In The End...

I really enjoyed my experiences in Mr. Johnson's class. Besides facing normal challenges that everyday teachers faced, I saw that it was a reality check for me. In this experience, my classroom management skills, knowledge, application, and teaching strategies were all put to the test. I take it as a learning experience and preparation for my student teaching in the upcoming semester. I am grateful for the students cooperation throughout my practicum, Mr. Johnson's patience in mentoring me, and encouraging me with meaningful advice. I must admit that I was really challenged this semester with the amount of work and meeting the expectations of my family, courses, life, and mentor. I am proud of my accomplishments in completing this practicum and semester in general. More importantly, I felt the rewards of teaching every time I step into Mr. Johnson's class as I am greeted with smiles and hugs from the students who have fallen in love with learning with me. Thank you to all the students of Mr. Johnson's class! Thank you Mr. Johnson for welcoming me and allowing me to grow and learn in your classroom.

Ms. Bobbi's 2nd visit

During Ms. Bobbi's second formal observation in my practicum experience in Mr. Johnson's 3rd Grade class, the students were comparing the U.S. Constitution and CNMI Constitution. In my attempt to challenge both my students and myself, I chose a high-leveled thinking activity for the students to engage in. I had them compare the the U.S. and CNMI Constitutions with wordy documents. Some of the students caught on, but I later realized that I might have used the wrong approach. After comparing the Constitutions, students looked through newspapers of how our personal freedoms are practiced in our daily lives. During my formative assessment, I found that my grouping strategy for the activity should have been approached differently as well. I could have possibly grouped students according to their knowledge and abilities. A couple of days later, Ms. Bobbi congratulated me on the great job that I did during her second visit. She also asked me what I think I could have done better, and I expressed my reflections about how I should have grouped the class. I continue to learn!

Tests

Throughout my practicum experience, I gave several tests. One of the tests was an assessment tool taken from the teacher's edition assessment book. I quickly recognized that some of the questions on the tests were not appropriate for my students. Because I practiced selective abandonment in the information students learned in lessons, I didn't feel that it was fair of me to test it. The majority of the students did fairly on that test. I realized from this experience that I need to pay close attention to what I assess and how I asses it. I also created a teacher-made test to assess student learning. I learned that creating this type of test requires lots of thought and consideration. I also had the opportunity of making modifications to assess my students with special needs. This was one of the meaningful experiences of my practicum because I felt responsible for creating a test that was reliable and valid.

Ms. Bobbi's first visit

Besides being pretty nervous for Ms. Bobbi's first visit, I was ready for my first real challenge of being formally observed. In this lesson, we continued with learning about how the government operates. As part of my diagnostic assessment of student knowledge, I asked some questions about safety and rules found in homes, school, and public. After a short discussion, I initiated a quick game I call "Unfair" where the students were at the mercy of the queen in terms of earning points. My students quickly caught on that the game was unfair, but they continued to play until I ended the game. After a quick debate about the fairness of the game, I explained that the government has it's way of keeping things fair. As an extension to their learning, students created a "government tree" made from a paper bag and construction paper. The students enjoyed this activity. They expressed how much they enjoyed learning interactively. I was satisfied with the results of this lesson. After Ms. Bobbi stepped out, I was surprised to learn from my students as they expressed how nervous they were too. I was glad to learn that I wasn't alone on that one.

Learning Center

To keep learning at a constant rate, I created a learning center for the students to learn more and apply their learning of minerals and rocks. The students were so excited to get started on the center. At one point, it even became an incentive for good behavior. They worked hard just to get a try at the center. I included several activities to engage students. The activities ranged from vocabulary games and puzzles, matching minerals and rocks according to their classifications, and accessing online resources via internet. Mr. Johnson liked the fact that he could use this throughout the day in his instruction.

Mr. Johnson's Observation 1

This was my very first formal observation with Mr. Johnson. He insisted that I have my first formal observation with him to prepare me for my upcoming formal observation with Ms. Bobbi. As nervous as I was, Mr. Johnson gave me some really good feedback that I could use as I prepared for my formal observation by Ms. Bobbi. In this lesson, I covered the science benchmark regarding the introduction to the solar system. Overall, the lesson went smoothly and the students enjoyed it. One of the activities that the students underwent was to create a mnemonic devices to recall the 8 planets in our solar system. They definitely created some silly sentences that they'll remember for a long time. Click here to see the lesson plan for my first formal observation with Mr. Johnson.

Week 3: Election

As a continuation lesson to learning about government, students were to choose a leader through an election. The students were extra excited about this project because it was super interactive. The students were responsible for choosing possible candidates, and conducting a preliminary election to narrow down the choices of candidates. In addition, students worked together to create speeches, campaigning for specific candidates, creating posters, ballots, and ballot boxes. It took a several days to do this activity, because the students were so into it. Looking back to the activity, one of my reflective comments about it was that I did pretty good delegating some jobs and grouping students according to their skills and abilities. For example, my strong writers were tasked to help the candidates compose speeches that they would read aloud to the class the day before election. Overall, both the students and I enjoyed this lesson as we were able to put concrete concepts into actual practices. This was also one of the few times I've seen my students so serious while working.

