Assessment with Cheerios!

I babysit for a cute, little 2 year old girl during the week, which I will name Sara, and I usually am at her house by 7 in the morning and leave around 3 in the afternoon. My favorite part of the day with this child is when I first arrive to her house, and I get to go in her room and get her up once I hear her start to talk on the baby monitor. She usually has wild woman hair when she wakes up, and she is always ready to get up and get ready for the day. Our morning routine consists of getting her out of the crib, then a diaper change, and then it's time for breakfast. What's always on the menu for breakfast? A big bowl of Cheerios! I put Sara in her so called "big girl"chair aka her highchair and then I go into the pantry to get the Cheerios. Once I have the box of Cheerios in hand,its is time to do the Cheerio dance in which I shake the box of Cheerios while I dance around the kitchen. Sara has enjoyed this dance since the first day I made it up when I was trying to make her stop crying after her parents left her in my care and went to work. On that first day, I thought for a couple of minutes that it was going to take a while for this little girl to warm up to me. However, after I cleverly made up the Cheerio dance, she started to explode with laughter and we have been friends ever since. Now, this past Thursday when I was babysitting her, I had assessment on the brain because of our exam, and I decided to practice my ability to plan a short assessment that would definitely involve Cheerios. I knew from knowing Sara and how smart she was that she could already count to ten; however, I wanted to see if she could understand the relationship between the number name and the quantity of objects is stood for. I knew this may be to challenging for her,but I wanted to give it a try. I engaged her in the lesson by asking her to count to ten with me, which she did very easily. Next put one Cheerio on my spoon and asked her how many Cheerios did I have on my spoon. She responded by saying two. I asked her to count with me the number of Cheerios I had on my spoon. We both said one , and then she kept counting to ten. From this pre-assessment I determined that she had no concept of number quantities. To Sara, numbers were just words that were to be repeated in a pattern. I went back to trying to teach her how to count the number of Cheerios I had but this time I put three Cheerios on the spoon and asked her to watch me as I pointed to each Cheerio and counted to three. I modeled the same thing again for her by putting two Cheerios on my spoon this time, which I pointed to as I counted to two. I asked her if she wanted to try it, which she did and I put my spoon in my bowl and pulled out a spoon filled with four Cheerios. Both she and I counted together and I noticed that she stopped counting once she got to four. I tried another spoonful with her, this time with five cheerios as she again stopped counting after we pointed to the 5th Cheerio. I asked her if she waned to pick some Cheerios out of her bowl this time and try counting them. She regained interest in the lesson when I changed it so that now the Cheerios were coming out of her bowl. She stuck her spoon in the bowl and came out with three Cheerios. I asked her how many were on her spoon and amazingly she pointed to each one and said one,two,three and stopped! I praised her for saying the right answer and asked if she wanted to do it again which she did. This time she pulled out a big spoonful of nine Cheerios. I told her that she could count the Cheerios as she stuck each of them in her mouth. She started out and ended at nine and stopped counting! I was amazed at her ability to pick up this concept so quickly. We didn't do this very much longer as it was a beautiful day outside and it was time to put on her play clothes and go outside. However, once outside I found three flowers and showed them to Sara. I asked her if she could count how many flowers I had and she did it perfectly! I was surprised to see that she understood the concept hours after we had done the Cheerio assessment!
I know I'm a nerd, but it was fun!

Just a couple of thoughts:

I just wanted to blog about how just recently I really have been thinking a lot about assessment and the important role that the teacher plays in finding appropriate assessments to conduct with children in order to find out what their needs are. I guess I have heard that over and over again this past semester, however for some reason it really didn't hit me that the way to evaluate what kids needs are is to do an assessment. I know that may sound dumb that I really am thinking of it now, but it is so necessary for a teacher to be well informed about appropriate assessment methods to use with their students so that they can plan appropriate instruction to meet their students needs.
Another thought that I had was that assessment never stops, it is a continuous cycle in that once a teacher assesses a students in a particular skill, area of development, or disposition, the information that the teacher receives from that initial assessment lets the teacher know what areas the student needs further instruction in. After the teacher plans appropriate instruction for the student(s), then the teacher must plan another form of assessment to see if the students needs were met by the instruction the teacher provided them. Then the teacher must take the information she gathers from that assessment and formulate an effective plan of instruction to either help the student take the new found understanding that he received from the previous instruction and build upon it, or if the student did not do well on the assessment, then the teacher must modify their original plan of instruction so that the students needs are met. Then the teacher will reassess that student until he/she can attain the skills they need top pass the assessment.
Anyways, this is just a light bulb that went off in my head. I think that when I was originally thinking about planning assessments, I had the mentality that as a teacher, I would teach the students a skill and then assess their ability to complete it and then we would move on. Of course I knew that I would have to help any of my students who had trouble grasping the concept he first time I taught it, but I just feel like I connected the dots to a big puzzle and it really makes sense to me. I think that my original notion of using assessment was based on how in Field II we would go into the class and teach our Literacy, math, Social studies or Science lesson to the students, and then we would have a plan to assess their understanding of what we taught them at the end. However, since we were only with the students for one day during the week, we never got the opportunity to modify our instruction in order to suit the needs of kids who may have needed further instruction. I know that I will have the opportunity to do this when I am in clinical practice. Field II was such a great learning experience for me. I am glad that I finally made this connection , and hopefully I am not the only one who has ever had this A-ha moment. But anyways, I just wanted to blog about what I learned and how I connected everything together.

