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.