Week Fourteen

This will be a shorter blog post because of a short school week.  Today was our only day of school.  Four out of our twenty students were absent.  The remaining sixteen students were pretty wound up.  The only academic things that transpired today were the regular math class, plus a lot of catching up on incomplete assignments.  There was no new instruction.  Students had both P.E. and art in the morning, and then an assembly and an hour of fun activities in the afternoon.

Sometimes it is easy to forget how young these students are.  But there are some things that are always good reminders of their age.  One of thing that always reminds me of their youngness is their complete inability to comprehend time when they are excited about something.  Like last week when we did the activity in which they made landforms out of homemade dough, even though I told them numerous times we would do the activity after lunch, they asked me a million times that morning if it was time to do the dough project yet.  Today, one student asked several times if Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  He had to be reminded each time that Thanksgiving is on Thursday.  He was just excited and wanted Thanksgiving to be sooner!

Math can be disheartening sometimes.  I feel like it is often two steps forward, one step back.  Today felt like a step back.  I teach a small group according to a scripted math intervention program.  The plan for today was for the students to play a game in which they had to roll a die and decide if they wanted that number to represent ones or tens.  For example if they rolled a two, their number could be two or twenty depending on that student’s decision.  There was an incredible amount of confusion during this game.  This is probably due in part to me not explaining it well.  I did follow the script, but something did not come across in my directions/modeling.  Also, even though we have been practicing using a hundred chart to add ones and tens to a number, it seems that today none of them could remember how to add tens.  It’s like the previous three lessons never occurred.  It is remarkable how much they can forget over the course of the weekend.  It makes me think about how much they will forget over the summer. 

I think on Mondays it would be wise for me to always make a conscious effort to explicitly ask students to recall what took place on Friday.  This would allow me to demonstrate Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 1I, which states, “The competent teacher stimulates prior knowledge and links new ideas to already familiar ideas and experiences.”  My goal for the next two Mondays is to do this.

I cannot believe I only have nine days left at my student teaching placement.  I am really going to miss these kids.  I submitted an application to sub in this district today, so hopefully I will see their sweet little faces again and continue to facilitate their learning.  This Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for my experiences at this school.