In What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, chapter five discusses the idea of prevention versus revenge in relation to teachers and disciplining their students. It was interesting to me because Whitaker went into psychological detail about the fight between students and the teacher. For example, he told a story about having a classroom full of 25 students. The first 24 students behaved however the last student was not behaving at all. However he knew that the minute he treated the 25th student in a less than professional manner, regardless of behavior, the other students will side with #25. Slowly the other students will shift their behavior into modeling #25’s behavior leading to a misbehaving classroom. Even though I have only been in my classroom for four full days, I have not noticed any behavior issues. I can however relate this scenario to my practicum classroom from last semester. Last semester’s class had a lot of behavior issues. As the semester grew on I could tell more and more students siding with the behavior of their peers more so than the teacher. Friends of friends would start sticking up for the student who was clearly in trouble. Over time it ended up becoming one huge MESSY classroom full of lack of respect and attitudes. It really made me see what I DON’T want to happen in my future classroom.
“Angry Students are problem, not a solution” I really liked this quote but I do not see it applying to the classroom I am in now. We rarely have behavior issues and if we do it is because a student is talking during circle time. If that happens, my mentor teacher gives him or her a warning and nine times out of ten they don’t do it again. However this quote reminded me of the many times I have seen teachers get satisfaction out of punishing students. It’s as if they wanted the student to become mad and angry. How is an angry student a solution? It’s not. Try getting an angry student back on task or following directions…it doesn’t seem to work to well. I think there is a fine line between disciplining with respect and disciplining/making a student angry.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
F.R.O.G.S
What Great Teachers Do Differently? pg 15-20
Although this chapter is one of the most basic chapters, I feel as though it is one of the most important chapters. Setting expectations in your classroom is key to establishing a cooperating and focused environment. When I say focused I do not mean all students are sitting up straight, on task 100% of the time, and silent for all 8 hours of the day. Focused in my mind means that students are engaged in learning and on the tasks at hand.
In the chapter there was a short story about how a middle school principle came on the loud speaker and told students to “ Stop Thumping”.(Thumping, apparently is when a students pulls their middle finger back and flicks it onto someone’s chest, causing pain.) I thought this was really funny because as I read it, I started to try and “ thump” since I had no idea what it was. Well the author continutes to write how right when the announcement came on students started “thumping” too. So was the announcement really effective?
In my practicum classroom as well as the whole entire school, there are a set of expectations that students are to follow. It goes with the acronym F.R.O.G.S. ( my school’s mascot are the tree frogs)
Follow Directions
Respect yourself and others
Observe personal space
Give it your best
S how responsibility
This is really neat because not only are they classroom rules, they are school-wide rules. Therefore every single child is on the same page in terms of what is expected. When a child moves up to a new grade the next year they already know what the class norms are. I see it as the school working together toward a common goal.
Although this chapter is one of the most basic chapters, I feel as though it is one of the most important chapters. Setting expectations in your classroom is key to establishing a cooperating and focused environment. When I say focused I do not mean all students are sitting up straight, on task 100% of the time, and silent for all 8 hours of the day. Focused in my mind means that students are engaged in learning and on the tasks at hand.
In the chapter there was a short story about how a middle school principle came on the loud speaker and told students to “ Stop Thumping”.(Thumping, apparently is when a students pulls their middle finger back and flicks it onto someone’s chest, causing pain.) I thought this was really funny because as I read it, I started to try and “ thump” since I had no idea what it was. Well the author continutes to write how right when the announcement came on students started “thumping” too. So was the announcement really effective?
