Day 18: 2nd Observation

Wednesday February 15, 2012 Blog Post

Mary Lynn separated boys in the 4th grade class who were misbehaving and also took away their artwork. They didn't get to do art. I thought that was a good idea. It shows doing art is a reward and gives an incentive to behaving. A girl in the 5th grade class sucks her thumb and one of the girls who got a camera from her said, "Ewe" because she just touched it after sucking her thumb. I asked Mary Lynn about it and she said for awhile people didn't say anything because she had or has a rough childhood but that they are starting to now and was glad to hear that her peers are attempting to help her realize she shouldn't be sucking her thumb anymore.

I like the mentor program the 5th graders are getting to do with the SU students. They are working on birds eye view, worms eye, etc and exploring working with cameras. The students seem to enjoy it.

The observation for my kindergarten lesson went well. I wasn't as nervous as I was the first time, but still feel somewhat inexperienced working with that age group. I feel like I learned how to adapt the lesson by trial and error the first two times, so by the time the third day came around a lot of the kinks were already worked out. Changing the lesson to have particular categories of words really made a huge difference. I did my teacher generated example the night before because with not having the words have a direction it was hard to do one not knowing what the kids would be writing. This lesson began with a lesson Daniela did where she had 3rd graders illustrate a paper folded with ten boxes that said things like frog on a log, puppy dog, window with a view, road that never ends, your best friend, something you can't reach, a day at the beach. When I showed it to Mary Lynn she said it seemed kind of superficial and thought of the idea of having them write it. I think at first it seems a little more difficult because you have to guide it and get them thinking more which in the end is tapping more into their creative sides and getting them invested much more. I thought about what I wanted to draw and came up with the categories of fruit, veggies, favorite toy, favorite candy, and favorite animal. I also liked the idea of having them only be able to come up with four options and making them pick their favorite from one of four ideas given by their classmates. This made them long to be able to pick their own and participate. Every time someone said they didn't get to pick theirs I told them I promised them I'd call on them first for the next category. Although we were going to start writing the poem collaboratively in the beginning and didn't end up doing it, I think in a way we really did but with a more specific process. It also went better to just focus on writing the poem and have that be something they looked forward to completing and getting to line six. Overall I think it went well and was excited to see it come together.