Total Participation Techniques
TPT's are techniques that teachers use to have all students participating in a lesson or activity.
A list of my favorite techniques:
-Think-Pair-Share
- Hold-ups (true/false)
-Mouth it, Air-write it, Write in on the floor or person in front of them
-White boards
-Quick draw/Quick write
Management
EDEL/EDRD 350
Literacy
Back to 300
Emergency Procedures
Lesson Planning
6 Modes of Language Arts
Learning to Read vs. Reading to Learn
Pillars of Reading
Backward Design
ALICE
Alert, Lock down, Inform, Counter, Evacuate
There was a book read in class called I'm Not Scared, I'm Prepared! by: Julia Cook
This is a book that can be read in addition to other instruction about the ALICE emergency procedure.
CRASE
Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events
A training course can be taken to teach how to respond if an active shooter events were to happen. It is good for everywhere and not just in a school.
A planning framework that helps teacher instruction be designed to focus on the long term goals and understandings the teacher wants their students to have.
3 Stages of Backward Design
- Identify the desired results
- Determine how you want the results to look
- Start planning instruction and the learning experiences
Windows, Sliding Glass Doors, and Mirrors
Receptive (taking it in):
Listening, Reading, Viewing
Productive (Composing):
Talking, Writing, Visually Representing
Windows: A book that offers a view of the world that is either familiar or strange
Sliding Glass Doors: Being able to imagine yourself in a part of the story
Mirrors: Seeing your own life be reflected in a book
Learning to Read
-Takes place during literacy time
-Mainly focused in younger students,
but should continue up until high school
-Students in older grades know how to read, but they will need guidance in reading informational texts.
Reading to Learn
-Takes place in all content areas
-Begins around 4th grade, but sometimes earlier
Phonemic Awareness & Phonics
-Listeners are able to identify, hear, and manipulate the smallest unit of sounds (Phonemes)
-Phonics are the relationship between written letters and the sounds those letters make
Comprehension
Fluency
Vocabulary
South View
Miss. Spearman's 4th Grade Class
29 students
Open concept school with no classroom doors
Students have tier time and success time when I am in the classroom
Tier time is a time for students to work on literacy assignments that are made just for them. Their work comes from Study Island, an online program, they first take a test and then the teacher can create assignments based on the results. While the students are working individually, Miss Spearman will work with a smaller group of students.
At South View, success time is for the whole school. In 4th grade every student switches classrooms and has a different teacher for 30 minutes. On Monday's students take a pretest to determine which teacher they go to. The next 3 days are spent learning the math topic. On Friday they have a short quiz to show what they have learned.
Objective Writing
Definition: a description of what I want learners to be able to show before I consider them competent. The results not the process.
Before writing, remember these few things:
- Determine what I want the learner to accomplish
- Keep it simple, but with enough details that someone else could understand and do it.
- Use verbs like: To write, to recite, to identify, to sort, to construct, to compare, to contrast etc.
Authentic Assessment:
Students are performing and creating work that showcases the knowledge and benefits they have gained throughout a lesson
Loss of a student or family member
Miss. Spearman's class is very well behaved and not like a lot of other classes at South View. (According to one of the aides that comes into her room during the afternoon)
That same aide described Miss Spearman as more of a leader instead of a teacher. She does manage her classroom extremely well and there have not been any behavior issues at all since we have been at the school.
Online Resources
StudyIsland.com
Students begin by taking a diagnostic test to find their level. The teacher can then assign assignments and activities to practice the concepts the students need more work on.
myOn.com
Somehow students are able to pick from a long list of books they can read or have read to them while they follow along.
Storylineonline.net
Books read by celebrities on video and students are able to listen and look at the pictures while being read to.
Teaching Moments
Icebreaker
Description: Students are asked this or that questions and they pick 1 side of the room to go to based on what they chose. One student from each side debate why one is better than the other, hoping to maybe change their classmates answer.
