhere from 16 to 90!

            Next, I told the students that we could also estimate money. I had drawn pictures of several objects on the white board, and wrote prices next to them. I told the students to pretend they had a dollar, and wanted to buy at least two things from the garage sale, but they wouldn’t have time to add the prices up to get the exact totals. They’d have to estimate. I then gave them the chance to come up with combinations of items they wanted to buy. Then I’d add up the total, to find the exact amount, and see if they were correct. The students were all doing this really well, so I decided to make it a little more complicated and asked them to name three things they could buy! Most of them did really well at this, although I suspect some of them really were adding in their heads instead of estimating.

            Finally, I closed by asking them to come up with other situations in which they might estimate. The kids came up with all sorts of answers, from guessing a dog’s age, to calculating the number of stars in the sky, to guessing how many candy corns were in a jar in order to win a prize. A few came up with answers such as, estimating how many states there were in the USA or how many days there were in a year. I asked those students if they knew the exact answers to those questions (they did) and I pointed out that this meant they were not really estimating. I think most of them had a good idea of what estimating was by the time we were done!

            To tell you the truth, this lesson went so quickly, and I thought I was doing horribly! I couldn't wait for it to be over! I was actually a little relieved that my little friend Kristie was absent, since it cut down on the distractions. Still, I was shaking, and I thought Mrs. Jones was probably so disappointed in me. But at the end, she actually came up to me and told me I did wonderfully! In fact, she said that although she usually doesn't take student teachers, if I need a student placement she would love for me to come be her student teacher! (My school doesn't allow us to choose our own placements, plus I need to be in a special education placement... but still, it was flattering!) Its so weird how I can think I am doing terribly, and in real life I'm doing great. 

            At the end of class, the teacher and I were talking, and I mentioned that in our class we learn more about teaching using a problem solving approach. Mrs. Jones said that she liked that approach also, but the school now follows a Guided Math approach, which means that they start with a short, fifteen-minute “math message,” which is what I had just taught, followed by work stations that should be no longer than twenty minutes each. The rationale behind this is that the Internet and other media has changed the way people think, and that we now need to switch tasks every twenty minutes in order to stay engaged. I mentioned to Mrs. Jones that I felt like using this approach with young children was actually encouraging them to have short attention spans, instead of helping them learn to focus on something. Mrs. Jones agreed. I think a problem solving approach is a better way because you can focus on one topic (for instance, fractions) but also have several short activities (such as an introduction by the teacher, a problem-solving activity, sharing, and wrap up) so that students stay engaged. Math centers could also be incorporated, but I think more problem-solving activities and opportunities are needed.

        If you're a teacher and you use Guided Math, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this! Whether you agree with me or not, I'd love to learn from you! Please leave me a comment. 

      Cutest moments in class..: 

             During Independent Reading time, I asked a little girl named Ainslie, one of the children in the class who has special needs, to read aloud to me. At first, she was reading a story about a girl and her father baking a cake... and she kept interrupting her own reading to explain to me that she bakes all the time, with her older sister. She'd be reading, "Then, stir in the eggs," and then she'd look up to frantically tell me, "But don't get any shells in the mix! Be very careful!" or "They're putting the pan in the oven, but I'm not allowed to touch the oven. An adult needs to do that." I jokingly asked her if the picture in the story was of her. She made sure to tell me it couldn't be her, because her family included four children and three adults... the adults being her mother, her father, and her sister who was thirteen. LOL! Next she read a book called Amazon Alphabet, which had a different rainforest animal for each letter. A lot of the animal names were hard even for me to pronounce,  I did know what a kinkajou was, having seen one at the nature center last summer! I also knew that macaws, true to the picture in the book, do like fruit. Ainslie looked at me in amazement and said, "Whoa! You know so much!"

 One little girl from another second grade class saw that my name badge had the name and logo of my university. She came up and told me, "My older sister goes to that university!"
      "Really? I asked her. "What is your sister studying to be!"
       The little girl proudly replied, "A business woman!" 
    
      One little boy kept interrupting me today to show me printed photos of his dog! (How did he know I adore dogs?) 


