Week 5

This 5th week of student teaching was my first week being the full-time teacher in the classroom. I think it went well! There was one student who had some argumentative behaviors with me on Wednesday but he was fine the rest of the week. I had this big speech prepared for him on Thursday but I could tell he was in a much better mood and I realized that he really just had one bad day so I did not want to bring it up until it happens again. If it does happen again though, I will address it immediately because he needs to respect me the way he would any other full time teacher in the classroom. One other issue was a particular student who was not focusing during instructions. He would immediately raise his hand confused about what was going on and was talking a lot when I was giving directions. I had a talk with him about it and how he needs to listen for directions because he is taking away from his classmates work time when I have to repeat everything multiple times for him. Also, this is a newish behavior I've noticed so I am not sure what is causing it. He decided to make it his goal for next week to pay attention to directions and try to ask a neighbor before disrupting the class and asking me. I am really hopeful that these two students will have an awesome week this upcoming week.

Other than those two behavior problems, I thought that the week went smoothly. We had Monday off due to the snow so I did need to adjust a lot of my lessons and the schedule so that I could fit everything I needed to in and I ended up moving some things to next week. This was good practice for me in adjusting schedules and determining the important materials that need to be covered verses the things that can be put off. Speaking of determining importance, we worked on this a lot during literacy and will be throughout the month. I did a few fun activities with the students in which I read passages from trade books and they had to determine the important parts of what they read. I also brought in a "magic bag" which had about 6 or 7 items in it and the students had to decide which were most important to bring if I were going to the gym after work. For example, I would need the water bottle but not the nail polish. They also had to support their decisions by explaining why or why not it was important to bring. My students are writing research papers and this idea of determining the important things has been helpful in their research and deciding what they need to include in their papers.

In Math we have been continuing our work with fractions. The final standard dealing with fractions is being able to divide a unit fraction and a whole number. It has been going really well. My RtI students have been excelling with multiplying and dividing fractions and I can tell their attitudes about math are up this week based on their performance. I plan on testing them next week on multiplying and dividing fractions before moving onto decimals. In Social Studies we are doing a "Top Secret Mission" in which an agency has discovered time travel and the students have been put into research groups in which they must make a trailer on IMovie to convince the agency to time travel back to their colony. The students are really into it and I think they really enjoy using technology- it makes Social Studies less "boring" to them. In Science we are about to begin a unit on pulleys. I have never taught Science to them yet, so I am eager to see how it goes! The curriculum really spells out everything I need to do and the students love the investigations so I am excited.

The highlight of my week was when the students voted on their top three moments of 5th grade in room 127 to put into the year book and "Miss Bordenaro coming to our class" was one of the winning moments. I was so touched. I can't believe I have only 5 weeks left! I am half way done!

Schmidt Chapter 11

Chapter 11 of Schmidt is all about communication. Cross cultural communication is something that can potentially play a huge role in communicating with parents if they are from an unfamiliar culture than you. Even paraprofessionals or other coworkers that you work with may be of a different culture than you. Communication is an area that I feel teachers can always be improving in.

Thankfully, at Trinity I have had a lot of instruction on communication. We have had many discussions and role play opportunities for how to communicate best with those of other cultures than our own. What I have learned about this is that getting a good background knowledge and doing your research is key to cross cultural communication. Another experience I had at Trinity was being able to design a communication plan for communicating with parents and paraprofessionals. What I have learned concerning that is that being proactive is key. Always try to start off on a positive note and do so early on.

The reason that Schmidt talks about for communication being so important is that it is key to getting everyone on the same page and if everyone is on the same page, the child will be benefitted. It is also good to have a positive and comfortable relationship with those connections so that if any problems ever arise, you have already made contact and have built an open line for communication. One tip that I really enjoyed was offering visuals to parents for communication and having the visuals be brief and concise. Bullets, Summaries, Examples, etc.