Last Class Ever. . .

Eight weeks have gone by so fast. HOW? As I have said before, I have a love/hate relationship with summer classes. I love that we can do the assignments on our own time, we don't have to look socially acceptable, and really don't even have to leave the couch :) Okay.. I leave the couch, I promise. However, it is also a bad thing that we can do things at our own pace.. I am notorious for doing things last minute if I can. In my other summer class, I have papers due every Sunday night at midnight. I work Sunday's from 10-9pm... then I'd go home and write my papers. I think I just like the challenge.

Anyway, I have really enjoyed this class these past eight weeks. This is my second Hybrid course (both being with Dr. Steffes) and she has been great. Even though this is a summer class, I feel much more connected to the class than other summer classes I have taken. I enjoy blogging a lot and seeing others' blogs. It is much better than doing the D2L discussions because we can make it our own and get creative with them.

The blog posts we have done about book lists are my favorite. I cannot wait to go back and look at them when I get a classroom of my own. I am hesitant to start building my classroom library, just because I have no idea which grade I will be getting. I am not set on primary grades or upper elementary. I think there is good and bad about each grade, so I am still waiting to collect books.

Teaching language arts is so important when it comes to being an elementary teacher. Students are literally learning life skills they will use the rest of their lives -writing, language, communication skills, etc. I am grateful to have taken this course this summer and I really look forward to teaching language arts with my future students one day soon. :)

Books on Presidents!

Here I have researched various books about presidents that will help students gain insight on past presidents' experiences, challenges, early life, etc. was like for them. It is important for children to know about the presidents, as they are a key element of our nation's history. It is also important for children to understand why we have a president in office, and what it means to have a democratic society. Enjoy.

1. What Does the President Do? by Amanda Miller. This has current president, Barack Obama, on the cover page and is a very engaging/factual resource.

2. Scholastic: I Grew Up to Be President by Laurie Calkhoven. Personal favorite.

3. Lives of the Presidents by Kathleen Krull. This shows more of the maternal side, as well as random facts, of these presidents.

4. So You Want to Be President? by Judith St. George. This story helps kids understand more of the judicial system side of the presidency.

5. If You Please, President Lincoln! by Harriette Gillem Robinet. This story talks about the Emancipation Proclamation and slavery.

6. Franklin D. Roosevelt by Sue Vander Hook. This story is all about the life of President Roosevelt, the only president to be elected four times.

7. Brain Quest Presidents. I loved doing Brain Quest challenges in school. This little game/book will help students gain insight about the various presidents in a fun way.

8. Presidents FYI by Gary Drevitch. This book has random facts about different presidents that will surely spark a conversation in the classroom or lunch table.

9. Discovery Welcome to My World: Presidents of the USA by Parragon Inc. Many interesting facts!

10. Presidents' Day by Anne Rockwell. This book, I believe, is a picture book with different facts about presidents and Presidents' Day.

10 Books about Kindness

Teaching kindness in schools is not only encouraged, it is now part of the standards and mandatory for teachers. Here I have come up with a list of ten books that teach children kindness:

1. I See Kindness Everywhere by Shelley Frost.

2. Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler by Margery Cuyler

3. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

4. The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

5. How Kind! by Mary Murphy

6. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and David Messing

7. Rude Cakes by Rowboat Watkins

8. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

9. My Mouth is a Volcano! by Julia Cook

10. What does it mean to be kind? by Rana DiOrio

10 Books: Making Connections

The ability to make connections while reading is an important part of comprehension. Good readers are constantly making connections. The books that popped up when I searched included: 

1. The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant. This story relates the anticipation and joy that comes from relatives coming to visit.

2. Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber. This story helps students make connections to having their first sleepover/using a stuffed animal at night to sleep. 

3. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. This story helps students to put things into perspective when they, too, have a bad day. 

4. No, David! by David Shannon. This story follows David, who gets told no quite often for doing things he should not be doing. 

5. The Girl Who Hated Books by Manjusha Pawagi. This book would be great to connect with the students who do not enjoy reading. They just have to find the right book to be hooked. 

