Getting ready for the last week of classes has interrupted my blogging routine. Well, the last couple weeks of my third grade unit went well. The third graders sure do know a lot about the senses. They created some very insightful writing and very expressive artwork as well.
So one last week of class and then finals,after that I am going to miss my first graders, they are inspirational. And now for a bit of leisure before re-commencing studies; Quote of the day, Bradley Nowell "throw the fish back in the water" Blog ya later -K-dub.

Week Ten
This week on Tuesday I did my strategy lesson. The lesson was about the water cycle. I had a great book called Bob The Snow Man to read with the class as well as a poster diagram I made show the class. The students were enthusiastic about understanding the concept of the water cycle. We worked on spelling words like water, and river. We also had a magic-e word, lake. The students just received magic e pencils this week as it is a new concept to them. The students did a great job in participating in my lesson and we were able to connect it to many other things that they have been learning.
On Wednesday my writing buddy was absent so I worked with a new student. I helped him finish a rough draft of a story about Bob the builder. I helped him to revise his sloppy copy a bit. He was focused and wanted a bit of time to write, so I stood by and helped him sound out and spell tricky words. It was a pleasure to assist this student’s with his writing; he seemed to be enjoying the writing that he was doing.
Thursday was the second part of our four week unit with the third graders. My unit is about the senses. On Thursday we focused on hearing and discussed how different animals use the sense of hearing differently. I tried to use a bit of technology by showing a short video of a computer animated ear. The computer was not loud enough for the students to hear the video. They were excited about me bringing the computer, but there is not much that I can do with it without internet in the room. I was amazed at how many scientific concepts the students had already learned. We also talked about sounds we like, and wrote poems about sounds the students like. I did a brief mini lesson about onomatopoeia that tied into the poems the students were writing about sounds. I gave them the opportunity to choose which sense we will cover in our next meeting. The decision was unanimous for taste; we will combine taste and smell in one day next meeting.

Week Nine.
This week during my observation period with the first graders we had a substitute teacher in our class. I was happy to see the students well behaved with the substitute. I think that they had the same substitute teacher once earlier in the year. After participating in class this Tuesday I am thinking that having the same substitute teacher fill in for you every time you miss class would probably be the most ideal circumstance. The students remembered the teacher and she reminded them of a good day they had in the past which appeared to be a morale booster.
It was a pleasure for me to have been able to observe the classroom management techniques that the substitute teacher used with our first graders. I would like to emulate her patient responses to distracted students, as well as her very concise expectations about classroom participation.
Wednesday in our writers’ workshop one on one time me and my writing buddy continued our work on his biography about Amelia Earhart. We finished up our research by discussing her disappearance by looking at maps and re-reading about her final flight. We started to write a rough draft of the biography. We ran out of time after writing a few sentences describing Amelia’s childhood. I was happy that we got started on the rough draft. Now that it is started he can continue to work on the story by using the facts we researched and listed chronologically.
Thursday was our first day with the third graders whom we are doing a four week unit with. Today was an opportunity for us to meet and get to know each other a bit, and also for us to introduce our idea for a unit of study. I brought a short questionnaire to help generate some discussion about reading and other interests. One thing that I found worked well was filling out my own copy and offering to trade mine for theirs so that we could read about each other. An unexpected outcome was the students’ desire to read each other’s responses. I asked if it was ok to share and they were all enthusiastic about the opportunity to read about their classmates. After our greeting we read a Magic School Bus Story about the five senses. I told them that I was hoping to talk to them more about the five senses over the next four weeks. We did not get through the entire story, but the reading went well. I told them we would find out what happens to the students in Mrs. Frizzles class next time.

Week Eight

Week Eight.
This week was the first back after spring break. I had a productive break, working on the house, now it’s time to refocus and finish the semester. On Tuesday this week I was assessing the students’ knowledge of numbers and counting individually. I was interesting to see the strategies that they used to count out loud for me. Some appeared to be easily distracted while others were remaining deeply focused while counting out loud. Some students had the patterns for counting by twos memorized; others tried to actually count every other number in their head. I had one students count: “two, four, five, seven, nine, and he proceeded to count the odd intervals by two successfully up to the mid forties. Later that day on Tuesday I did a read aloud with my childrens literature class, I thought that I did ok on that, but I received bad marks, oh well, win some lose some, people in my class liked it and thought I did a good job. That was discouraging, but I can shake it off; my main focus for this week was the phonics exam we took Thursday anyway. On Wednesday we helped our Writer’s Workshop buddies work on biographies. I was helping to collect some interesting information about Amelia Earhart. In the past my Writing Buddy has been reluctant to get to work on his stories. He was very willing to work hard on his biography this Wednesday, I was proud of the concentration that my Writing Buddy was showing during writer’s workshop this week.

