Assignment #4

These are goals that I posted at the beginning of student teaching. There are various ways that I have gained the feeling of accomplishment for each goal set. "I would like to establish a rapport with my students." I have made very deep connections with my students. They come to me with issues they are having, stories they want to share, exciting news, and help. They trust me, are comfortable around me, and believe me. These are all ways that I know that I have built a relationship with each of my students. The last day of student teaching was the hardest. None of the students wanted me to go, all of them hugged me and made cards asking me to come back.

"I would like to become more familiar with the curriculum used in various ways." I taught out of the school's curriculum for 11 weeks. I did one week of observation, and week 2 I picked up Science and taught it until the end. Later came math; between the two subjects I became more acquainted with the books and how they wanted them used. At times I followed the book's lesson exactly, and other times I added my own thing to it. One example of using the basal, yet adding something would be when I pulled up the library of virtual manipulatives on the SMARTboard and built spinners with the class. This was a cool experience and it really enhanced my lesson. The basals are nice to have and use, but adding your own teaching style is important as well.

"I want to become familiar with grading techniques and programs used to keep records." I did A LOT of grading in the 12 weeks. I graded math, science, tests, writing. There were always stacks of papers needing grading on my desk. The program I became most familiar with using during my time was GradeBook. It already had a class list, I would create a new assignment, assign how much it would be worth, and set it so parents could see the grades. Then, it allowed me to easily enter grades for each student into the grade book. It did all of the work as far as calculating grades, and I could print reports about which students were missing what assignment. GradeBook was not hard to learn, and very user friendly.

"I would like to develop better classroom management skills." Though I really never had problems in the class, I was not too confident in my classroom management skills. Then, one day Jeff was gone, and the sub was going to be late. The principal stopped by (when I was in the middle of something and didn't notice). The next day, Jeff came to me and told me that Principal Tom was impressed that when he poked his head in, I had full control of the class and we were working like we should be. This was early in my student teaching and gave me more confidence to do what was needed in regards to classroom management. The card flip system that Bemidji school district has seemed to work nicely in the classroom. Students responded to it and knew that what the consequences were.

"I want to become more familiar with my school, support staff, and colleagues." When I set this goal for myself, I did not know many in the building. Now when I walk into the building, I am greeted by any passing teacher and it feels like home! I stop in the office, and they love to see me. I've always been told that you should make friends with the janitor and the secretary. These people have been very nice, open, and helpful! Elaine, in the office, was very helpful with the copy machine when things went wrong, or when I forgot the attendance (woops!) and we became comfortable enough to joke about those things. Lincoln and it's staff are all wonderful. It's a great place to be, and would be an awesome place to work, just because of the people that work there!


Meaningful Experience:

While student teaching, there was a student that announced that he would be moving in about a month. For that whole month, he talked about it and how he was not going to be going to school there anymore and he started missing a lot of school and not trying to catch up because he was "moving anyway." Well, the date of "moving day" came, and Jeff found out that his mom was going to be moving him to Cass Lake. He also found out that they didn't have the money to make ends meet with utilities and what not. Immediately, Jeff contacted people in the community he knew helped with these situations and got the family assistance. Not only that, but he also arranged so that the boy could stay in school at Lincoln and he would stay at Kids and Co. when needed and 21st Century on the other days. The buses can take the students almost all the way to Cass Lake, so transportation would not be as hard for the family. This was all in the best interest for the student. He had already transferred once this year, and he had been showing many improvements throughout the year, and Jeff felt that this would be the best place for him to continue success for the year. This experience was VERY meaningful to me because it was another way that I, as a teacher, will be caring for the students in my class. This student and his mother were almost homeless, and by the teacher utilizing resources in the community, it did not happen. As teachers, we are there to care for those students, meet their needs in any way we can, and make educated decisions with their best interest in mind. This experience modeled what teaching should really be, and allowed me to see how things can be handled instead of writing a kid off and just allowing their whole world to change for better or worse.