Goals I would like to set and reflection over this past semester

A I look back over this semester, I can definitely see how my confidence in my ability to teach has grown. I believe that one of the goals I will continue to strive for is to continue to make good assessments of what children's needs are , and create lessons that will most efficiently meet their needs. I also would like to continue to learn how to create engaging lessons by expanding my knowledge of how to use technology within the classroom. This semester I was able to use the SMART board, and I really enjoyed using it. I only hope to become more familiar with the technology that is availability for me to use in my classroom. I really enjoyed this semester and I am looking forward to Field III!

Last Day in Field II

I totally forgot to blog last week about my last day in Field II! I guess I was so overwhelmed by the goodbye party and the thanks that we received from the students and teacher, that it totally slipped my mind! Anyways, last Wednesday was our last day at Drayton Hall. Mrs. Martin and the students had planned a goodbye party for Tiffany and I, which was absolutely amazing! I had no idea how much of an impact we had made on the class and the impact that they had mad eon us until we left that day. I really learned a lot in this Field experience, and I am much more confident now in my ability to assess and create lesson plans that will meet the individual needs of each child.
Our going away party consisted of Mrs. Martin and the students surprising us with a cake and gifts! I was so honored to be a part of their class this semester. Tiffany and I also had a few small gifts for the students and a gift certificate for Mrs. Martin that I am sure they enjoyed! This class has trully been a great experience for me.

Teaching my lesson on Earth Day

This past Wednesday I taught my 4th lesson on Earth Day. Earth Day will be celebrated next Thursday, April 22. In my lesson I chose to read Dr. Seuss' book "The Lorax."This was a great book to use because it focused on what can happen to the environment if it is not taken care of. The class seemed to really be into the book and the lesson as a whole. I believe that this was the best lesson that I did in which I basically had the whole class engaged the whole time. I was so excited to see how interested the class was in, in learning about why we celebrated Earth Day, and what we could do to help celebrate it. In order to asses the students' knowledge on what I had just finished teaching them, I had them write in their journals about the things that the Earth provides us that they are most thankful for and why did they think these thinks were so important to them? I had the class share their journal entries if they wanted to. The ideas they wrote down were wonderful! I could tell that they really thought hard about what to write down. At the end, I had them make a class book that was filled with their ideas on how to they could celebrate Earth Day on Thursday. One little boy really impressed me when he said that he had noticed that there was a lot of trash around the Bi-Lo grocery store where he lived. He said that on Earth Day he was going to ask his parents to take him there so he could clean it up! When the book was finished I stapled the cover that I had made to the front of their "idea" pages, and I gave it to Mrs. Marti to keep. They loved the fact that they had made their very own class book!
This was definitely one of my favorite lessons that I taught. I believe that over the semester I have become more and more comfortable with writing lesson plans and teaching them. I really really enjoy being in the classroom , and I can't wait to be a teacher!!

Stop and Think Chapter 4:

What are your earliest memories about how your family and your teachers related? Did anyone in your family visit school? Who? Why? What was that like for you?

I can remember when I visited my third grade teacher a week before I started back to school. My family and I had just moved back to Charleston, and I was excited to start back to school because I would be going to the same school as my cousin. A week before school was to start my mom asked me if I would like to drop by the school to see if we could see the classroom that I was going to be in. I was very excited and a little nervous as well. When we arrived at Mason Prep, I remember going into the office with my mom and meeting a very nice secretary. She told us that we were more than welcome to go look at the classroom that I would be in. As we walked down the hall and neared my classroom doorway, I noticed that my teacher had put up pictures of me and my classmates on the wall. I was amazed to see that she already had a picture of me before we had even had the chance to meet!! My mom said that my teacher had phoned her to introduce herself and also to ask my mom to send in a picture of me. It was comforting to know that my teacher was expecting me.
When my mom and I entered the classroom, it was as if my teacher was expecting us ( looking back, I think my mom and my teacher had prearranged the meeting). My teacher greeted us with a nice smile, and she knew my name when she saw me! She showed us around the classroom and told us a little bit about herself and that she had a lot of wonderful things planned for the year ahead. I left the school excited about my first day of third grade. It was nice to know that my teacher already knew who I was, and that she was excited about having me in her class.
I think that it is very beneficial for teachers to meet the students that will be in their class and their parents before the year begins. This meeting help to comfort the child and their parents by helping them to know what to expect from their teacher.

Assessing my case study

In my assessment project, I focused on handwriting and word spacing in writing sentences. I found that my case study child struggles to space words when he is writing sentences. I believe this may be partially due to the fact that he holds his pencil incorrectly when he writes. I worked with him a little bit to help him correct this problem, but I mainly focused on assessing his sentence structure when he writes. Ms. Martin, his teacher, has told me that it is so important that he develops his handwriting skills further before he reaches second grade. I have personally noticed improvement in his writing from the work I have seen him do over the semester. I think with more individual instruction with this child may be beneficial for him.