week seven

Week Seven.
During my observation time last Tuesday I was able to help the First graders create log cabins by gluing pretzel logs to construction paper. It was interesting to see the process that they chose to use. Some sketched out a design of what their cabin was going to look like and then glued to that, others just started pasting without any drawing. The glue bottles were all clogged before we started; my main duty was to help un-clog to get them going, luckily I had my secret weapon available in our room (warm water). After the students were done making their cabins they all had an idea of what they needed to do. They were finishing some projects they have been working on for the last couple of weeks. I helped to organize one student who has been out for a few days; we cleaned the crumbs and what-not of his desk and helped him to prioritize the work that must be made up. He had quite a few math sheets to do so I got him started on one by doing a quick review about counting down on the number line. After making sure he was successfully completing the sheet I went elsewhere to help a different student. Throughout the morning I re-visited this student catching up on his math work to encourage him and make sure that he was completing the assignments correctly. I had a lot of opportunities to see the students working individually on different things on Tuesday. The focus that I observed in the students was impressive as they understood they were expected to be busy.
On Thursday we did our word building exercise with a second grade class. We chose a book to read with the students during the exercise and we selected a secret magic word from the book. The letters that make up this magic word were given to the students in a random order, they found and separated these letters from their “letter sets”, then used the small group of letters to create short words. My magic word was, Sharing. I had to give them some clues to help find the magic word. When they found it they were very excited. This was a fun lesson for me to share with these second graders because it is the type of activity that amuses me. I was especially happy with the enjoyment the students got from the book I selected. This was my first experience in a second grade class and I was apprehensive in selecting a book. I am happy that I chose to error on the side of a simpler read because the students willingly joined in a shared reading experience. It was great to hear them read aloud with me. Also my self-confidence to select appropriate reading material for different skill levels is growing.
Spring break this week!

Week six

We had a snow day this week. It was a weird week for me. No class on Tuesday, and I almost missed class on Thursday because my car got stuck in the driveway. This weekend I have a bunch of friends visiting from Chicago to go skiing. I need to clean my house before they get here. I can't believe we only have a week until spring break!

Week five. This week on Tuesday morning I helped sell raffle tickets. The students are doing an adopt a musher program, to support the UP200, in which they can buy raffle tickets for fifty cents apiece. The prizes are things like stuffed animals. The musher comes to the school and gives a presentation before the race. The older students bought tickets before the class bell, and the kindergarten students came down as a class to buy paws. (The raffle tickets look like dog paws) Most of the students that saw me did not know that two quarters was fifty cents. A lot of them had their money in an envelope that they gave me. This was a good opportunity for me to interact with some of the students from other classes that I have not had a chance to see yet, and also it was good to see how much they understood about money.
For the rest of the morning when I got back in the classroom the students were doing centers. I was happy that I was able to see the intro to the centers. Groups of students are all assigned a different color shape which, these shapes are put in a chart that shows the students where they need to be. The center that I was facilitating had a worksheet with times on an analogue clock. To help the students I had the classic big clock with gears in it, which is very cool and hasn’t changed since I learned to tell time. As expected, some understood a fair amount about telling time, and other did not. The worksheet only had times at the top of the hour, and half past. These expressions are foreign to them and I struggled to create a solid way to connect “O’clock” with writing the digits, :00, in a digital display. Someday I will think of a great device, or I will ask an experienced teacher for a strategy.
On Thursday of this week we returned to the same class for writers’ workshop. The student teacher did a great job on her mini lesson “what to do if you don’t know how to spell a word. “ The student that I approached during the writers’ workshop gave me the impression that he would rather read a book since he was done with his story. I was sensing that he was feeling shy so I waited for him to warm up to me, then asked to see his story. After reading it I gave him positive comments about the story’s strengths. He was pleased with this but wanted to continue reading, so I waited more. When he was done with his predictable book I asked him if I could make one very small suggestion about a mistake in his story. He reluctantly put the book away and allowed me to point out to him that he had done a great job by capitalizing his own name in the story, buy why didn’t his friend deserve that same designation? At this point he was thrilled that all I wanted him to do was change one letter and he did so diligently. I continued to show other places that capital letters should appear, culminating on the idea that when using I to talk about myself the subordinate will never do. Our workshop time was spent productively and I think that student will be less shy the next time we meet.

