Week 9 CES

This week I got to observe several kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms.  I saw a variety of behavior management strategies that I would like to try in my classroom.  During a first-grade reading group, I saw a teacher that used coins for good behavior.  I thought that the coins were a great idea because they are visual.  If  a student is off-task on misbehaving, the teacher takes one of the student's coins away and puts it back into her container.  The students trade in their coins for Gotchas.  They have to earn twenty coins to earn a Gotcha.  I also liked how some teachers placed numbers on their floor for the students to line up.  They called a few number at a time to reduce pushing and arguing to get in line.  Every student had an assigned spot.  I also got to see classrooms with special needs while I was observing.  A couple of classrooms had children with IEPs.  I saw that some of the students with IEPs had to be pulled out for testing.  Many of the students had to have the test read to them for their IEP.  Some students had aides that had to stay with throughout the day.  I saw how challenging teaching can be when there are many different needs in the classroom.

Week 8 CES

This week we learned about the long o sound spelled with -oa and -ow.  I was impressed with my students spelling test grades.  A majority of the class got all of the words correct on their pre-test.  During reading slideshow, the students had to listen to me say the sounds in the words and tell me if I needed to use the letters -oa or -ow.  I think that this activity helped the students because they had to practice listening to the sounds in the words.  A couple of weeks go, I taught them that -ay belongs at the end of a word when the long a sound is the last sound they hear.  I noticed that the students could tell me the rule but could not apply it on their tests.  I used this observation as evident that my change in spelling instruction made a difference.  I also thought of a new way to teach the students how to figure out what is ten less and ten more of a number.  I told them that I was going to pick a number, but I was also going to hide the number chart where they could not cheat.  It caught their attention when I told them that they were not going to be able to look at the chart.  First, I ask the students how many tens and ones a number consisted of.  Then, I explained ten more as having one more ten in the ten's place.  I also explain ten less as one less ten in the ten's place.  We checked all of our answers  on the number chart.  The math test results showed me that they had a better understanding of ten more and ten less without looking at a number chart.