In my practicum classroom as well as the whole entire school, there are a set of expectations that students are to follow. It goes with the acronym F.R.O.G.S. ( my school’s mascot are the tree frogs)
Follow Directions
Respect yourself and others
Observe personal space
Give it your best
S how responsibility
This is really neat because not only are they classroom rules, they are school-wide rules. Therefore every single child is on the same page in terms of what is expected. When a child moves up to a new grade the next year they already know what the class norms are. I see it as the school working together toward a common goal.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
7 minutes...*
Chapters: 9,10, and 13
I really liked how Ray emphasized “group share” time while establishing a writer’s workshop. I think it is very important to show students that what every single student in the classroom says is valuable. If a student took the time to write it down then obviously that statement means something in that student’s world. One person reading “ My dog’s name is Chuck” on a friends page may not mean anything but to the author who wrote that sentence, that sentence could be linked to so many emotions and feelings of joy and happiness. You just never know. When I incorporate writers workshop into my classroom, I would like to make sure students get the opportunity to share their work. I know that there will be days where we will be crunched for time and not everyone can share in front of the class however even if students can share their writing with a partner it would be beneficial. Sometimes students are too afraid to speak in front of the class and feel more comfortable sharing with a friend or classmate. By sharing the work done in writer’s workshop every student will be catered too.
In chapter 13, Ray says we as teachers need to be aware of pulling students together during writers workshop time. This is so true. Nothing is more annoying then when I am writing, sometimes on a winning role in my writing when a teacher stops the whole class to address the spelling of a word. I hate that! I was on a role, and you want me to stop while you pretend to be dumb and ask US how to spell a word in order for Jimmy over there to get “class help “on his spelling. THIS IS WRITING TIME…FORGET ABOUT THE SPELLING! A good writer’s workshop teacher knows and understands the importance of being focused. I once read a study where it took the average students 7 minutes to get fully back on task and focused after just a single interruption. Think about that for a minute..or 7 7 minutes is a long time.
After reading these past eight chapters that we have been assigned, I am overwhelmed on doing writer’s workshop in my future classroom. I REALLY want to do it however I want to make sure I do it correctly. I was not taught in this way, therefore I feel like I have no valuable experience. Hopefully I will be able to facilitate writer’s workshop in my practicum classroom this semester. I have yet to see the students do it however my teacher did say that writer’s workshop is done in the class.
I really liked how Ray emphasized “group share” time while establishing a writer’s workshop. I think it is very important to show students that what every single student in the classroom says is valuable. If a student took the time to write it down then obviously that statement means something in that student’s world. One person reading “ My dog’s name is Chuck” on a friends page may not mean anything but to the author who wrote that sentence, that sentence could be linked to so many emotions and feelings of joy and happiness. You just never know. When I incorporate writers workshop into my classroom, I would like to make sure students get the opportunity to share their work. I know that there will be days where we will be crunched for time and not everyone can share in front of the class however even if students can share their writing with a partner it would be beneficial. Sometimes students are too afraid to speak in front of the class and feel more comfortable sharing with a friend or classmate. By sharing the work done in writer’s workshop every student will be catered too.
In chapter 13, Ray says we as teachers need to be aware of pulling students together during writers workshop time. This is so true. Nothing is more annoying then when I am writing, sometimes on a winning role in my writing when a teacher stops the whole class to address the spelling of a word. I hate that! I was on a role, and you want me to stop while you pretend to be dumb and ask US how to spell a word in order for Jimmy over there to get “class help “on his spelling. THIS IS WRITING TIME…FORGET ABOUT THE SPELLING! A good writer’s workshop teacher knows and understands the importance of being focused. I once read a study where it took the average students 7 minutes to get fully back on task and focused after just a single interruption. Think about that for a minute..or 7 7 minutes is a long time.
After reading these past eight chapters that we have been assigned, I am overwhelmed on doing writer’s workshop in my future classroom. I REALLY want to do it however I want to make sure I do it correctly. I was not taught in this way, therefore I feel like I have no valuable experience. Hopefully I will be able to facilitate writer’s workshop in my practicum classroom this semester. I have yet to see the students do it however my teacher did say that writer’s workshop is done in the class.
Monday, January 24, 2011
What Great Teachers Do Differently? *
What Great Teachers Do Differently?
Chapters 1&2
These chapters were interesting to me because it wasn’t you standard “this is what you should do as a future teacher” type of book. It was more of a calling to all teachers to look inside themselves and really ask yourself “what or why are you doing this?”