Assignment #3

1. How does your unit contribute to the curriculum goals of your teaching assignment? Standards, content, student learning?
My unit contributes to the curriculum goals by following the school wide decision to do Dr. Seuss activities for the week. I set a goal to get to know the curriculum better and how to use it in various ways, this allowed me to take something taught in the curriculum and use it across different subjects. It was not something that was in the district curriculum, but it went along side with what was being taught within that curriculum. The students were learning about properties of water, with this lesson they were applying what they knew to something other than water. The concepts of properties such as surface tension are within the 4th grade standards set by the state of Minnesota. By using their prior knowledge to apply it to Oobleck, students were working at higher levels of learning as defined by Bloom's Taxonomy.

2. Describe the learning expectations that you had for your lessons. What aspects of the lesson were successful and why? What aspects of the lesson where not successful and why?
The skills that were intended for the students to learn and acquire during this unit was collaboration and making decisions as a group. In groups, students were expected to use prior knowledge to come up with properties and investigate Oobleck's surface tension and report their findings. With their findings, the students were then supposed to collectively, as a class come up with laws for Oobleck. They did this through a process of proving their group's law and then the class voted it in or out. The student were able to successfully complete these tasks and the discussion was very productive. The part that was unsuccessful was the time that it occurred in and at first the students were not really understanding what was expected of them. That was more something I needed to correct, which I did. I stopped, explained the process again, and continued with facilitating the discussion.


3. Analyze one of your instructional materials and discuss its effectiveness.
Oobleck. The Oobleck is in a way a tool for instruction in this unit. It is what the whole unit is based on, and is definitely needed to perform the activities in the unit. The Oobleck is very effective in that it brings the literature to life and allows for students to explore their imaginations. Not only are they using tools they have been equipped with to come up with ideas about the Oobleck, but they are also using imagination to create spacecrafts.


4. Analyze the student work you provided. Describe why one example is an illustration of quality work and why one is not. Discuss what steps you took to support the student that did not produce quality work.
The first student provided quality work because he followed all directions and produced a spacecraft that was colored, named, and labeled parts that were useful. Not only did he follow the directions, but he added an extra piece. Using his imagination, he incorporated a floor plan of what the inside of the spacecraft would look like. The student that did not produce quality work did not follow the directions given. She did color her spacecraft, but she did not label the parts that could be useful to the collecting and leaving the planet. She also did not name her spacecraft. After seeing her and others who did not follow directions, I restated the directions and put them on the board so all students could see what the expectations were. Later, those who did not follow instruction, I then had finish their project to the expectations.


5. Provide an argument for why the assessment instrument that you developed was the best strategy for determining student achievement. Include a discussion of how the instrument addressed the lesson objectives and provided concrete evidence of student achievement.
The assessment instrument was a rubric. This rubric was the best strategy because it wrapped all of the activities into one grade, and allowed for grading on each part of the unit. The rubric addressed the lesson objectives by including pieces like "consider participation, cooperation" in group work. It suggested what should be considered within each grade. This breaks down how the student was graded piece by piece. With this, you can look at each category and see what the student was lacking. Were they not collaborating with their peers? Were they not on task? This allows a justification to the grade given and gives the teacher and the student an opportunity to discuss what was lacking and why the grade is what it is.

Assignment # 2

Assignment #2 Unit

At the beginning of March was Dr. Seuss week. Our school, Lincoln, took part in many activities to remember Dr. Seuss and his work. On Wednesday of that week, we had Dr. Seuss day where we did even more activities as a school together. This unit was inspired by the Dr. Seuss week, and went along with his book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck." It is a unit that is taken from A GEMS guide inspired by Oobleck.

Day 1
Introduce/ read the book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss.
during reading time.

Day 2
Lab Investigation
Student will take a look at an "unknown" green substance we "received" from NASA.
The students will take a look at the substance and brainstorm within groups the
properties of the substance and discuss whether it is more solid or liquid. (We had been
discussing properties of water and such in science.) Students will make posters with their
observations on them and will present them to the class after investigation.

Day 3
Science Convention
Students will take another look at the substance, which they have already named Oobleck,
and perform duties that are carried out at Science Conventions. It is the class' objective to
come up with laws of Oobleck. These laws only become laws after we have come up with them,
investigated to prove them, and voted them into laws just like a science convention.

Day 4
Space Craft Design
With the laws we now know about Oobleck, students will use that knowledge to design a spacecraft
that will fly to, and land on the planet Oobleck is from, collect Oobleck, and return safely. The students
are required to label all parts of their spacecrafts and color them.

