Professional Documents
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Phillips Traditional Elementary, Des Moines Public School District 2014 Spring Semester by Kevin Zdenek
Next week, I will take over half-time teaching responsibilities. I have 4 groups. (All three reading groups one of which meets twice a day.) I will have many opportunities to try new strategies, and work with every level of ability that Mrs. Keller helps. I will also be coming up with plans for a new writing unit, which I will take over the following week. Mrs. Keller said that I will have a lot of freedom with that unit, and so I will enjoy going through each students goals and finding a lesson that addresses a common need.
Other goals for the week include continuing the Fantastic Mr. Fox reading group, and working on the Main Idea of the story and eventually theme. In writing the students will write a short description of their weekend. In 4th grade reading we will continue to read a story about explorers and work on character traits. Hopefully, there are not so many distractions this week like we had with snow days and reward parties. It will make for a busy week, but lots of fun!
the story, and 2. What I learned about myself as a reader. The students were able to successfully identify major themes from the story, and one student wrote that what he learned is that he felt he could read any chapter book. It was a very rewarding experience for me, and I hope for them as well. 3. What are the plans for the upcoming week? Next week, I will continue teaching full days. I will continue working on goals established last week. In Math I will continue reviewing concepts introduced to students over the last several weeks. In reading I will continue to use the prescribed write-in reader interventions. However, in writing once the persuasive papers are completed, I will have a chance to tackle a new writing concept. I have not formalized my plans for that lesson as yet, but I know that two of the concepts the students have a great deal of difficulty with is stamina and descriptive words. They do not write out their sentences exactly how they hear them in their head because of how long it would take them to do so. As a result, they do not write out complete sentences, and when a student is trying to simply finish as quickly as possible they will not attempt to describe an event in great detail. I want to come up with several lessons that will help the students be able to get down descriptive details quicker and use them in complete written thoughts.
re-teach or scale back the complexity of the question until they understood. Meanwhile, the other students in my group were not waiting for me to come up with a new story problem. They could work ahead. For example, I would give a story problem, and first I would have them estimate, then I would have them solve for the total, then I would have them round to nearest decimal place, and finally, I would have them multiple and/or divide by whole numbers. This process helped me understand where students were having difficulty and what core concepts I needed to address. It may have taken me a lot more time to do it this way, but until Im better at coming up with math problems like Mrs. Keller this is the route that helped me prepare. 3. What are the plans for the upcoming week? For my last week of student teaching at Phillips, I will have the opportunity to observe different classrooms and even a different school. On Monday I start by visiting Brubaker Elementary School to see a self-contained special education room, a behavior room and another resource room. They have 12 full time special education teachers at Brubaker with some students with more severe intellectual disabilities. So Im excited to see the differences. Then I will be shadowing some lower elementary students in Kindergarten and in 1st grade. On Tuesday, I will shadow the 3rd grade special education teacher at Phillips. So I will be able to see some new students and different techniques. One student has a specific behavior goal, which I had not had a chance to experience with the 4th/5th grade students. Im looking forward to learning some strategies to address that type of students needs. On Wednesday, I will be sitting in with the 5th grade general education classrooms. I know many of these students, but usually I only see them in small groups. Im excited to see how they perform in a general education setting. Plus, since my next placement is a general education 5th grade classroom, I will be observing some techniques and strategies for teaching to a full 5th grade class. Then after school, I will be participating in a mock interview with the principal at Phillips, Mrs. PriorSweet. On Thursday, I will be shadowing my mentor teacher again for one last time. I will get to say goodbye to all the students I worked with, and wrap up my placement here at Phillips. Its hard to imagine that its nearly over already.