Week 11

This week was another interesting week at Watson. I feel like every week I come upon a different obstacle in my early teaching career. This week, one of our students had a rough stride toward the middle of the week. Earlier in the year, this student showed signs of being very hyper and defiant. Then, for about the last month, he has been an angel. This week he had a rough day on Wednesday and Thursday, and when a call was made home about his behavior we came to find out that he was out of his prescription. When, I wanted to become a teacher, I didn't realize all of the things a teacher may have to deal with during the year. A second grade student who is a complete 180 without medicine. It's amazing some of the things that I will discover throughout my career that I have already seen.

On another note, I kept going on with my action research. The week before this, I did spelling words every day on spelling city, and with the mimio. The students absolutely loved it, and it showed on their test scores, as almost everyone scored a 100%. This week, I got back to the regular saying each word aloud, and just going over all of the words. The students, I feel, are bored by this, but it still keeps up with my action research as I am doing activities with the students. The scores, as I figured would happen, came back down to earth as only the few consistent students that having been scoring very high scores all year scored very well on this test. I plan on implementing technology one more time to see if anything happens with the scores, or if it was just the words of last week that were so easy for my students. Either way, action research is coming to an end, and I am hoping that I can discover something from my data.

Week 10

Last week was a huge stepping stone in my intern year. Not only do I feel like I am a major part of this class, but it is starting to show. On Friday, we had, what i called a "Fun Friday". It was a learning celebration day for Halloween. There was just one catch to this, Mrs. Decker was out Friday which meant we had a substitute on what was pretty much a laid back eventful Friday. When I was a tutor I had Mrs. Karr, and I can remember asking her, "Why do you always do the same things during each day?" She told me, and I'll never forget, that routine is great for students in elementary grades. Well, on Friday, when the routine was thrown off for our students, I could tell that it was going to be a tough day of managing our class. In the morning, the second grade rooms turned into giant stations for the students as each class switched to a different room every forty minutes. This made me feel as if I was in control of the whole second grade, which tested my management skills. Then, after lunch we had a movie to watch all afternoon, which of course was taking place in our room. The sub and I had to literally move all the desks up against the walls to make room for 75 students, who would have drinks and snacks. I set everything up and talked about the movie. I felt as if it was a big day for me because I felt like I controlled second grade that day. By the end of the day, I was whooped, and ready for a nap, but also excited about how well I did during the duration of this day.

On a separate note for this week, I finally got the chance to integrate technology into my action research, and the students fell in love with it. I integrated a website called spellingcity.com, and it sure paid off. Out of 24 students, 22 of them scored a 100%, which was by far the highest total of 100's through the whole year. Only one student scored under a 70%. Technology seems to be an attraction of these students.

Week 9

Once again I have slightly slacked off in my blogs, but luckily enough I can remember back to the main highlights of my ninth week of my intern year. This was a big week for me since it was the time for my observation by Sarah Steel. I wanted her to observe me doing something that mattered to me, and that was important to me, so I had her observe me during my action research activities. I did a spelling activity in which I used word cards and chalkboard colorful writing to help review the spelling words for the week with my students. The words were contractions, so I knew going in that it may be a struggle teaching this to my students, but I felt like I was prepared for any obstacles that may come in my way. The lesson went very well I thought, and my students were extraordinary and very cooperative. Sarah told me that my classroom management has grown dramatically since the last time she observed me, which made me feel very good. Classroom management is a big part to elementary school instruction, and hearing something like that makes me feel awesome. On the spelling test this week, over half of my students recorded a score of 100%. On the flip side, a majority of the remaining students scored lower than 70%, which showed me further work had to be done in the spelling activities.