Week Five

It's hard to believe that we are more than a quarter of the way through with the semester! While we have really hit the ground running with our classes, my students are still getting in the hang of things in third grade. We are finally stepping away from reviewing second grade standards and have moved on to third grade standards. One thing I have noticed about my CE is that she seems to have song for everything! So far, we have a song for even numbers, odd numbers, and rounding. Here is the link to the song that she uses for rounding: We will round you. I really like this method that she is using because it gets the students moving around and it gives them a catchy way to remember the order in which they solve the problems. It is definitely something I will plan to be doing in my future classroom.

One thing I have really struggled with this week is coming to terms with just how much testing these little third graders have. They just completed their BOGs, this week they are doing AIG testing, for the past few weeks they have doing TRC/DIBLES, on top of their regular assessments such as spelling tests! It is a lot for a student who is just coming out of 2nd grade. Since I am still fairly unfamiliar with how much testing goes on in school, my research this week has been focused on how I can better prepare myself for helping my students. There are so many test taking strategies for students, but where are the strategies for teachers in the classroom with these anxious and tired students? How can I make sure I am not just simply teaching for the test, but instead instilling knowledge in my students? Concordia University and Fishtree.com have some really good tips for helping teachers with all of the stress that can come with testing. Since teachers must reflect on their practice and analyze student learning, these tips can really help me in my future classroom.

For science this week, my group completed the experiment part of our science project. I am really proud of the way we have all collaborated so well with each other. It was really interesting to see how our experiment turned out. It was definitely not what we had predicted on our hypothesis but that's all part of the learning process.

For the hyperdoc this week, it was all about knowing vs. understanding and how we can get our students to better understand through scaffolding. I thought about the questions that we have been asked in class about hurricanes forming and the sky being blue. We all know what a hurricane is, but do we really understand how it works? To some extent, we know why the sky appears blue, but could we say we understand enough about wavelengths and light to explain it to our students? Knowing is very different from understanding and I have never really thought about that before.

The current event that I would like to talk about this week is the major earthquake that hit in Mexico. Much like the hurricanes that have coming into the US, this has been a major tragedy. I read one article about a school collapsing with many students inside and it was absolutely heartbreaking to read. Our students are going to hear about these current events and they may get scared and feel uneasy coming to school thinking that it will happen in their school. As teachers, we should be able to educate students so that they do not feel scared or unprepared in the event of a natural disaster.

Twitter:
My first tweet this week comes from scholastic. It is talking about creating a strong culture of reading. In my classroom I want my students to be reading all the time and I want them to be able to enjoy reading. It doesn't just help their literacy skills get better. When students read they are learning more about the world around them and are integrating science and social studies without even knowing it.

My second tweet is all about establishing a growth mindset as a teacher. This infographic gave some very simple ways to change the way we think as teachers and become better at encouraging our students.

My last tweet this week is a simple checklist of things we ought to be doing everything. These things help us to make our classroom environment more inviting and welcoming for our students.