Reflections on Recent Lessons

The third nine weeks has just begun, and already the technology lab at KCSMA is a whirlwind of activity.  Here is a short synopsis of what I have been doing with each grade level as well as my thoughts on the success of each lesson.

SIXTH GRADE:  This nine weeks I am teaching a first period 6th grade connections class.  This first period is only 6th grade, whereas my 6th grade connections have been mixed with different 5th grade groups on different days.  It was quite a challenge to get used to have the same 6th graders everyday with a changing group of 5th graders, and figuring a way to teach different lessons to 2 groups at the same time.  The tool I found to help was Edmodo.  The students love the familiar format, and I enjoy the secure learning environment where I can post links, assignments, polls, quizzes as well as (a recent plus) find educational game and learning apps for students to access.
In grad school last semester, I created an entire online class in Edmodo which the 6th graders are now working through.  This is the semester I get graded on my facilitation of this class.  My goal with this experience is that students come away with an understanding of how classes online work, as at some point before graduating from high school, these 6th graders will be required to take an online class. Their college experience will definitely be peppered with online learning.

FIFTH GRADE:  The 5th graders are also on Edmodo, and this week most of the classes have spent time reviewing the apps that I purchased with Edmodo credit and then voting on their favorite app.  One class completed the lesson which will be used this week; They listened to a 5 minute science podcast, took notes while listening, and then created a document with their thoughts on the podcast.  This document was then uploaded to the assignment in Edmodo.
*Reflection:  The students were able to choose the format of this reflection on the podcast, either a Word document or a picture drawn and captioned in Paint.  I would also like to include Glogster as a possibility for an assignment like this, if the bandwidth at school will support use of Glogster.

FOURTH GRADE:  Fourth graders are on round 2 of specials where they are working on a 7 slide "All About Me" Power Point presentation.  Week 1 began with a demonstration slideshow, an example from a 6th grader, as well as a planning document for each slide.  This week, students are adding pictures from the Internet that they have saved to their computer and then inserted into Powerpoint.  Some students emailed me photos or brought flash drives from home of personal photos to use.  All students are practicing editing text and formatting backgrounds.  Next round of specials, we will attempt to put the finishing touches on the slideshows, with animations and transitions.  It may take one more week of technology lab to finish up the slideshows.  I will give the students the option to share them with the class, or only share them with me.
*Reflection:  I can honestly say that at least 80% of the students are seemingly enjoying this task as well as doing a great job of learning the steps of creating a presentation.  I know this will come in handy for them in years to come with school projects.  I only wish I had an assistant to walk around the room and reach more students during their 45 minute class.

SECOND & THIRD GRADE:  Third graders will be moving on to learning the task of cutting and pasting, as the second graders have learned this week.  Second grade has been a doing a great job with this task, which is small but powerful throughout the years of typing book reports, research papers, etc.
*Reflection:  Some second graders have already been exposed to this skill, and some were learning it for the first time.  Most of them tried hard to accomplish the task, which was the level I was hoping to achieve with them.  It will be interesting to see what third graders do this week.

FIRST GRADE & KINDERGARTEN:  First grade and Kindergarten are both utilizing the ABC Magnet Game on ABCYA.COM.  Kindergarten is using the letters to spell their first and last names, with emphasis on capital letters beginning each word.  First grade is creating a sentence with the letters, with emphasis on capitalization skills, punctuation skills, and spacing skills as well as sentence creativity.  Also, during the demonstration with first grade, we are using the Cloze technique to identify what word could come next in the sentence based on the letter I select.

*Reflection:  The students are doing well with this short lesson.  I am enjoying their sentences, and especially liked the comment made by one student yesterday, asking if he could make a number sentence.  This tells me what his interests lean toward!  Another student created this image, which intrigued me to search into place value identification, so that we could determine exactly what this number was!  See below:

Why couldn't someone have shared these with me in 1997??

So as I was searching for various sites to plan lessons in technology, I stumbled across some classroom management sites that I deemed important and helpful.  I knew if I let them slip through, I would be wanting to refer to them again one day, to assist myself and refocus on classroom management as well as possibly help out a rookie one day.

As yes, I too was a rookie teacher way back in 1997, and wow, classroom management was just not something we talked a lot about in undergrad school.  Of course, I am not sure to what degree those talks would have helped me. It is definitely an art that must be mastered by doing.  As a beginning teacher, you feel like you can change the world just by being present, and that all in your room will focus on your voice and be entranced like the animals in Snow White when she sang (or in Shrek when Fionna sang).  I also only had one child at the time, a very quiet little 2 year old who, at the time, never gave me much grief.  My experience with children was limited to my babysitting experiences in high school and my brief stint as a student teacher, where I had Mrs. Carlos to maintain control.  (I did learn a lot from her about classroom management, that is for sure.)

Back to the links on classroom management.  Pass them on~
Have some awesome ideas???  PLEASE PLEASE comment and let us know!

• Five Essential Classroom Management Strategies
• Five Critical Classroom Management Domains
• A Classroom Management Wiki
• Classroom Management Entry in a forum
• 5,4,3,2,1- a blog entry from an ESOL teacher in South Korea

NOTE:  I have to add my idea from when I was teaching first grade.  Now this is in a school with daily conduct charts.  I tried various methods and none seemed to really work for me, until the "GOLDEN CLIP".  I wish I had a picture of it to share, so let me describe.  I created a chart out of foam board, library card pockets, and index cards.  Each student had a number, so the pockets were numbered.  Any visitor on any given day did not know who's pocket was who's, so therefore no embarrasment on the kids who were having an off day.  The cars were color coded, and the students all started on green, and moved down through the colors in the pocket.  I cannot remember the order, but I know I am not a big fan of red for failure, so the last color was definitely not red.  The students knew the consequences for a move-down of each color.  (Parent note home, parent phone call, etc.) 

The students could move UP in color throughout the day for good behavior.  If they were already on a top color they would earn the GOLDEN CLIP, a clothespin that I spray painted gold.  In my last year, I also had golden bejeweled clips, which were like super awesome terrific.  The rewards for these clips were big "I did it!" stickers at the end of the day, plus smaller scratch and sniff stickers, and also good notes home, good phone calls home, etc.  I had a treasure box, if I remember right, but attempted not to use that too often as that was the extrinsic reward the kids always jumped for.