For this assignment, we are supposed to relate what we read in these chapters to our observations in the field. Since I just met my teacher on Thursday, it is kind of hard to relate what I have learned so far about her to the intro pages of this book. However, a portion of this chapter talked about assertive discipline and if it was a solution or problem in the classroom. When looking at the Kindergarten classroom that I am placed in, the behavior situation is as follows: students all start out on the “green fish” , if they do well their clothespin gets moved up to the “orange fish”. If they then behave especially well then their fish gets moved up to the “blue fish.” However if the student misbehaves badly, their clothespin will go down to the “yellow” or “red fish”. Whenever my teacher moves clips up or down she makes an announcement to the class. Sometimes she will say “ Jill, James, and John are moving up…thank you for behaving nicely, or Jack and Julie are moving down for talking.” By brining the whole class’s attention to the situation can either be a good or bad thing in my opinion. Good because students are aware of the overall tone of the classroom however bad because now those students who are in trouble are feeling embarrassed. This doesn’t seem like a win-win to me. So should this be happening in the classroom? Would this be assertive discipline? I am not really sure. I haven’t been in the classroom or been around the students long enough to figure out if this is the BEST possible solution to discipline.
Chapters 1&2
These chapters were interesting to me because it wasn’t you standard “this is what you should do as a future teacher” type of book. It was more of a calling to all teachers to look inside themselves and really ask yourself “what or why are you doing this?”
For this assignment, we are supposed to relate what we read in these chapters to our observations in the field. Since I just met my teacher on Thursday, it is kind of hard to relate what I have learned so far about her to the intro pages of this book. However, a portion of this chapter talked about assertive discipline and if it was a solution or problem in the classroom. When looking at the Kindergarten classroom that I am placed in, the behavior situation is as follows: students all start out on the “green fish” , if they do well their clothespin gets moved up to the “orange fish”. If they then behave especially well then their fish gets moved up to the “blue fish.” However if the student misbehaves badly, their clothespin will go down to the “yellow” or “red fish”. Whenever my teacher moves clips up or down she makes an announcement to the class. Sometimes she will say “ Jill, James, and John are moving up…thank you for behaving nicely, or Jack and Julie are moving down for talking.” By brining the whole class’s attention to the situation can either be a good or bad thing in my opinion. Good because students are aware of the overall tone of the classroom however bad because now those students who are in trouble are feeling embarrassed. This doesn’t seem like a win-win to me. So should this be happening in the classroom? Would this be assertive discipline? I am not really sure. I haven’t been in the classroom or been around the students long enough to figure out if this is the BEST possible solution to discipline.
Passion Leads to Writing*
Before I start, the star on the titles means that this post is in repsonse to a class assignment! ( Thanks Margot for the idea!)
When I read the first five chapters of Katie Wood Ray’s book, I found myself going back and re-reading important sections. She crammed so much USEFUL content in each of her chapters. I found myself trying to remember everything before I even got to this blog. For example, Who knew that there was a difference between writing workshop and the writing process? . I have always heard those terms in and out of classrooms but I had never stopped to think about their actual definitions. It makes sense though. The writing process is having where students take a piece of writing and go through the necessary steps such as prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, and publication in order to complete a piece of writing, whereas the writing workshop is more of an open-ended exploration of writing itself. The way I like to think about it is through this analogy: The writing process is to traditional teaching as Writing Workshop is to Inquiry-Based Teaching. This is because in Writing Workshop students are able to take writing into their own hands by asking questions, researching answers, scrapping drafts, start over, publish, etc. Basically they students can write without pressure. It makes me wonder why we as teachers tell kids “ Okay you have 40 minutes to write, I want you to spend 10 minutes pre-writing, 20 minutes writing, and the last 10 minutes editing. DO NOT go on to the next step until I have given you the 10 minute ‘okay’ to move on.” That is not writing in the real world. Aren’t we supposed to do our students a favor and PREPARE them for the real world? What author do you know ( if you know any) sits down and puts time limits on their creative writing piece. Yes they may have deadlines but majority of the time a writer writes, takes breaks, scratches an idea, writes some more, goes on a walk for inspiration, leaves the work, and comes back to the work later. Ir we truly want our kids to be a writer then we need to treat them like one and give them the “as close to real-life” as possible writing atmosphere.