6. Earrings! by Judith Viorst. This author, again, is great at helping students make connections. This story is about a girl who desperately wants to wear earrings. Kids can connect to the idea of wanting something so badly and doing whatever they need to do in order to get it. 

7. I Hate English! by Ellen Levine. This book would be great for the students who are trying to learn a new language and are struggling. 

8. Ruby The Copycat by Peggy Rathmann. This story would be great for students who are copycats, or students who find themselves being copied by other students. These students will learn all about how awesome it is to be yourself. 

9. Waiting by Kevin Henkes. This book gives children a different perspective on waiting and being patient. Great for making those connections.

10. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes. This book is great for making the connections to the teachers and relationships to teachers in schools. 

Word Walls in my Classroom

I loved our discussion on all the different techniques and ideas that revolve around word walls. Naturally, I think we picture a wall in the classroom that is designated for words to help the students. But I think the possibilities are endless and it does not have to be limited to a designated wall. Personally, I think my "word wall" will be on a wall, and I am leaning towards a Scrabble themed classroom. If this is the case, I will definitely make the large-scale Scrabble board that students can play with and make words out of with bigger Scrabble tiles. I also want the students to be able to touch the words or recreate the words, and to make this happen, I want a large roll of butcher paper hung on the wall for the students to practice writing the word wall words <-- this could be a station or an activity to do if a student gets free time. It's exciting thinking about my own classroom. Time is definitely ticking away and we are getting closer by the minute.

Teaching Language Arts: Class 1

After the first night of EDUC 337 Teaching Language Arts, I felt like we reviewed a lot of important information that will definitely be useful to us throughout these eight weeks. First of all, it is really hard to get into the mindset that the words 'summer' and 'classes' can go together. Anyone else struggle with motivation on summer classes? I am trying my best! Dr. Steffes is awesome for those of you who have not had her yet. I am looking forward to this class, but maybe next week I will nap beforehand. :)

Since I usually attend the residential campus in Columbia, MO, I found that many of my classmates there took EDUC 337 in seat. Personally, I chose to take Environmental Science Lecture and Lab online during that time (yikes) in order to get it out of the way. I think this hybrid course will really be engaging and help us to learn how to teach language arts to our future students effectively.

As far as resources go, I feel like we are already well on our way to being prepared for the integrated unit plan. We now have the two websites (I made sure to bookmark them!), our thorough syllabus, PowerPoints, our textbook, and email communication for further help. Moreover, I am glad that there are ten students in this class, as it will help us to be more engaged, learn from each other on a greater level, and have more time to discuss our lesson plans as a class.

When it comes to teaching language arts, or really anything, it is critical for teachers to have a wide depth of knowledge about the subjects they are teaching. We cannot expect our students to reach the mastery level on the content if we, ourselves, have not mastered the content. The more time and effort teachers put into learning the material and teaching a variety of concepts to students, the more likely the students are to learn the material and master it. We have big shoes to fill, guys.

Thoughts about EDUC 338

How did eight weeks go by so fast?

This course was wonderful for me. It was my first time using Blackboard and having a hybrid class, first time using a microphone to communicate with my peers, and my first time making lesson plans with reading strategies. I am so glad that creating 10 lesson plans was on the agenda for this class because I feel that most of my learning came from figuring out how to effectively incorporate reading strategies into any content lesson.

Dr. Steffes is an awesome teacher. I was nervous about having technical difficulties and the teacher not being friendly or understanding, but Dr. Steffes is the total opposite. I love how laid back she is and how she does such a small portion of lecturing; most of our class time is spent discussing, which is great!

I love using reading strategies in lesson plans now because they truly help students learn the material and to be able to communicate their thoughts and ideas through these strategies.

I just finished my fieldwork in a second grade classroom and taught my lesson TODAY. I was so nervous that I forgot to eat today (which NEVER happens). Ha. I love food. Anyway, the lesson went really well and the students were on their best behavior. I was sad to leave them for the last time. We used exit slips as our reading strategy and the students were to choose a stage of a turkey's life cycle and write an exit slip about it. Then, they were to come up to the board and place their sticky note under the appropriate life cycle stage. It worked out well and I was so relieved.