Day 5
Writing Assignment
Students will create a non fictional story of their trip to the Oobleck planet to collect the Oobleck sample
in their own designed spacecraft.


Lesson Plans

4^th Grade Science

Oobleck Day 2

Jason Inmon

Objectives:

-Students will describe what the word “property” means when discussing a material

-Students will use 3 of the 5 senses to observe and describe the substance oobleck

-Students will work in groups to list 5 properties of oobleck

Standard:

II. Physical Science

A. Structure of Matter

Students will compare and contrast the mass, shape and volume of solids, liquids and gases.

Materials:

-Bulletin board paper -Paper towels

-Oobleck

-Markers

Anticipatory Set: To set the stage, read the story, “Bartholomew and the Oobleck” by Dr. Seuss. The next day, have oobleck ready and see if students make the connection immediately or if questioning will need to take place for students to guess the substance’s name. Tell the students that there has been a shipment of the substance called oobleck from another planet and NASA has asked us to investigate its properties.

During: Review with the students what the word “property” is and tell them that they will be using three of their five senses to investigate the oobleck’s properties. The three they will be using are sight, touch, smell. Stress that it is not safe to taste the oobleck. We do not know if its edible and nothing in science lab should be tasted. Allow the students some time to explore the oobleck and begin to form a list of 5 properties that they came up with regarding oobleck. Also, have students star which properties that they believe to be most important in explaining under what circumstances oobleck acts as a solid or liquid.

Closure: As a class, we will post our lists of oobleck’s properties on the wall and discuss each and which sense they used to investigate that property. Discuss questions such as, “How does oobleck behave when you press on it?” “When does oobleck behave like a liquid?” “When does oobleck behave like a solid?”

Assessment:

-Group work -Lists of properties -Class participation

4th Grade Science

Oobleck Day 3

Jason Inmon

Objectives:

-Students will participate in a science convention to create laws of Oobleck

-Students will collaborate with partners to come up with laws of Oobleck

-students will discuss the properties of Oobleck

Materials:

-Oobleck

-Old Newspaper

-Large sheet for writing laws

-Markers

Anticipatory Set:

Begin with allowing students to take another look at the Oobleck. By now, it will be dried out, so discuss what can be done to make it like it was the day before. After adding water, allow the students some time to look at it and the properties again.

During: Bring class back together and discuss their most important properties on their posters. Then, describe a scientific convention and the voting process for creating/ proving laws in science. Tell the students we will proving, writing, and voting on laws of Oobleck. Then, go around the room and record what each group feels should be a law. When all potential laws are recorded for all to see, begin the voting process and discuss why a proposal should or shouldn't become a law.

Closure: When all laws are decided on and proved, record the laws onto the final poster that will be hung in the classroom for the students to see for the next day's lesson.

Assessment:

-Group work -Discussion/ reasoning for laws -Participation

This is a picture of the official laws the class came up with at our Science convention during our 3rd Dr. Seuss lesson.


Resource:

Sneider, Cary. OOBLECK: What Do Scientists Do? Lawrence Hall of Science.

Student work

This picture is a picture of higher quality work. The assignment was to color, name, and label all parts that can help with the collection of Oobleck and the return from the planet covered in Oobleck. As you can see, this student did all of the requirements and even decided to put a layout of one of the floors inside the spacecraft next to it.

Here is an example of lower quality work. The student has coloring, minimal labels that do not help with understanding how it works, and did not name the spacecraft.


Assessment Piece

Oobleck Narrative Rubric

Student Name:____________________

Science
1. Group work- consider participation, cooperation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. Self-evaluation- consider honesty in self evaluation for group work
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. Spacecraft design- consider if spacecraft is designed to land on Oobleck, quality, and detail
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The Writing Process
1. Ideas are clearly stated.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. Organization-events are in proper sequences.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. Conversations- proper spelling and punctuation is used.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Teacher's Comments: _____________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

Writer's Comments: ______________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

The school that I am student teaching at is Lincoln Elementary in Bemidji, MN.
I am in Mr. Smith's fourth grade classroom.

Pictured here is my fourth grade classroom, just after they all left! :) It is not a big area, and there are many students, so there isn't much to do with the desks.