One of the ideas that Ray stated that I am in full agreement with was “One of the main goals teachers have is to help students find good reasons to write. These teachers feel that nothing else matters if students aren’t finding writing projects in which they can become deeply involved.” If a child is not interested in something, then how is he or she going to be passionate on writing about that topic? When I was in fourth grade, we had to write a report project on another county. I REALLY wanted to write my report on Spain because ever since I was four when my dad taught me how to count to 10 in Spanish, I loved Spanish and Spain. Well, I was ready to tell my teacher that my report was going to be on Spain however she then put a stipulation on our writing country of choice. It had to be a country where our ancestors were from. I was very sad. That night I must have asked my mom and dad a hundred times if they were absolutely sure no one from our family came from Spain. I even then started asking about other countries such as Mexico but to no avail, none of my ancestors came from there. The next day, I wanted to lie to my teacher and say my great great great grandmother came from Spain but I knew I just couldn’t lie. I decided I would settle on doing my writing report over Germany because it was close to Spain and I did actually have ancestors from there. However my teacher then told me that I couldn’t do my writing report on Germany because Jacob was doing his on Germany. UGH! So frustrating. We would both write about different things so what did it matter? I ended up having to do my report on Lebanon. Don’t get me wrong, Lebanon is a nice country… I guess.. but I wasn’t passionate about it. I ended up completing the writing report assignment however to this day I cannot tell you one single thing about Lebanon. The lack of passion led to an almost non-existent involvement in writing the report. Therefore when I have my classroom I want to make sure that I instill in my students the idea of being passionate about something; anything because it is that passion that will make them great writers.
When I read the first five chapters of Katie Wood Ray’s book, I found myself going back and re-reading important sections. She crammed so much USEFUL content in each of her chapters. I found myself trying to remember everything before I even got to this blog. For example, Who knew that there was a difference between writing workshop and the writing process? . I have always heard those terms in and out of classrooms but I had never stopped to think about their actual definitions. It makes sense though. The writing process is having where students take a piece of writing and go through the necessary steps such as prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, and publication in order to complete a piece of writing, whereas the writing workshop is more of an open-ended exploration of writing itself. The way I like to think about it is through this analogy: The writing process is to traditional teaching as Writing Workshop is to Inquiry-Based Teaching. This is because in Writing Workshop students are able to take writing into their own hands by asking questions, researching answers, scrapping drafts, start over, publish, etc. Basically they students can write without pressure. It makes me wonder why we as teachers tell kids “ Okay you have 40 minutes to write, I want you to spend 10 minutes pre-writing, 20 minutes writing, and the last 10 minutes editing. DO NOT go on to the next step until I have given you the 10 minute ‘okay’ to move on.” That is not writing in the real world. Aren’t we supposed to do our students a favor and PREPARE them for the real world? What author do you know ( if you know any) sits down and puts time limits on their creative writing piece. Yes they may have deadlines but majority of the time a writer writes, takes breaks, scratches an idea, writes some more, goes on a walk for inspiration, leaves the work, and comes back to the work later. Ir we truly want our kids to be a writer then we need to treat them like one and give them the “as close to real-life” as possible writing atmosphere.
