EVERYTHING that I've missed blogging about =)

Well, first of all I have missed blogging for a few weeks. I am going to sum up the last couple of weeks in this one blog and then continue with the correct way of blogging on a regular basis =) Sorry to those following and to those I am following!

The last place I left off on was with Guided Reading. I really liked how prepared Dr. Poehner made us with Guided Reading. We went over the concept for a few days and then we actually got to perform our Guided Reading lessons. I really liked doing the Guided Reading lessons in class within our groups. It was fun to be able to watch our other peers perform their lessons and I thought it was especially helpful to do our own lessons. I liked performing the running record. This is something I am still a little nervous about doing in my own classroom though. I still am wondering how we will ever have time to assess our students this way all of the time. I think it is an excellent way to understand where a student is in their reading abilities and I think I will just have to get comfortable with a routine of running records. I also liked that we had to then reflect on our lessons. This made me evaulate how I did and what I would do different with my next Guided Reading. I think one of the most important things with Guided Reading will be to make sure that my centers for my other students will contain enough learning activities and will be beneficial to them.

The next thing we moved on to was the word games we performed. This was where we cut out letters of the alphabet and we formed words from using these letters and parts of other words. I really enjoyed this. I felt that this would be very successful in a classroom. I like that Dr. Poehner showed us that there are books for creating small words, medium words, and big words. This would be bneficial for all grade levels and abilities. I would definitely use this activity in my classroom.

Next we moved on to our fractured fairytales miniunit. This is my favorite thing we have done thus far. I think this would be an excellent unit for elementary students. They would absolutely love this! I really like that we began by reading fractured fairytales. Some students will not know what they are so I thought this was a great way to introduce the lesson. The next thing I loved and thought was an excellent idea was having us write our own fractured fairytales. This was fun and a great way to add ease into this crazy semester. Our fractured fairtale contained two princesses and ducks. The students in our classes will absolutely love this and could probably relate to it even more than we could. Students would love to dress up. I think I would already have dress up clothes in my room for the students to search through and then offer that if they have anything from home they would like to bring in they are more than welcome. I also LOVED comic life. I think this would be an excellent resource for a classroom. This could be used in so many different ways for students and they would love to take their final comic strips home to their parents. I liked the program a lot and thought it would be easy to use for students. The only thing I wish it had was pictures already installed in the program so we didn't have to look on the internet for everything. The last thing we did was perform our fractured fairytale. This was a fun activity to do and also a fun activity to watch. Students would love doing this. I also like that we video taped them. I would video tape them in my classroom and then show them on different events during the school year. This is something the students really would enjoy. I definitely plan on using this miniunit in my classroom.

Guided Reading

Well today we discussed Guided Reading. I was glad we did this because I was a little unsure on what we were going to do about the upcoming assignment. I am not really sure about how I feel about Guided Reading. I know I have witnessed it before but I don't know if it is the most effective way to teach reading. Firstly, I feel that to teach Guided Reading you have to be really organized. I don't know how you can teach all these different levels of reading to your students and have full control of your whole class at the same time. I am excited to witness guided reading being done in the classrooms in our future participation days. I think the hardest thing about teaching guided reading will be thinking of something creative and enriching for the other students to do while the teacher works with one of the guided reading groups. I am glad we are spending about two weeks on guided reading because I don't feel that I am that strong in it or very comfortable with it yet.

India

I really loved today's Language Arts Class. One of my favorite things is to learn about different countries and what their customs are. I have not done much traveling but I plan to do a lot in the future. I thought this was good to do in Language Arts because it shows us that we can make connections to other subjects in one subject. Most teachers would have taught this lesson in a social studies class however, I thought it worked well as a Language Arts Lesson. I liked that we first were to write a quickwrite about what we already knew about India. Then we brought our prior knowledge into a group discussion about what everyone at our tables knew about India. When we gathered all our information we made a concept map on a large post-it note paper. The center of of concept map was India and we included culture, religion, entertainment, food, and geography. We then shared with the whole class. I liked doing this because it showed what everyone else thought about India and then we found out what was true and what was not true. I enjoyed the movie clips at the end of class as well. I loved the movie "Slumdog Millionare" and I was recommend it to everyone.

Final Basal Critique

Well today our final basal critiques were due. I worked hard on this and felt that my final product was pretty good. Today we critiqued our critiques. I thought this was very helpful because no matter how many times I read my paper I always miss some mistakes. I was glad that someone else was able to edit my paper before I got to turn in it. When I got my paper back I was happy that the person that edited my paper did not catch many mistakes. The main thing I did wrong was capitalized all the letter B's in basal. I will be going back to my paper and fixing this before I turn it in. I did like editing other peoples papers but I thought it was a bit frustrating. Sometimes i get nervous and second guess myself to make sure I am making correct corrections on someone else's paper. I did enjoy using the highlighting tape and I have never seen this before. I think it is definitely good for a classroom because you can use this and write on them without writing on the students actual paper.

Basal Critique

Today in class we went over the Basal Critique. This was very beneficial because I was somewhat confused on what we were supposed to exactly write about. I started the assignment but I wasn't sure if I was going in the right direction. When I first looked at the Basal I was very overwhelmed because there is so much information. I was surprised at how scripted the Basal was and that it tells you exactly what to do! This could be both fortunate and unfortunate in a classroom. I think it could be bad because it doesn't always force a teacher to think and be creative with their lessons. We also went and reread our interviews. This was good because if we had mistakes they could be fixed. I would want the block students to be looking forward to doing this and not be reading mistakes from future teachers. Lastly we went over chapter 2. This was helpful because we relearned what the gradual release of responsibility is. This will be very helpful with teaching our students.

Writing

I really enjoyed class today. I enjoy writing so when I heard we would be writing a prompt I was excited. When we were first told that we were to write about anything I thought that the topic was a bit broad. I do like writing but I like writing to a prompt or something that has more of a focus. It is more difficult to pick any topic to write about. I chose to write about my vacation to Florida the week before we came back to school. I went to visit my friend Emily and it was my favorite part of my summer. Once I found a topic and began writing it was very easy for me. I love to do my work with music in the background so when the music came on my writing flowed even more easily. I always have my ipod on or music coming from my computer. I really enjoyed sharing our writing afterwards too. I feel that doing this brings us closer to the other students in our class and therefore we will feel a lot more comfortable when we have to do presentations or lessons. Writing like this in class is very beneficial and I am excited to be doing this more often.

Metaphors

Today I completed my cardboard cut-out that was supposed to represent who we are as a Language Arts teacher. For my metaphor I chose a weight or a dumbell. I chose this because Language Arts is one of my favorite subjects. I have always liked this subject ever since elementary school. I feel it is one of my stronger subjects and the dumbell represents strength. It can also represent training to the stronger so that I can one day be the best Language Arts teacher I can be. I am looking forward to learning new techniques and strengthening my Language Arts skills during this semester.