I have really enjoyed being in Mrs. Jones's class. I think second grade just might be my grade! I'm not going to see them next week because my university has Thanksgiving break all week, and the week after that will be my last week in the class. I'm going to miss them a lot! 

           

I'm Going To Teach A Lesson!

Hi everyone! For the class I'm taking on teaching math, I have to write and teach a lesson plan to the second grade class I observe in, towards the end of the semester. My professor will be there to watch and evaluate me. Frown! I thought, at least, I was safe for a few weeks, though... until when I got to Ash Elementary today, and my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Jones, told me she'd like me to try to teach a lesson next week! AUGH!
She gave me the teacher's edition of the math book and showed me the lesson I'll be in charge of, which is on estimating time. So its not like I'll have to write the lesson plan. I'll basically be following the guidelines in the book. On the other hand... this will only be my second time teaching a lesson! I think its a little odd that I've almost completed my entire teaching education and have only had one opportunity to actually teach a lesson to children. I've written plenty of lesson plans, and carried out a few in front of peers in my class, but only once in front of children! I'm a little anxious. Will I stutter and stammer and look like a fool? For my first lesson, I taught kindergarteners about magnets, and everything went wrong. This time, Mrs. Jones has suggested that I actually script out everything I am going to say and do. I'll probably post my "script" later on this week! Maybe someone can give me a few pointers!
I did work a little with a group of children today. I played Time Bingo with a group of kids who are having most difficulty learning to tell time. My group included Kristie, the little girl I mentioned in my last Ash Elementary post who has behavioral difficulties. She was being a wild woman today, but she actually did really well in my group. She seems like a lot of kids I've met in life... on one hand, she wants to please adults, earn praise, and make friends, but on the other hand she just can't stop bouncing around! The other kids were able to focus more easily, but they all had a terrible time with the clocks. They mixed up the hour hand and the minute hand, or they tried to count by fives to get the hour as well as the minute. For instance, if they saw a clock like this...

...some might say its is 2:50, and others might say its 50:10. Still others might call it 10:02, or 2:10. And a few tried to count by ten instead of fives, and would call this 10:20. With the first group, they had their Bingo cards turned to the analog side, and I would call out a time and have them look for that time on their cards. But it took them about a million years to look at each of the sixteen clocks on their cards, decide what time it was (usually incorrectly) and decide if any matched the time I had mentioned. So, for the second group, I had them turn their cards to the digital side. Then I'd show them a card with a clock on it, and we'd all figure out the time together, and then they'd check their cards. This was much easier for them, and I could keep track of who was actually getting the times right and who was having trouble. The problem was, the game was meant for a whole classroom, so there were about a million different calling cards, and almost none of the times I called out matched a time on any of the particular BINGO cards the kids in my group were using. It was a little discouraging for them to go through the long process of deciphering the time, and then not have it on their card ever! I think next week I will sort through the calling cards ahead of time, so that someone gets to mark their card for almost every clock we look at.
I was still observing when the teacher was working on what they call "Interventions," which is really just an extra reading class. Mrs. Jones was trying to teach them about the prefixes "un" and "dis." For part of it, she was showing them words with "dis," and the students would raise their hands and try to come up with an example of how the word is used. They were doing a good job with most of the words, until they came to the word "disorder." Some of their responses made me giggle!

Girl: "I disordered my mother."

Teacher: "How did you do that?"

Girl: "She told me to do something, so that was an order. I didn't listen to her, so I disordered her!"

Boy: "The people at the restaurant disordered us."

Teacher: "Can you explain more?"

Boy: "We gave them our order. They messed it up. It was a disorder."

LOL, right?
Well, wish me luck on my lesson next week!