Week 3: Dr. Soil

After students learned about minerals and rocks, the next standard and benchmark to cover was soil. As I was doing my research about soil lessons online, I came across one that was called Dr. Soil. As as an introduction and hook to the lesson, I came in as Dr. Soil. I brought a pair of extra clothes for the day, and rubbed soil all over my clothes. I walked into the class filthy and the students were all curious as to what had happened to me. I got them hooked! I told the students that on my way to the classroom , I was stopped by a student that told me that there was some sick soil that needed help behind their classroom. I explained that I had to help find out what was wrong with the soil by checking for signs in the soil temperature and color. The looks on their faces was priceless. Unfortunately, I was not able to take any pictures of that particular day. Nonetheless, I was so thrilled to see how hooked the students were about soil. That was one of the most interesting introductions we've had in class.

Week 3: Intro to Laws

As easy as it may seem to follow the Teacher's Edition textbook, it is still pretty complicated. It still requires careful planning and a practice of selective abandonment, because the T.E. does give out lots of potential activities. But again, I had to keep in mind the best types of activities for my students in particular. This lesson introduced the importance of creating laws in a community. Students learned that different groups of people, such as the Iroqouis and Pilgrims, both created laws to keep their communities safe. At the end of this particular lesson, I announced that our class is in need of a class officer, and an election would have to take place to determine who will be the class officer in Mr. Johnson's class. I can't describe how excited they were about the news. Lets just say they were hyped up!

Week 2: Minerals & Rocks Exploration

In this lesson, students explored and compared minerals and rocks using the properties that they learned in the introductory lessons. In pairs, students were asked to compare the hardness of different types of minerals. We also looked at some rocks and compared them to one another. A graphic organizer was used to document the differences that they found in the various minerals that we explored. The main challenged I faced in this lesson was grouping. I initially had the students work in groups of four for this particular activity, but I changed that after I realized it was not the appropriate grouping method. Students were more productive as pairs. That was another lesson for me.

Week 2: Conflict Resolution

In this lesson, the class had a discussion about the importance of conflict resolution. Everyday, people are faced with challenges and sometimes disagreements. Today's lesson focuses on how to resolve our conflicts. The students learn different ways to resolve disagreements. As an activity, I had the students work in cooperative groups. I wanted to see how the students reacted to working in a group setting as I was still learning the personalities of the class. Although this was quite a chaotic way to see personalities, it helped me identify which students not to group together for certain tasks. I kept note of that.
For the activity, students came up with a conflict/disagreement scenario. The groups were also required to solve their own problems, identify the solution, and role play the whole scene. The outcome of the activity was fair. Some students had difficulty because they were embarrassed to present, but the majority of the students enjoyed role playing. It was fun watching the kids in action.

Week 2: Introduction, minerals, and rocks

In this first week of actual teaching, I begin with teaching minerals and rocks for science, and U.S. government/civics for social studies. I am realizing the difficulties that teachers are facing everyday in terms of having enough time to teach each subject. One 40 minute block is really not enough to have good instruction for neither science nor social studies. I ask Mr. Johnson about this problem and he says to me with a grin, "welcome to the real world of teaching." We come up with a plan to alternate days for teaching each subject as my master teacher notices that I have difficulty squeezing two subjects in 80 minutes.
The students are excited at this point that there are new teaching strategies being applied in their class. My classroom management skills are being put to the test as my students' excitement gets the best of them.
Mr. Johnson showed me how he uses some technology in teaching his lessons by showing video clips on brainpop. Brainpop is a website that provides cartoon clips of different topics, and Garapan Elementary School is a member of this site. As an introduction to the lesson on minerals and rocks, we watch a brainpop video. I will use this video clip as reference as we learn about minerals and rocks. In addition, I introduce the use of graphic organizers to the class to help us log our learning.

week 1

During this first week in Mr. Johnson's class, I spend most of my time observing student behavior and teaching strategies of the master teacher. I learn in this week that I will be teaching Social Studies and Science. I feel pretty anxious and nervous when Mr. Johnson mentions this to me, but I accept the challenge and start doing my research. At this point, Mr. Johnson asks me how familiar I am with using teacher's editions. I honestly reply that I don't really have much experience with working with teacher's edition textbooks. He suggests that I take this time to learn how to use it while integrating the strategies that I've learned at the School of Education. As i look through the teacher's edition, I realize how much I don't know about it. I'm learning that there are many component to this book, and I can see how some teachers can be dependent and limit themselves to this resource. This is not easy at all. Here we go!

At first....

When I was first told that I would be working with Mr. Johnson's class at Garapan Elementary School I was excited and nervous at the same time. Although this was my second time working with Mr. Johnson, this would be a whole other experience as the challenges became much harder. The expectations are higher this time, but I was confident that I would get the hang of it as I progressed. During this first week in Mr. Johnson's class, I spent most of time observing Mr. Johnson's teaching styles, and the different student personalities in the classroom.