Angela Bargas

Looking Back, Looking Forward Student Teaching

December 2013

During my student teaching internship, I was placed in the Madison City school district at Heritage Elementary School. This is a Title One school with approximately eight hundred and seventy students and growing. My first placement was in a kindergarten classroom with nineteen students. My second placement was a special education resource room with eighteen students ranging from the fourth to sixth grade. My first placement in the kindergarten classroom is one that I will never forget. The students made my day every day; they were loving, caring and were so helpful with everything. One of the very first meaningful experiences is when I started my first unit of teaching with them. My cooperating teacher gave me theme as my first assignment which included both science and social studies. The theme I began with was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This is a popular beginning of the year theme and as I researched I was able to find many resources. With this theme I was able to incorporate all subjects rather than just science and social studies. Reading, writing and math were also incorporated. At the beginning of this unit I gave the students a pre-assessment of the alphabet. I made it a fun activity where they were given a blank coconut tree with twenty six blank coconuts in and around the tree. They had to fill all the coconuts with all of the letters of the alphabet, and of course color the tree (they loved coloring everything). I found out from this pre-assessment that many of the students did not know how to write the alphabet. They could sing it and say it verbatim but writing it was another story.

I began the unit with introducing the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to the students and gave them an activity to practice letter recognition, and identify upper and lowercase letters, and also rhyming words. I read the book to them, stopping to ask questions during the book to help them connect with their own lives and predict what would be happening next. The next day I reread the story to them, a student had brought in a video of the book, so we watched it together, and we did another activity using their names. We colored another coconut tree, and they counted how many letters were in their names, and they colored and wrote their names using coconuts (one letter per coconut). This allowed them to recognize how many letters were in their name, how to write the letters, and to use capitalization. I never had a problem with the students writing their names after this lesson and activity. The next day, we read a new book, Chicka Chicka 123. This book introduced numbers to the students, and how they are related to one another. I found a video to play that sang the whole book to them after reading the book. We then did an activity with counting coconuts, creating a booklet. The final day we did a very fun activity that included science, social studies and a little math. This lesson took most of the afternoon, but we had such a great time with it. I introduced real coconut trees and we discussed how they grow, where they grow, and what they need to grow. I brought in a real coconut for them to explore using their five senses; we listened to it, felt it, opened it up and smelled it and then we tasted it. I then introduced a data T chart labeled Yucky and Yummy where each

student labeled a coconut with their name and they brought it up to the chart and put it under their opinion of the taste of coconut. Next, we compared how many thought coconut tasted yummy or yucky. For a treat I brought in some coconut M & Ms, this was a big hit. I believe by keeping the students active and engaged is key to behavior management and learning. I also displayed all of their finished products in the hallway so students could see all of their work and show it to friends and family. We had a beautiful coconut tree to display also. This was also the first of the many units I taught. I did a theme each week which incorporated all subjects. This was the best way I could find to add to the school assigned reading and math programs. By doing this, I was able to create meaningful experiences every week. Other themes I taught were All About Me, Community Helpers and Apples and Trees. My second placement was very different. I worked with a much older group that was motivated in different ways. They still very much enjoyed activities included in their daily lessons, but were more motivated by seeing improvements in their grades. Each student was given a student profile survey, just asking them what their interests are, what they want to learn, what they are best at, what they needed most help with, suggestions they have about working with them, their most important goal of the year and lastly, when they leave high school as a young adult, what do they expect. Almost every student wrote down that their goal was to receive As and Bs on their report cards as their most important goal for the year. Having a learning disability can be crushing for your self-confidence. It takes a long time to get that confidence back, and

I personally made this my goal for each and every student to give them what they needed to get that self-confidence back or at least start to get it back by seeing their grades improve. Showing students their own data and allowing them to see it grow brings their confidence up. My second placement was full of meaningful experiences. My cooperating teacher gave me the opportunity to write two students IEP from start to finish. I first had to test the students with two different achievement tests, I also had to observe the students in two settings, I had to get teacher input surveys from their general education teachers, I had to send meeting notices home and parent input surveys. By giving me this experience made my cooperating teacher wonderful. She knew that this was what I would be doing in my own classroom and knew that it would benefit me most to have this first-hand experience. One of my students did not qualify for services because her I.Q. and achievement had no gaps, even though her I.Q. was very low, she was working well above her potential. My other student had been in special education for several years, this was a reevaluation for him, and he did qualify to continue services. Both IEP meetings went very well, the parents were fantastic, very understanding and willing to help in any way. I attended several IEP meetings, which was also a great move on my cooperating teachers part to make me a part of these meetings which became quite a learning experience for me. These were not the only students I was able to test or observe being tested. There were several more, which gave me the insight into each student; it showed me how they learned, where they were with their learning, and where they needed to grow