So week two is happening and I feel like it is all going rather quickly. I can not shake that feeling that I forgot to do something, I am trying to blog actively. Reading all of those tweets about the BBQ in Austin, TX at educause is making me envious of the culinary experience, one thing that twitter just doesn't' do justice is the smell of BBQ.
My first day observing at the first grade class went well. I was able to get the feel for their morning routine and to see what the students responsibilities are, and how they rotate from week to week. It was snowing on Tuesday morning so we had an indoor recess during which I was able to interact with the students for a bit in the class informally. During the rest of the time I read a story twice to two separate groups of five students. After I read the story we colored a worksheet and solved some clues about some characters in the story. The students were very curious about me and they wanted to ask me some questions about myself while we were coloring the worksheet. In particular they were curious about my age, when I told them I was nearly a quarter century old they were surprised because according to them I look no older than nineteen.
Week three was a fun week. On Tuesday I was helping students get ready for a timed test on addition and subtraction. They had a practice test to do and I looked it over when they finished and they corrected any mistakes that I found. This was a great opportunity for me to see how the class was doing with addition and subtraction. This was my first opportunity to see a sample of work from every student in the class so it was useful for me to get a better look at the ability level of the class. After practicing math I worked one on one with students on stories during writer’s workshop. These were the first writing samples that I have looked at from this class; I now have a better idea of what type of writing they are working on. Before I left on Tuesday I was given some materials to make a bulletin board for the class diagramming the water cycle. I think that I am going to take a look at it this weekend.
Thursday we did our kindergarten read aloud. The book that I used was, Because a Little Bug Went Ka-choo. The students liked it a lot. The book is a story that is a chain reaction that starts with a little bug sneezing and ends up in chaotic circus parade scene. The language has a bit of rhyme, Dr. Seuss rhymes, and the pictures are great. The second to last page of the book is a scene with so many things to see we spent a few minutes looking at it a pointing out different funny things. After reading the book once one girl said “ok lets read it again but we will say what the words mean.” She proceeded to inform me that it was my turn to start. So I read the first page then she turned the page and gave the book to the boy to my left and said “now it is his turn”. She created an interactive reading exercise for our group as if it was routine. After we read the book a second time they simply asked, “can we color now? Look, they are coloring”. So I told them if they wanted to color they can color, and if they wanted to make a story like the one we just read that I would help them write words. One girl made a popup book, “they climbed the mountain”; the others had me write a sentence on a lined paper that they colored on. It was great to see the creativity in action as they created their stories. They each had different ideas and concepts of what their book was going to look like, they also wanted me to make one with them and they helped me to get started by giving me scraps of paper from their books.
I am finally feeling like I have gotten my schedule figured out. The first two weeks were a bit chaotic, but now I feel that I have both feet on the merry-go-round. Well I will once I get my nametag, they say I will get an email when they get it in but I am starting to think that I was forgotten about again. Oh well, the students all know me as Mr. Kyle by now. NMU vs. Alaska this weekend, go cats!
Week four. This last Tuesday was Ground Hog’s day. As an eye opener the students were making cards to take home that say “Happy Ground Hog’s Day” and as you open them a Ground Hog’s head pops up. The students colored their cards and cut them out and I helped them fold them. After the morning meeting the students were divided into groups and some went across the hall as they always do at this time. I was assigned a group and we were given a story to read a together. The form of the text was a script so I divided the students into two pairs, Ground Hog 1 and Ground Hog 2. The story had two possible endings. The first one we read would be considered the classic UP version where he sees his shadow and gets scared back into his den. Then we switched the roles and re-read the story but used the alternative ending the second time.
On Thursday we did our first grade non-fiction read aloud. Because the classroom that I observe on Tuesdays is a first grade room I was able to read aloud to students with whom I am familiar. The book that I chose was called Animals in Winter. The book describes what different animals do to survive winter. I was able to open the session with a conversation about the Ground Hog from Tuesday. This was a coincidental connection but it worked great to get the students interested in the book. After we read Animals in Winter I gave them a worksheet assignment. The paper had four lines for them to write a bit, and it had a part of a tree with a birdhouse in it surrounded by blank space for them to draw in. We used suggestions from the book to draw things like birdfeeders or berry bushes in the blank space. The students did well on the assignment. Some were more willing to attempt to do the writing on their own, and others needed/wanted more assistance from me. The non-fiction read aloud assignment took me a long time to brainstorm the right activity to relate to the content, but I think that what I chose to bring to the students was quality. The allowed time was all used up without waste and I was able to talk about the things that I had planned on covering.

This is my first blog. Enjoy!