One more day of finals and we are done, guys. I cannot wait to move back home and eat my parents' food for three months. I hope you all have a great summer! I am going to take EDUC 337 with Dr. Steffes this summer, so I may see some of you.

Mollie

Assessments, Assessments, Assessments

I enjoyed seeing everyone's lessons tonight. I am always curious to see how people think and create their own lessons from scratch. I think, even with a uniform format, we still find ways to be creative and show our thinking through our lesson plans. Sorry about the technical difficulties tonight with my lesson, guys. I had no idea how to put my lesson on Blackboard! Thanks for being patient. I really enjoyed the hero lesson and I think this is something that teaches students morals and how to be good people, which is a skill that will be used throughout their entire lives.  

There are three types of assessments that we learned about this evening: summative, formative, and authentic. 

Summative: 
These are typically given at the end of a unit or semester, depending on the lesson and age. Summative assessments are comprised of the whole with lots of different elements and parts. An example of this type of assessment is an exam.

Formative:
This type of assessment can be given each day, and it just involves the students doing something that shows what they know and how they are doing. Examples of formative assessments include exit slips and quick writes. 

Authentic:
MY FAVORITE. This type of assessment relates the information/material students learn to the real world. Authentic assessments are something that the students would really do in real life. Examples of this include: making a menu after a nutrition unit or explaining how you adapt to Missouri weather after learning about animals and their adaptations. 

As a teacher, it is important to have a good understanding of each of these assessments in order to make sure the students are on the right track. I feel that students take away much more from the lessons that are authentic because it is connected to real-world applications. 


I think an authentic assessment for a different lesson plan that I have is for students to go home and take an inventory of their fridge. I will challenge students to write at least 15 items down and then sort them into each food group like an inventory. The food group categories would be grains, meat and beans, fruit, vegetables, and dairy. This is authentic because people take inventories of the contents in their fridge before they go to the store and buy more items. 

Strategies to tap into higher-level thinking

Hello class,

Tonight's class was very interesting. I really enjoyed watching the lesson plan presentations. Even though each person does a different grade or subject, it really does tie into the fact that all of these reading strategies can be utilized effectively. It is so great to see what everyone is doing and how creative they are getting on their lesson plans in order to really reach the students. Speaking of creative. . .

I love how these recent strategies are tapping into students' creativity. I think creativity is something that does not go away as long as it is continually practiced and displayed in some way. Another way to reach student creativity is by having the higher-level thinking strategies, such as the RAFT and TPRC. Whereas RAFT is a writing strategy, TPRC is a reading strategy. Often, students are given a reading or writing task and they are immediately shutting down and annoyed. We, as teachers, should use strategies such as these in order to get students engaged again through creativity and higher-level thinking. If students create pieces of writing that are unique and personalized to them, then they will have increased motivation and make real-life connections when working on that assignment.

New Strategy: Semantic Mapping

So, tonight we learned about semantic mapping, and I LOVE this strategy. I am just a very visual person and I constantly find myself organizing and categorizing information after brainstorming or brain dumping about a random topic.

Semantic mapping is basically the teacher choosing a topic and placing it in the center of a piece of paper. Then, students contribute and add words that come to mind that relate to the topic at hand. Once everyone includes what they would like to include on the paper, then the teacher has the students pause to observe all of the words without speaking. After a minute or two, the teacher guides the students in organizing the words into different categories. This is a great way to organize information, both on paper and in our minds. This strategy would work well on a Smart Board because the teacher could type the text in multiple text boxes and then move the words into their own categories, similar to the way we did this during class tonight.

I think this strategy would work well for many age groups. I am observing second grade and I think they would do well with this strategy. In order for them to be successful, I would need to explain what we are doing and why we were doing it. As a student, it is so frustrating to me when teachers do not explain the purpose for doing something and everyone is just wondering what in the world is going on.

An example of incorporating this into a lesson plan is to review concepts and vocabulary as a second day lesson. Say the topic is life cycles. Life cycles could be the main topic and the students could take turns adding related words to the document. Students would probably include names of animals, processes such as life and death, and so on. Then, we could categorize the animals and the processes, as well as whatever else the students contribute. This is a great higher-level thinking strategy that helps students work on analyzing.

