Using Tech

inspiring with art

I have to share an experience teaching art. I'm the art docent for my main placement class; on Friday, I taught a lesson on Keith Haring, who is well known for the subway art he created in New York. If you want a great subject to do an art lesson on, look into Keith Haring. I read portions of a picture book to give the students some background on the artist, and for the entire time, everyone paid attention. For the actual project, I took a sheet of 8 x 11 black construction paper, taped it to a piece of 11 x 18 construction paper (to protect the walls) then taped the paper to the hallway walls - some up really high, some low. The students pretended we were in a subway station and their assignment was to create a work of art using chalk that would tell a story. Later, students would guess the stories behind their classmates' artwork, then share their own. I was surprised at how enthusiastic everyone was, and it was great that so many of them came up to me afterwards to tell me how much fun it was.

Classroom management advice

I went back and visited my main placement on Friday and walked into a big surprise! The well behaved class I had left in September had definitely undergone some transformations. My master teacher warned me that this would happen as they got more comfortable, but I didn’t realize how serious she was! They were still the very sweet students that I left of course, but obtaining their attention was extremely difficult and keeping it…. Not possible! I know part of it was simply their excitement in seeing me since it’s been over a month. However, I feel like I need to go back in January with a game plan! I really don’t want to use punishment in my classroom management but the only idea that I can imagine working is card pulling. So, I was hoping that someone might be able to give me some feedback for some positive discipline I could use to ensure that I have control of the class but also to ensure that my students keep their integrity. I really dislike going into classrooms and seeing the same kids cards pulled all of the time. What can I do to keep those kids motivated to behave?

Music for Math?

Just wondering whether anyone in our cohort has seen music being used to teach other subjects in the classroom--like mathematics. Here's a site with music resources for teaching math.

I've heard of teachers doing this, even in middle school, but I've not seen it done anywhere. I figure I'll be brushing up on playing my guitar soon for use in a math class!

Take a look at the Quadratic Rap

I Blogged

Well I just did my first official reply to a public blog. It's at http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=31#comment-134490. It was fun and hopefully that is the right link. I wanted to past the link in here but couldn't figure out how to in the limited time I have here at the library. It was an interesting post about reading and math taking over and everything else being left behind. I would recommend the read to anyone. I hope some teachers read my post and give me some real feedback! By real I mean something I can sink my teeth into. Take care. ~Catflips

Roswell: Not Just Aliens!

Cool video created by kids!

Environmental Adventure School

For my Dyad, I am working with 6th to 9th graders at the Environmental Adventure School. This is a choice school in the Lake Washington School District. There are several different choice schools in this district and this one was started eleven years ago. The ideals that EAS is founded on are: integrated units of study, environmental stewardship, community building, and social constructivist, multi-age learning. The units of study are rotated on a six week basis, with service projects performed in between rotations. In the image above, one of the EAS students can be seen planting trees at the ground breaking ceremony for Brightwater's environmental center. Some of the other community service projects included teaching third graders about the environment, building bird feeders to be placed in the open spaces near the school and feeding the homeless in Seattle.

In addition to the community service projects, the EAS students also go on a community building camping trip at the beginning of the year and an environmental education trip in March. What an interesting way to revolutionize the usual classroom routine. As my master teacher says, they are given a lot of latitude in how they teach and organize their school because they continue to get very good WASL scores. It also probably does not hurt that the LWSD superintendent's daughters go to the school. It always helps to have a connection, but in my mind the school's concept seems to really be effective and the teachers' at EAS have earned their freedom to teach outside the usual boundaries.

I'm reading The Daily Five, Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades, by Boushey and Moser.  I am fascinated with their ideas on literacy.  They believe that children must practice reading a choice book for a significant period of time every day.  The way their classroom community is set up, this practice actually occurs and students learn to independently manage their own literacy.  They write of the "happy, busy hum" of children learning and working and I find myself wondering if this could really be achieved?  It sounds almost too good to be true, but I would like to believe it is.  I'm about halfway through the book, has anyone seen the daily five in action?  I remember most of my choice reading was done after school or on weekends and the same was true for my children.  But what about those students who don't read at home?  What a novel idea, practicing reading! 

a student needs help, but there's no one to help her

Any advice on how to support a student who has an IEP but is not receiving the support she desperately needs? I know of one situation where a third grade child is supposed to be receiving up to two hours of help per day. However, it is not uncommon for three to four days to go by before she gets pulled and receives the help she is entitled to. The school has a new special ed teacher who is overwhelmed by her student population. Apparently, the classroom teacher, principal and special ed teacher are trying to work something out; yet in the meantime, this student sits in a classroom, unable to truly participate in the day to day activities. Every subject presents a challenge for her. She needs someone to scribe for her and read to her.

As we get closer to having classrooms of our own, I wonder what to do in a situation like this. If a teacher isn't fortunate enough to have an IA, student teacher or parent to help out, how can the teacher help this child?

Learning about ourselves

It seems that we are never too old to learn more about ourselves. For me, yet another learning opportunity occurred this last month while we were hosting a German exchange student. Our student, named Katha, was here with 30 of her classmates. There was lots of socializing going on with the large group of exchange students, so many times I found myself meeting one or two new students that I had not met yet and then struggling to pronounce yet another unfamiliar name. Most of these names were not that hard, but I found I was having a very hard time remembering whether Lenos was pronounced with the long e sound or the long a sound. After butchering another German name for the umpteenth time, I realized that it was not due to lack of me trying, I was just having a very hard time distinguishing sounds in the uncommon (to me) names. This revelation caused me to think about why these sounds were so hard for me. I remembered that I had to take four years of speech therapy when I was in elementary school because I couldn't easily distinguish, and therefore say, the differences between sh, sw, sl, sp, ch, th amongst many, many other phonemic sounds. I also remembered how difficult learning Spanish was for me in high school. I mastered the written language okay, but I really struggled with the oral skills. Putting all this evidence together, I realize that I lack good phonemic skills. With lots of speech therapy, and learning coping techniques, I don't think that my language challenges are real noticeable as an adult, but when I have to learn new words such as the German names, my challenges become very apparent. It's funny, if I hadn't been learning about beginning literacy skills, I don't think I ever would have put all these ideas of needing speech therapy, sucking at Spanish, and mispronouncing new names all together.

Dear Future teachers of writing,
I had an aha moment with my teenager last week that I thought you could all relate too. I shared my rough draft for my literary vignette with him, which he was happy to read. When he finished he said that I needed to work on my transitions, that what I had divided into 6 paragraphs was actually only two, that I had some convention "issues" and finally that I wrote with a powerful voice.
First, I was blown away with his language--I had a "powerful" voice. Wow, was I impressed, but also disturbed that he started with the "problems" with my writing. "But what about my story? Did you like it", I asked. "Oh, it was great", he said. It really brought home to me again that we need to validate all our student writers for their ideas and know that the conventions will come!