Reflection

Well, I haven't personally checked engrade, but due to some commentary by my peers I do not think my blog is doing too well as far as scores go. I don't really want to check my actual scores because I don't want to be discouraged so I am just going to commit to be better starting now. Since I find it hard to reflect on the week once it is all over I am just going to add to my post day-to-day. Today in our class (Foundations of American Education) I was a little panicked. I apparently am not navigating the class web site very well since I learned in class, instead of on the web, that no one in particular was fascilitating. I was nervous, but it went well. I actually learned something kind of important too. I usually make a lot of comments, because I feel bad when no one is saying anything so I just try to blurt something out to bail everyone out, but today, I tried not to talk as much (aka every time it is quiet). I think it taught me a lot about wait time. I think this is/was important for me to understand so that when I become a teacher I am not always just bailing the students out/not letting them think deep enough when there is silence. The Foundations of Multicultural Classroom class went pretty well. Mondays are really long though, because we have five hours of classes and both classes are taught with similar teaching styles. Our classes on Tuesday went pretty well, the science class always seems really long, just because to be honest three hours is a long time! We had an assignment to bring a science experiment you could use in class and teach it to two others. I did a static electricity experiment and worksheet for fifth grade. It was actually a lot of fun and I think it went well. I really would use it later. I don't think I learned that much in classroom management. It feels like a lot of what we talk about is basically common sense. Then again, it is only an hour of class so you can't get into the subject too deep. On Wednesdays we have Literacy Methods. I feel like I am doing fine understanding the class, but it is also a little frustrating. Most of what we are learning focuses on the early elementary grades and I would like to teach fifth or sixth grade so I have a hard time seeing how I would apply some of the techniques.

Reflection

I feel like I don't have a whole lot to write about this week since one of our classes was canceled. I did my facilitation on Monday, I was nervous, but I felt like it went well. I feel bad that we didn't get a chance to change articles and talk about the article about Freire too much, but it was hard to find a place to stop talking/change the subject because everyone had a lot to say. In our Multicultural Classroom class, we had a debate and my team won, that was pretty fun. I am also looking for some type of science experiment activity for a lesson plan that is due next Tuesday. I also had a problem with Amazon.com sending me one of my books so I keep having to borrow it from friends. Well, not much to say about anything else. I just have a lot of homework to do, but at least my blog is done now!

Reflection

This week of classes were pretty standard. It was nice to see how Group #1 did their facilitation to help me since my group is next. There have been a lot of reading assignments so that is getting overwhelming. I just wish there were more diversity in the types of assignments. I had a hard time finding a secondary source for my facilitation, but it was kind of my own fault for not sending a message with my questions sooner. It seemed like all of the sources I found that were good on EBSCO Host and Google Scholar were all PDF files that were copyrighted that I didn't know how to copy and was pretty sure I wasn't allowed to. Other than that things are going okay, fortunately the class for next Thursday is canceled. I don't really have a problem with that class or anything, but my boss keeps scheduling me for more hours than I want so that helps a little bit.

09/08/08- 09/11/08

So far the classes for this week have gone pretty well. I am a little overwhelmed with all of the reading assignments, but I guess I can just spread them out and watch episodes of The Office in between articles (haha). We have a test coming up for the Literacy Methods Class, so I hope that will go well. So far I don't feel like I have learned a whole lot yet, but we aren't that far into the semester. Now that we are done going over all of our syllabi hopefully we can get into more interesting topics. I am definitely looking forward to the field experience, which is undoubtedly the best part of each semester.

WebQuest Reflection

I thought that the design of all of our pages worked really well. I think that they were designed to look great. I think the thing that did not work well is that our webquest seemed to be too simple. I think we could have/should have made it more difficult. It was hard to work as a team on the computers since one person was doing most of the navigating. It was nice to do it as a team because it wasn't as much work for each person. It since we could only have the file up on one computer at a time we just had each write things our or find pictures and email it to the person who was working on it. The next time I design a webquest I will probably make it a little more complicated. I will probably want to have the webquest designed to get the students thinking more deeply.

Google Docs!

Here are some of my google docs:

Technology Specialist Paper

Media Rich Lesson Plan Reflection

Reptile Webquest

Field Experience Week 3

Well, all of my avid readers, it is the last week of my field experience. I am sad to report this news seeing as it means my upcoming departure from the lovely and hilarious 4th graders and my re-entrace to my classes. Since I last wrote I haven't had too many new experiences. We recently taught a lesson using the book we read in Social Studies Methods, "Molly's Pilgrim" by Barbara Cohen. It went really well. We were talking about showing respect for other cultures. I really enjoyed sharing this with the kids because we do have quite a culturally diverse little classroom. We also had our final observation by our supervisor. Although during the lesson plan I thought that it was total chaos and that we would surely fail, she thought it was fine. I thought it went badly only because we were doing a group research activity where the kids researched another culture and made a poster to present to the class. Groups mean talking, and I see what Professor Ramirez means now about being EXPLICIT. When you are not, there are hundreds of questions. I sometimes try not to be too explicit. I mean you don't want to feed them their homework on a golden spoon right? Also, I try to leave them room for creativity, but when you do that the kids all ask is it okay to do this or that or the other. I am sure it will be a little easier when it is my own classroom because the kids will get to know me and I will tell them I want them to be creative and that they don't need to check everything with me first, but it would help to be more explicit. Other than that I am stressed about all of the homework due dates, and interviewing a technology specialist tomorrow, and an upcoming math test, but I will survive it all somehow. I think this has been a really great learning experience. The end of the field work is proving to be very bittersweet, but leaning to the bitter side. I really don't want to go back to our classes, I just want to stay in the schools and have fun (teach). On the brightside, we do have summer vacation coming up. I hope everyone else's experiences are going well. I have finally learned all of the kids names now that it is time to go. They are all really awesome kids and I can't wait to get to know more when I have my own classroom for a full year :).