Strategies: DR-TA vs GMA

A Directed Reading Thinking Activity is a reading strategy in which the format of the reading is already constructed. Teachers just have to plan where to put in the required steps. (Ruddell p. 113) The steps are as follows:
1. Select the reading assignment.
2. Determine stop-points.
3. Prepare questions to be asked at the stop-points.
4. Obtain/prepare cover sheets for students.
5. Assessments.

This strategy could also be used to help students understand an assignment from the reading. This strategy is interesting because it involved the students stopping multiple times during reading and reviewing/discussing. Usually, teachers try to limit stop-points when it comes to reading a selection.

I could see myself doing the DR-TA as a pre reading, during reading, and post reading strategy during a guided reading lesson, say, in science. Before students read a short, nonfiction text, I could begin this process and prepare the DR-TA.

A GMA, also known as a Group Mapping Activity, is a great strategy to check for comprehension. An example of this could be to retell a story and explaining that you remember what you read through basic words, pictures, and symbols. It is called a map because it is literally a visual map that helps the students remember what they read and how they have made meaning from it. I like this a lot more than, say, writing a summarizing paragraph after reading something. Group Mapping Activities do not seem like busy work, and I think students could really show their creativity with this.

I could see myself doing the group mapping activity after reading any guided reading or read-aloud book. This is just a great visual for students to see and make those connections.

Creating My Lesson Plans

Anyone else struggling to make ample progress on their lesson plans? I observed for the first time in my field placement today and really enjoyed the second grade class and teacher. I feel like if you get time to talk one-on-one with your teacher, that time is pure gold. Luckily, I talked to my cooperating teacher the entire recess period about my goals in this placement and my apprehensiveness toward teaching the lesson in front of the CC supervisor. My teacher made me feel much better about it all and like I had her full support.

As far as the teaching of the lesson and creating the lesson plans, my teacher told me that she rotates between 4 weeks of Social Studies and 4 weeks of Science during the time that I observe her classroom. So, that being said, I think I will focus my lesson plans on social studies or science for second graders. I may do 5 of each. I did notice that she incorporated a lot of reading/writing activities into her economics lesson today. For example, she read a book aloud about a child with an eye patch and did a T chart about costs/benefits that the child experienced throughout the book. Then, the class related this back to economics with a fun worksheet activity.

Consolidating Understanding: The Connect Two Strategy

Connect Two is awesome. This is something that not only helps students after they have read, but also helps students before and during reading. 

This strategy is achieved by showing students vocabulary words that will be in the text and letting them associate the words with their own meanings. The students can predict what the text may be about, and what the words may be trying to tell when used altogether. So, during reading the students are already having these important vocab words in their heads, which is great. After reading the text, the students can choose a selection of the words (or all of them if there aren't that many) and summarize what that word means/how it was used in the text. This is great for consolidating understanding. 

How I would use it…

I think Connect Two would be a great strategy to use for many subjects, such as language, science, social studies, or reading. Really anything that students have to read, using the Connect Two strategy would help students. I think teachers could do this where the students write it out, or just think about the vocabulary terms and how they fit together. 

My Literacy Experience

It is kind of difficult to remember how I was taught to read. I remember doing short activities in daycare to help me learn about the letters. We would also get rewarded and praised for successfully singing the abc's.

In school, we did numerous activities:

Elementary school:
Alphabet charts each day
Letter worksheets
Tracing worksheets
Sight words
Read alouds
Short word books.. for example: See me run.
Learned some sign language with letters
Placed into guided reading groups
In upper elementary, a couple times a year we would take a reading assessment on the computers in the computer lab to get our reading lexiles. I really hated these and tried to be the first one finished.
I LOVED the Junie B Jones series.

Middle school:
Read alouds
Reading and typing class in 6th grade
7th and 8th: Language Arts class
Reading program: Reading Counts (Had to get so many points per quarter, or you had to sit out in PE)
I read the Series of Unfortunate Events books throughout middle school. I tried to take the reading test for Little Women (worth over 40 points!) and failed it three times. Turns out the movie isn't the same as the book.