in their learning. From this I was able to develop my unit of study with the help of my cooperating teacher we came up with an English Language Arts unit which included reading comprehension and writing expository texts. Both were areas not only listed in their IEPs but something that we both saw students needed a lot of practice with. With this unit, I began with reading and reading comprehension, I developed a graphic organizer for students to organize their predictions of the story, the events of the story, and facts from the story. The students then did a story sequencing activity, and a practice paper assessment of the story, and then finally they took an accelerated reader test on the computer. All students received a 90% or above on their assessments, which pleased us both. I knew that the strategy I taught them to organize the information had helped them with their comprehension. We next moved on to writing, I found an activity online that went right along with the story we read, it was also about to be Thanksgiving break so I gave them an essay assignment on thankfulness. They were to write about what they are thankful for. We first brainstormed some categories such as family, friends, food, school, etc. We then after I taught the expository essay format, wrote a rough draft, and then a final draft. The papers turned out beautifully, and each had a wonderful essay to take home and read to their families over Thanksgiving break. The students were very proud of their work; they each read their essays aloud to the class and could not wait to show their general education teachers what they had done. Some were doing similar work in their general education class that by doing this with me first helped them with those assignments.

When it comes to the candidate competencies, the two strongest areas of my teaching were content knowledge and communication. I found that especially working with my upper grade students it was most important to have that content knowledge prior to any lesson. I did heavy research prior to teaching each lesson, especially with math, something that does not come naturally to me, and also something that has changed over the years on how it is taught. I learned that it was extremely important to know all of the strategies and many of the different manipulatives that can be used to aid them in learning. Students need to find a strategy that works for them, so it is very important to teach them those strategies. With my kindergartners I learned that they are learning things for the very first time, it is so important to teach them something correctly the first time because it is so hard to un-learn something. So even with them I researched each lesson intensely to address each learning style and make sure the content I was teaching them was correct. By doing this I was able to give them a good lesson each and every time, and avoid having to reteach too often. Communication was one of the most important lessons learned in both of my classrooms. Having that good rapport with each and every student allowed them to be open and honest with me about everything. With both of my placements I realized that I had to be very step by step with every lesson. I do, we do, and you do was a phrase that I became very familiar with. Especially with my kindergartners, it turned out to be extremely important to model something first, do it together with them, and then allow them to do things on their own. By doing this I was able to see that they were

understanding directions told to them, or not understanding and having to show them all over again. I brought this lesson with me to the upper grades, they were just able to do harder activities once I showed them, we each did reading comprehension together, and then I allowed them to do this on their own after lessons taught. Seeing high scores on assessments showed me that the content taught and our communication with each other worked well together. When reflecting on areas of weakness, I believe classroom management started out to be a weakness of mine but after learning strategies from my cooperating teachers this weakness started to strengthen the longer I worked at it, experimented with it and used what worked best. I believe that every teacher is going to have a weakness with classroom management until they get to know their students personally, getting into a routine and figuring out what motivates students individually is key to managing their behaviors. I also learned that organization and planning become crucial to classroom management. It is so important to have known daily routine and organized classroom to avoid behaviors. This was apparent in both of my placements; the students were just motivated in different ways. Positive reinforcements worked with both sets of students, but with my upper grade students I learned that I need to be firm and consistent in regards to stopping inappropriate behaviors. Critical thinking was another one of the competencies I really had to work with, especially with my younger students; I really learned a lot from them in regards to time management, I had to plan for every minute with them to control classroom behaviors. Student engagement was crucial also, if they were not interested in the activity given to

them it became evident with behaviors also. With-it-ness was especially important with these students otherwise they were off doing their own thing. Positive reinforcement and immediate feedback was also extremely important to these students. They were always trying to please me with their completed work, therefore giving them that immediate feedback became most important to them, to know that they were pleasing me made their days so much better. I took this with me to my second placement. These students were also looking to please me with their work, but they were also looking for that intrinsic motivation to see their grades coming up. When this happened I also saw their self-confidence come up. I would say that this started out to be a relative weakness that I had but became a big strength as I grew in my placements. This experience has given me the knowledge I need to use in my own classroom. My previous observations were nothing compared to this experience when it came to learning. I did learn from those previous observations but being in the thick of it every day all day was a true test of my knowledge and experience. It was a very challenging and rewarding experience, not a day goes by that I do not miss my students and wonder how they are doing today. I believe I have many memorable experiences and new skills under my belt to become a great teacher. This has become a new beginning for me and I cannot wait to begin.