One of the ideas that Ray stated that I am in full agreement with was “One of the main goals teachers have is to help students find good reasons to write. These teachers feel that nothing else matters if students aren’t finding writing projects in which they can become deeply involved.” If a child is not interested in something, then how is he or she going to be passionate on writing about that topic? When I was in fourth grade, we had to write a report project on another county. I REALLY wanted to write my report on Spain because ever since I was four when my dad taught me how to count to 10 in Spanish, I loved Spanish and Spain. Well, I was ready to tell my teacher that my report was going to be on Spain however she then put a stipulation on our writing country of choice. It had to be a country where our ancestors were from. I was very sad. That night I must have asked my mom and dad a hundred times if they were absolutely sure no one from our family came from Spain. I even then started asking about other countries such as Mexico but to no avail, none of my ancestors came from there. The next day, I wanted to lie to my teacher and say my great great great grandmother came from Spain but I knew I just couldn’t lie. I decided I would settle on doing my writing report over Germany because it was close to Spain and I did actually have ancestors from there. However my teacher then told me that I couldn’t do my writing report on Germany because Jacob was doing his on Germany. UGH! So frustrating. We would both write about different things so what did it matter? I ended up having to do my report on Lebanon. Don’t get me wrong, Lebanon is a nice country… I guess.. but I wasn’t passionate about it. I ended up completing the writing report assignment however to this day I cannot tell you one single thing about Lebanon. The lack of passion led to an almost non-existent involvement in writing the report. Therefore when I have my classroom I want to make sure that I instill in my students the idea of being passionate about something; anything because it is that passion that will make them great writers.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
First day of Kindergarten!
This blog is serving the sole purpose as my space to reflect on my learning experiences in and outside the classroom. I originally created this blog for the sole purpose of my LLED teacher because we were told we needed a space to submit our thoughts and homework. However now that I have had more time to reflect I have decided to make this blog as a space to reflect upon my learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
This semester, I am placed in a Kindergarten classroom at Chase Street Elemantary. I am very excited about this because if I could teach any grade it would be Kindergarten. Going from 3rd grade to K is a big change but so far I LOVE IT! Today was my first day being in the classroom. They children were so sweet and the mentor teacher is AWESOME! She is older but really knows her stuff! This is such a REFRESHING (that’s an understatement) from last semester! God truly had a plan and blessed me with my placement.
Today was exhausting to say the least. Wow those little ones have SO much energy. I felt really bad because after lunch my blood sugar dropped or something and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. You know when your eyes become so heavy that they just fall and there is practically nothing you can do about it? Well that happened to me. It only lasts about 20 minutes but ahhhhhhh! I felt SO BAD. The students were on the floor while my teacher Ms. Young read a story and I felt that exhaustion hit. I tried to hide it by putting my head closer to the table and letting my hair hang down but oh myy gosshhh I just couldn’t open my eyes for a long period of time. I tried standing up, drinking water, holding my eyes open but my eyelids felt like lead. Then a little girl said “Miss Hockenberry, you tired?” Ahhhhh I was caught! I feel so bad because I hope my teacher doesn’t think that I am lazy or whatever. I just need to build/re-build my stamina up for the classroom. Tomorrow is a new day and I am excited for it! I am headed to bed because clearly I need some much needed sleep!
This semester, I am placed in a Kindergarten classroom at Chase Street Elemantary. I am very excited about this because if I could teach any grade it would be Kindergarten. Going from 3rd grade to K is a big change but so far I LOVE IT! Today was my first day being in the classroom. They children were so sweet and the mentor teacher is AWESOME! She is older but really knows her stuff! This is such a REFRESHING (that’s an understatement) from last semester! God truly had a plan and blessed me with my placement.
Today was exhausting to say the least. Wow those little ones have SO much energy. I felt really bad because after lunch my blood sugar dropped or something and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. You know when your eyes become so heavy that they just fall and there is practically nothing you can do about it? Well that happened to me. It only lasts about 20 minutes but ahhhhhhh! I felt SO BAD. The students were on the floor while my teacher Ms. Young read a story and I felt that exhaustion hit. I tried to hide it by putting my head closer to the table and letting my hair hang down but oh myy gosshhh I just couldn’t open my eyes for a long period of time. I tried standing up, drinking water, holding my eyes open but my eyelids felt like lead. Then a little girl said “Miss Hockenberry, you tired?” Ahhhhh I was caught! I feel so bad because I hope my teacher doesn’t think that I am lazy or whatever. I just need to build/re-build my stamina up for the classroom. Tomorrow is a new day and I am excited for it! I am headed to bed because clearly I need some much needed sleep!
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