When I arrived in the morning, there was a quiet table contest going on during the morning jumpstart. The quietest table won some bucks from Mrs. K. This is a great example of classroom management. Her money based system works well for the 3rd and 4th graders who are growing in their understanding of money and that having more of it can get them more of what they want in the classroom and maybe in life. She reviewed the jumpstart activity by drawing a Venn Diagram on the board and calling on students to give her examples of things that you can find in school or at home, or both.
One important thing to note about the jumpstart is the differentiating that she did with handwriting. The 4th graders were expected to write their work in cursive, while the 3rd graders could still use print to do their work.
At 9:30 am, I took over the class to begin a lesson on multiplication. I read the story, The Multiplying Menace to the class. And we discussed how you can multiply by either whole numbers or fractions. Also we discussed the examples in the book about how when and why the main character multiplied by whole numbers and fractions. To increase the number of objects, the main character multiplied by a whole number and to decrease the number of objects, the main character multiplied by fractions. I wrapped up this part of the lesson by letting the students know that the next time I came in, we would practice more of the multiplying to increase and decrease a number.
After I wrapped up the story around 9:55 am, Mrs. K. organized the class into a game of skip counting called the magic number game. I thought that this was a great way to segway out of the lesson and it was a chance to reinforce the story with a game they were already familiar with and to tie multiplication into skip counting. The students skip counted to bigger numbers to multiply and smaller numbers to divide. I got to learn a new game that I could use the next time I teach multiplication.
After the game at around 10:25 am, Mrs. K. administered a spelling test, and I got a copy of Sam’s test to use for my child study. He did very well on it. I graded the papers after the test was over. The 3rd graders got different tests that the 4th graders, just another way that Mrs. K. differentiated the instruction. As a transition into the next activity, Mrs. K. had all the students stand up and stretch. There is always some kind of movement involved in transitions in this class. Either the students are moving to another part of the room, or they are getting up and stretching, etc.
Around 10:50 the students began to give presentations on a writing assignment that they had to do about what they would do if they got to spend the day as their favorite kind of animal. 6 students gave their presentations. The stories were really silly and I was surprised that there was not a lot of laughter. All the students listened respectfully and Mrs. K. gave verbal encouragement and praise at the end of their readings.
The afternoon was wrapped up with the reading of an issue of Scholastic news that highlighted the story of Ruby Bridges, a kid who made history. This is the first time that I have seen the scholastic news and I thought it was a great resource and it talked a little about Ruby now and her educational advocacy work. The students engaged in a group discussion after reading the passage together about how they would have felt if they had been in Ruby’s position. Mrs. K. used the Magic ball to throw around to the students who were giving their answers. I really liked the scholastic news. As I read it I thought about how I would go about introducing a topic like that to a class without having the newspaper. I don’t think I would have been able to present it in the same way, especially with the update on what Ruby is doing now.
As the children were getting ready for lunch, Mrs. K. did a division problem with them to multiply the class into 3 sections to find out how many students could leave the classroom at once if they were going to go to lunch in 3 segments.
Today was the week of Thanksgiving and some of the parents came to the school to enjoy a turkey lunch with the students. None of the parents came into the room though, they just met them on the way to the lunch room. One thing about this class is that I have not seen any parents come in to help the class or participate in an activity with the students. In the other grades that I have observed (preschool, 2nd) there has been a consistent parental presence. I wonder if it is the school, or the age of the students.
No comments:
Post a Comment