Reflection: The students loved participating and so did the teachers! The questions that were asked were perfect for the students. The only problem was that the students would talk in between each one which made it hard to get their attention, but Miss Spearman gave us some things we could do to get the talking to a minimum.
Fiction vs. Nonfiction
Similarities:
-Has facts and information
-Employs imagination
-Provides pleasure
Nonfiction:
-Writing about reality where nothing is made up
-Most times we focus on the story elements
Websites for reading:
-Kids Discover
-Read words
-Time for kids
-Newsela
-myOn
Fiction
-Writing Where anything can be made up
-Provides factual information and use text structures and features (Captions, headings, bolded words, etc.)
Behavior Management Techniques
Cards:
- From Miss Spearman
Each student has their behavior cards (about 5ish) on their desk inside a little pocket. On the pocket students can keep their users and passwords for the technology sources they use in the classroom. When students are asked to pull a card they put it in a pencil box on the teachers desk.
They are not used often, her students do not have a lot of behavioral problems. Sometimes when their is a problem pulling a card is not enough, a administrator will get involved.
Sticks:
- From Mrs C.
Students each a their own pocket on the side of a book shelf. When they were asked to pull a stick they got one from a container with others. The sticks were plain and I don't know the consequences behind pulling the sticks.
Our Unit Planning
Lesson 1
Description: Sydney led this lesson with a small powerpoint about Indiana becoming a state and how the Northwest Territory was split into 4 smaller territories. A small activity followed where students colored the territories on a map using their textbook.
Reflection: The information was appropriate, but if some pictures were added to the slides so they could see the territories and the other things the students probably would have grasped the content better. The activity worked extremely well and I think the students liked it.
Lesson 2
Description: The class was split into three equal groups, each co-teacher led a small group. The focus was on rivers, roads, canals, and safe houses of the Underground Railroad in Indiana. The students were creating their own maps with rivers, roads, canals and safe houses on them.
Reflection: Only about 25 minutes were given for this lesson to be completed, so we were not able to complete the lesson. Some of the students struggled knowing where to place the rivers on the map based on the reading but were able to copy the river from the teachers paper. More time and a better explanation of directions should be given next time.
Lesson 3
Description: Destiny led this lesson and taught about the inventions in Indiana during the Civil War. The Ironclad battleship, mines, and the telegraph were the main inventions discussed. Also , the Civil War was discussed the role Abraham Lincoln played during the war.
Reflection: At the end of the lesson, students completed a quick write and quick draw about their own invention during the Civil War. The students enjoyed creating something new and explaining the invention to their partner. While Destiny was teaching, they could have benefited from some pictures or a short video or something more to get their attention and focused on what she was teaching.
Indiana History
From Indiana becoming a state in 1816 to the modern world of Indiana
TPT Kit prepared for South View
Includes:
Think-Pair-Share
True/False Hold ups
Multiple Choice Hold ups
Quick Draw/Write
White Board Hold ups
Bounce Cards
Ready to Share Cards
Debate Carousel
Thumbs up/thumbs down
Lesson 4
Description: This lesson was all about the Civil Right's Movement, Civil Rights in Indiana, and Dr. MLK Jr. Students were split into 3 groups with each group rotating every 15 minutes. Each group read a short reading and completed a writing activity after.
Reflection: I think the students enjoyed rotating between groups. The lesson could have been better if each group taught the content in a different way. One student said "Are we doing the same thing as before?" I liked the students rotating, after the first group I was able to change what didn't work the first time or add something in.
Lesson 5
Description: I planned this lesson. Students used ducksters.com to learn about events from the Cold War. Students filled out a graphic organizer. Students were sitting in groups and then moved to a new groups to tell their other classmates what they learned.
Reflection: This lesson did not go well. Students were not writing anything down. They were talking with their classmates and not behaving. Only about 5 people completed the entire graphic organizers the way I intended.
