Practicum Reflections

Week 1 – October 22

What have you seen in language arts/reading instruction?

• Today, we didn’t really witness any reading or language arts instruction.  The students played a game called Sparkle.  The kids stand in a circle and one assigned person calls out the spelling words.  They go around the circle and each person says one letter of that word until it is spelled correctly.  The next student after the word is spelled has to sit down.  If a student misspells a word they also have to sit down.
• I read stories to a group of students so they could take AR tests on them.  These were students who had not taken and passed as many AR tests as required for that time of the year.

What have you taught in your internship?

• I took a group to the extra room and together we read a short story about planting a city garden.  Each child took a turn reading a page.  At the end we answered some questions as a group about the story.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

• The school seems a little behind on things.  A lot of things seem to be outdated.  Teachers upstairs have to use the student’s restroom.  The kids are very nice and welcoming.  Many of the girls want to sit with you or work with you.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

• None right now.

 

Week 2 – October 26 and 29

What have you seen in language arts/reading instruction?

• Again, we did not see any language arts or reading instruction this week.  However, this week Allison and I were each given two students to work with on reading fluency and Dolch words.  We were given a large notebook of 1-2 page long stories, Dolch word lists, and a spiral notebook to write our thoughts in.  Each child read a story four times with me timing it each time.  They then tried to see how quickly they could read the Dolch words.  In my notebook, I wrote down their times and what words were missed on each thing.

What have you taught in your internship?

• The only thing close to teaching this week was working on the fluency stories and the Dolch words list.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

• When working with the fluency and Dolch words, the students were very eager to try and beat their times on the previous reading of the story.  By the fourth time, they usually had their fastest time.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

• None

 

Week 3 – November 2 and 5

What have you seen in language arts/reading instruction?

• On Monday, the 2^nd, we administered the classroom spelling test.  This is the only thing closely related to reading that we did today.  On Thursday, the students did a spelling activity.  Mrs. Harmon put shaving cream on each student’s desk.  Then Allison and I called out their spelling words and they spelled them out by writing with their fingers in the shaving cream.
• While I was out of the room, I believe the students listened to a recording of part of Sarah, Plain and Tall.  They also answered some questions on the part they read.
• One day this week the students worked on some social studies reading activities.  They read a story about Native Americans and/or Thanksgiving.  Then they had to answer questions or complete an activity for each story.

What have you taught in your internship?

• On Thursday, I helped a boy write a Social Studies research paper.  He had collected some research information with his group earlier in the week, but had not yet written the paper.  It was very difficult for him to write the paper since his research notes were not very good.  I had to borrow another student’s paper so I could get more information to help him write his paper.
• I also worked with students on some reading fluency activities to see how fast they could read the story using expression and intonation.
• Allison and I gave a homophone test while Mrs. Harmon was out of the room.  We made up sentences for think, thank, their, and there.  The students had to determine which word applied for that sentence and write it down on their papers.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

• Mrs. Harmon does not do a lot of actual standing in front of the class instruction.  Many of the things the students do in the class are premade activities.  She’ll just hand them something and let them go at it.  Many times she expects them to know exactly what to do without any instruction and gets frustrated when the activity is not completed exactly how she would like it.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

• None

 

Week 4 – November 9, 12, and 13

What have you seen in language arts/reading instruction?

• I believe most days Allison and I missed out on what could have potentially been language arts and reading instruction because of our time out of the classroom working with our assigned children on fluency and Dolch words.
• On Monday, we gave practice spelling test.  They are focused on sight/Dolch words this week.  We had two students who made a hundred on their pretest and do not have to take the real test on Friday.

What have you taught in your internship?

• On Monday, I worked with my students for around an hour on reading fluency and Dolch words.  We had time to read through several stories today, and practice the Dolch words twice.
• Again on Thursday, I did the Dolch words and fluency stories with my students.
• On Friday, the students played Sparkle, and then took the spelling test, and Allison and I graded them.  The students had specials today, and we were out of the classroom a lot to do our Diagnostic Interview for math.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

• While our teacher has been doing math Allison and I noticed her doing a lot of the things that Dr. Lynch-Davis has taught us not to do.  For example, she has started using graph paper so the problems look neat on the page.  We have been taught that as long as the student is getting the problems correct, it shouldn’t matter if they take up half a page to do the problem.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

• Are the teachers not supposed to be in the classroom for the majority of the time, for supervision reasons, as well as to maximize instruction time?  Our teacher spends a lot of time “going to the office”, but not returning for thirty plus minutes.

 

Week 5 – November 16 and 19

What have you seen in language arts/reading instruction?

• On Monday, the 16^th, the students listened to another section of Sarah, Plain and Tall.  They then had pages in their reading workbook to do.  They had a page on diagramming sentences, a page where they changed singular words in a sentence to plural, and then they read a short story and answered the questions about it.
• On Thursday, they played a game called Heart Attack.  There was one sheet of paper for each row of students.  I called out a spelling word and the first person spelled it then quickly passed it down the row.  It person had to spell the word then pass it.  The first row to have the paper raised in the air after the last person wrote the word won a point.  The row with the most points at the end won the game.
• Also on Thursday, Mrs. Harmon went over the 9 weeks reading assessment with the students.  She read the story aloud and told the students important stuff to underline that could possibly help them answer the questions to follow.  Later in the day, they also read about rocks during their science lesson.

What have you taught in your internship?

• I worked with my students on the fluency and Dolch words.

Comment on any interesting things that you have noticed about your school, the teachers, the students, or the curriculum.

• Mrs. Harmon has a very strict schedule she follows throughout the day.  The class does the same subject as right about the same time every day.  Many times they are working on the exact same thing we saw the previous time we were there to intern.
• Another thing that really bothered me is that neither the office staff nor principal were very friendly towards us as interns.  I have been in schools before volunteering, subbing, and interning for a high school class.  Every other time I have been in the schools, the office staff was very welcoming and seemed excited for me to be there.  I wasn’t expecting a party or anything, but at least a nice “Good Morning” or “How did your day go?” would have been nice.

Post any questions that you have about teaching/learning.

• We have rarely seen any reading or writing instruction during our time interning.  Is there not still a required writing test for students in the fourth grade?