Math Lessons At Ash Elementary

Hi, everyone! Today was my first day of doing observations at Ash Elementary School .* I'm sure you're all dying to know how it went!
The class that I'm doing the observations for is a class on how to teach math, so I was mostly there to observe the math lessons. Its a second grade classroom. The somewhat annoying thing about my school is that, although I am majoring in special education and intend to teach special ed, I have barely ever been placed in a special education or with any type of special ed teacher. The closest I have come was being allowed to shadow a resource teacher for two hours one morning. So its a little difficult because, although I am going to be learning and practicing on how to teach a large group of typically developing second graders with a few children with special needs mixed in (and those few usually leave the classroom for reading and math) I will not get much experience in teaching children with special needs. But... oh well!
Great things I observed? The classroom is super organized, with children busy and happy at all moments. There is a lot of moving around the room and talking, instead of the quiet boredom I endured in most of my elementary school classes! The children also get a lot of choices throughout the day. For instance, during "work centers," the kids were able to raise their hands and say which work center they wanted to go to. The teacher kept track on a chart, so eventually throughout the week the kids would have had the chance to do each work center, but it would still be their choice. Different work stations included reading an oversized book with a partner and taking turns using a pointer to point at the words, coloring scarecrows for the bulletin board, playing educational games, using the computer, listening to a book on tape, etc.
Interesting things I observed? The classroom uses Everyday Mathematics, which is supposed to be based on real-life math situations. There is a lot of emphasis on learning math strategies to solve problems. But some of the strategies for solving problems seem more complicated than the problem itself!
For instance, lets say you have the problem 9 + 6. You're supposed to say to yourself, "9 is one less than 10. I know that 10 + 6 = 16, so and one less than 16 is 15, so 9 + 6 = 15."
Okay, maybe that one isn't so bad... but here's another one.
Lets say you have the problem, 4 + 6. You should say to yourself, "I've already memorized that 4+4 is 8, and 6 is 2 more than 4. 10 is 2 more than 8, so 4 + 6 must be 10!"
To me, it just seems like counting would be easier! I always had a horrible time learning math, but I think I would have had more trouble trying to remember all of the strategies, and working the problems out that way, than I would have just counting in my head!
Another thing I noticed, which I have also noticed while observing in other schools before, is that sometimes teachers don't quite know what to do with the behavioral issues of the children with special needs in the class. In the classes I've observed, this one included, there are always two or three children that have special needs, with behavioral issues that come along with them. This may be anything from a child with autism who keeps making random noises or  jumping out of his seat to get a closer look at the fascinating basket of colored paper clips on the teacher's desk (Those things are just begging to be lined up or sorted out!) to a child with ADHD who just keeps fidgetting or blurting things out during circle time, to a child with a developmental delay who just doesn't seem sure of what he's supposed to be doing and so just sits there. There seems to be a lot of training for teachers on how to teach children with various learning needs, plus a lot of the kids with special needs get help from special teachers or staff members during reading and math. But teachers don't seem to have many ideas on how to handle the different behaviors! In another class i observed, the teacher would just get so frustrated and angry with the children who had trouble going with the flow of the classroom. In the class I observed today, the teacher was a little less easily frustrated, but still wasn't sure how to manage certain kids. For instance, one little girl who clearly had special needs kept doing things such as talking out of turn and moving around when she wasn't supposed to. The kids get rewarded for good behavior with tokens, which they can turn in each month for prizes. So this little girl kept getting in trouble and having to give up a token. She lost three tokens in the three hours I was there! The thing that bothered me about this was that 1.) The little girl didn't seem to have much control over moving around and blurting out... she'd just forget, and bounce away. 2.) When she did lose a ticket, it didn't bother her at all... she cheerfully gave up the little piece of paper, so she wasn't really learning anything in the moment. 3.) By the time the students cash in their tickets, and the little girl finds she barely has any, she will long have forgotten those wiggly moments during story time!
Saddest thing I observed? There was one part of the day when the students had to quickly find a partner for an activity. That same little girl walked around asking everyone to be her partner, even grabbing people, but the other children ignored her. Finally the teacher had to assign her someone. :(
Funniest thing I observed? I always love overhearing the conversations of little kids when they think no adults are paying attention. So here are a couple I heard today. During snack time: "What if my mom poisoned my snack today? I might be about to eat a poisonous grape!" During work time; "I think I forgot to wear underwear today. Yep, I'm pretty sure I forgot." LOL!
Thats all I have for today! Feel free to comment if you have any thoughts on Everyday Math, behavior management, or anything else!

Yours truly,
Miss Angel Read.

*Names of all schools, teachers and students have been changed.