High school:
Reading plays out loud -limited teacher read alouds
Language class each year of high school
Vocabulary words each week (We actually used the front loading activities that we went over last week)
Read the appropriate texts, such as Shakespeare and Harper Lee.
We didn't really have to read very much in high school, which is crazy. We just kept a log of the books we checked out each quarter and discussed each book with our teachers.

Each class I took throughout my public education, there was always required reading. Students who really start out struggling with reading and constantly lag each year really suffer as a result of this, because each class is truly dependent upon reading and comprehending the material (maybe except for math).

Mollie's Bio Poem

Mollie.
Creative, organized, kind, funny.
Daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and significant other.
Lover of dogs, sleep, and children.
Who feels excited for the future, slightly introverted, and happy.
Who fears her lesson being observed, losing Netflix, and losing someone close to me.
Who graduates next May, can clean like no one's business, and naps each day.
Who would like to get her pilot's license, become debt free, and travel the world.
Resident of Columbia, MO and originally from Belle, MO.
Wilson.

M is for Mollie.

Frontloading

Frontloading is an interesting activity to use with students when working with vocabulary. Frontloading is basically a mini-lesson that teachers can do at the beginning of a lesson in order to discuss vocabulary. We know that students who know less than 95% of what they are reading really struggle to comprehend it. This is what frontloading helps to do -comprehension through the focus of vocabulary. 

Without knowing it, I have done frontloading activities in my field experience courses before doing guided reading lessons. This also includes just seeing how much students know already in order to effectively teach the lesson. When I did this in the past, I did not use one of the models that we have studied in this class -I just used chart paper and the guided reading books. Students seem to learn a lot through discussion, too, so I also directed the vocabulary mini-lesson around small-group discussion. In order for students to learn, they have to be able to chat. 

My thoughts?

I really like frontloading activities. I think they are straight forward and are pretty clear. However, I do not think these models should be relied upon so heavily or implemented as busy work, but I think they do really help with vocabulary and increased comprehension. 

First class -EDUC 338

I was super nervous going into this class since it is a hybrid course. I have taken numerous online classes, but have never taken one that is live-streamed. Since there were conflicting times for this class next semester at the day campus, I thought I would have to postpone graduation. Thankfully, I found out that this course was being offered in March, and that I would have a classmate, Monica, who would also be enrolling in this course.

Class 3.16.16

Tonight's class was great. I feel like a lot of the groundwork was discussed and I am less confused about what this course will entail. I hope to learn a lot from this course -especially from my field experience placement where I will be teaching the reading lesson. I hope we, as a class, can discuss ideas and thoughts productively and learn a lot from each other. Thanks for reading.

College Education Experiences So Far..

Hello everyone! My name is Mollie Wilson and I am a full-time student at Columbia College. I am studying to be an elementary teacher and will be graduating in May of 2016. At the beginning of college, I was sure that I wanted to teach lower elementary. Now, it is becoming more and more clear that I want to work with upper elementary students, or even middle school. I want to become a Reading Specialist post-undergrad when I obtain my Master's degree.

So far, I have had many classes with field experience in college, each with their own unique experiences. Education courses I have taken with field experience include:

EDUC 100 Into to Education
EDUC 198 Field Experience I
EDUC 298 Field Experience II
EDUC 300 Techniques of Teaching
EDUC 311 Behavior Management
EDUC 331 Teaching of Reading
EDUC 380 Diagnostic and Corrective Reading

I still have to take EDUC 358 Teaching Math in Elementary Schools, which will allow me to teach a math lesson.

In my Behavior Management course, we had an interesting experience. Has anyone heard of TeachLive? For those of you who don't know, TeachLive is a virtual classroom where you can teach students by looking on a television and interacting with them firsthand. It was great to get that practice from inside our course classrooms, but it was definitely stressful anticipating the lessons we taught. Of course, since the course was about managing behaviors, my instructor made it to where the virtual students had pretty bad misbehaviors, and we were given the task of trying to control these behaviors while trying to teach our lesson. It was definitely a learning experience, and we get to use this TeachLive program again in my science course this semester, EDUC 352.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!