In a two week time period, the group Miss Spearman had changed, but they were working on the same packet of math story problems. In a small group she let me assist and help some of the students needed more help than the others. She claimed that her group was not the "dumb" group but just randomly assigned.
Backward Design Plan
Stage 1: The development of Indiana and how
Stage 2: Students will write a short narrative about one or two of the events that was taught about in the unit.
Stage 3: 8 Lessons
-IN is a state, Northwest territory
-rivers, roads, canals, and safe houses of Underground Railroad
-IN role in Civil War and Abraham Lincoln
-Civil Rights Movement and Dr. MLK Jr.
-Cold War in IN
-Muncie/BSU history
-Narrative writing (Lessons 7&8)
Mrs. C was very strict and had a certain way that she liked her classroom to be ran. She was not open to change. In my opinion, her management style in the long run is not effective. Her students were getting angry at her because she was yelling at them constantly.
Miss. Spearman used a tactic called "Class Laps"
She wrote students names on the board and as students misbehaved their name was written on the board to do a lap at recess.
Also if the class was misbehaving as a whole she would write a tally mark for the whole class had to a class lap.
Examples:
-One students' name was written because she through something across the room.
-"Who played with the legos? I'm going to clean them up and add 2 classroom laps for recess tomorrow"
She added straws taped to the desk and pencils with a piece of tape and each students number on it. Students stored their pencil inside the straw. This way another student wouldn't take their pencil.
Lesson 6
Description: In lesson 6 students learned about Ball State and Muncie. Students were mostly lectured to and were listening to fill out a timeline with the years certain events happened. Students used addition and subtraction to find the number of years between specific events.
Reflection: I think students were a little bored listening to the lecture, but they did participate and complete the math practice. This lesson could have been better if there were some pictures involved so they could see what and who they were learning about.
Lesson 7
Description: Students started writing their narrative in this lesson. Students were supposed to put themselves into a narrative about one of the events/topics they learned throughout our unit.
Reflection: All students starting writing. Most just wrote an information text about the event they chose. Only a few actually started writing a story. This lesson helped us learn what we needed to say and do different in lesson 8.
Lesson 8
Description: This lesson gave the students the opportunity to revise and continue writing their narrative writing. A short book was read in the beginning to emphasize the points of descriptive words and dialogue. Students were asked to put descriptive words and dialogue into their writing.
Reflection: This lesson went much better than lesson 7. This time around students understood what we meant by putting themselves in the writing. A lot of students actually restarted their narrative. Students were asked to write at least 7 sentences and most of them did.
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With almost all schools moving 1 to 1 in technology, students are spending more time on their laptops, iPads, etc. meaning students are not spending as much time writing on paper and pencil. It is important for students to be able to write as everything cannot be done with technology.
It is very useful when used the way it is intended. In the lessons I planned I was thinking about what I wanted to see my students learn, and then I thought about how it should look, and then I finally started planning the lesson.
I had the whole lesson activity planned in my head before actually planning the lesson
When you lose a student or a family member there is not any way that you can prepare students other than being there for them after it happens. Every student is going to react a grieve in a different way. Asking them questions and getting in the middle of their situation is not always the best. Let them see a school counselor if possible. Books about grief that explain or show someone's experience can help students who are having a hard time. Make sure parents know what is happening inside the classroom during a hard time like this.
In high school, 2 students died within 2 months. The school had counselors did everything they could to help the students' friends and classmates. For each student, the school served their favorite food at lunch and they sold shirts in honor of the students. I don't think those were the best decisions, but it is already done.
Group work is a great way for students to work together. At first students will probably have behavior issues and work might not get done, but as time goes on and students learn the expectations and rules group work should hopefully get better.
The group work that students did at South View was not good. I could tell they don't do a lot of group work and how much work students were not completing.
Miss Spearman's teaching style was very different. She let her students a lot of independent work. She was not always giving her students direct instruction. She never raised her voice toward her students. Once she got frustrated but just took a deep breath and let it go.