Well, since I forgot to do this all week and Emily kindly reminded me... here goes nothing!

Day One: Monday
I taught a creative writing lesson on the Powerball (which winner was very previously chosen... lucky ducks)! The kids LOVED the fact that they were able to be completely involved in the conversation, and that many of them got to share what they wrote. I first discussed with them how Powerball tickets can be bought, etc. We then discussed the writing prompt that they wrote on which stated, "If you were to win the Powerball of $550,000,000, how would you use the money to benefit St. Marcus and the city of Milwaukee? Do you think your personality/outlook on life would change after winning so much money?" It was awesome to hear the kid's positive responses to this writing and we had many students share what they wrote. It is amazing to see how far they have come from writing fractured sentences to now writing with complete thoughts and perfect grammar. Overall, today was a great lesson which my student's really enjoyed.

Day Two: Tuesday
Today was also a very good lesson. I focused on the topic of using feeling within the student's writing. I wanted them to dig deep into their emotions and find how they can express these feelings through writing. Some students struggled with finding a topic to write on, but eventually came up with something. I assessed the students on their creativity and writing skills they had been working on the week prior to me teaching the class. I still find it amazing how great of writers some of the students I have are. The way their minds think is incredible. One thing I would like to improve on is reinforcing the expectation that everyone is quiet while they have time to write. I have found that while some students are holding conversations, it is difficult for many students to focus.

Day Three: Wednesday
Today we had an All-School Chapel Service to celebrate the first week of Advent, which also meant my class time was cut down to 20 minutes. Wednesday's always seem to be a crazy day in our room (not sure why), but this Wednesday proved to be no different. Many students were unfocused and would not participate in the writing portion of the class. Due to the fact that it was a shortened class, many students seemed restless. Once the students were given a topic to focus on for the day, the rest of the class ran smoothly. Unfortunately, no students were able to share what they wrote today because of the shortened class periods.

Day Four: Thursday
Today went really well! I taught a lesson that focused on fixing sentences with various things wrong with them. Think uncapitalized letters, bad grammar, wrong word choices, etc. The kids had a BLAST correcting the sentences. This was a very practical lesson as well because it is a lot of the mistakes I see the students use in their homework everyday. The student's took notes on the most common mistakes and corrected various sentences for homework. I also allowed them to come up with their own incorrect sentences for the class to correct. They love getting involved during the lessons and it makes for a fun atmosphere without many disruptions.

Day Five: Friday
On the last day of the week, the classes are shortened because the students have an earlier release time. Friday's are always dedicated to creative writing so I had to come up with an engaging and interesting prompt that the students would enjoy writing about. I allowed the students to find a topic on CNN Student Center that they found interesting and create a unique prompt. The students decided they wanted to write about Heisman trophy and what it takes to be a winner. Overall, the students had a great time and their responses were very clever and well thought out. For a Friday, the students did a great job of keeping focused.

Reflection Day Ten

REFLECTION & REVISION (This part is to be included in your daily reflections after teaching the lesson. How did I feel about my lesson today? If I feel successful, what did I see the students saying and doing that made me feel that way? What changes to tomorrow’s lesson need to be made as a result of today’s class):

      This day was very successful. I only had a limited amount of time because they had a special Daily Five. This was a good thing that we reviewed how to write a reflection the day beforehand. I went over each point of how to write a reflection and then the students had a chance to write a sentence of two about the prompt. Many of the responses were the same. For example, many student said they learned about morals and what moral are, but they did not tell me what a moral is or give me any examples. Also, a lot of students said that their favorite part was writing the books. When the students completed writing their reflection, I read their books aloud. There were lots of laughs and giggles, but most importantly the students were very proud of what they created. I had a lot of students come out of their shells because they were happy that their ideas were incorporated into the story. Then it was time for me to go. I had all the students say goodbye to me and even asked me if I could come and teach third grade. I am really going to miss them. 

      There are a few things that I would do to change this lesson. One thing would be more time because I did not have enough time to reinforce the parts of writing a reflection. Then another thing I would change is that I would have the prompts written on the board and then let the students write for a very long time. I also would have written each activity on the board because we did so much that the students did not remember what we did, or that they were sick. This has been a great experience and I would not change it for anything. 

Day 5

After finishing up the book yesterday I wanted to introduce the student to writing book critiques. This is a new topic for them. I outlined the basics of what a critique might look like. The summary of the story, what a reader liked, what they didn’t like, or parts of the book that could have been changed. I had the students rate Katie’s Trunk and give supporting details as to why they thought the way they did. I am not entirely sure why they didn’t get the concept of supporting details because we also talked about it this week during Social Studies. Yesterday, everyone was able to summarize the story and give key details as to what happened while reading. I was surprise that the class average for the book was 2 stars. I should have asked them about a book they would’ve give five stars too and have them compare and contrast. It was interesting to see how the influence of one student could sway the other student’s opinions. Once the class clown said the book was boring it was all downhill from there (even though for the past two days they didnt want to stop reading the text). The good reads app was not connecting to their internet, so I couldn’t connect what we were doing in class with real- world application for them to see how other’s write reviews. This time together felt very rushed. I gathered their language arts folders with all of the works for the week. I feel like this is a fairly accurate assessment of what the students knew and how much effort they put into their work. You can see which students did their work based on how much they participated in class.

Day 5! -Morgan Lueck

Day 5:
All of my students were in different places in their writing at the beginning of class today.  One student was finished and ready to email it to me when another student was not even close to be finished typing her story up on Scribble Press.  We spent the first 30 minutes typing the stories onto the iPad.  I walked around helping students and encouraging them to finish before the end of class.  There were two students who were done early on in the class period.  They worked on other things for another class and read silently.  There was one student who I had to keep under control, because he got up frequently and wandered around.  When I had the students share their stories they had a fun time.  There were a couple of times I had to refocus the class because they got very giggly.  I had such a fun time teaching these students how to write fiction stories, and I am glad I got to take on this challenge with a small class of five.  I cannot wait for student teaching where I can hopefully do this again with a bigger class.   

English Day 5

            English was great today.  The students assembled their poem booklets and we watched a clip from “Dead Poet’s Society.  The clip was about perspective and taking the time to look at things from different perspectives.  This led us into a discussion about respectful while the fellow classmates are presenting their poems.  I had the students’ names on strips of paper and randomly selected them to read a poem.  I read some of my poems too.  Each student had a chance to read 3 poems.  The students did really well.  They were respectful throughout the readings and we snapped for each poem.  I was impressed with the student’s poetry as well as their attentiveness to their classmates.  There was one student that did not feel very confident in her poems and her classmates impressed me by building her up every time it was her turn to read and after she read a poem. 

Week 2 Day 5

Today’s lesson went well. I ended up not using the file folder games that I had originally planned on due to the fact that the students can’t read and it would have been quite a challenge. Instead we worked more with syllables, rhymes and creating words. In order to create the words I have been using a strip of paper with boxes on it and then students find letters to fill in the boxes. There are five boxes on the strips of paper and I think I would bring it down to three boxes and explain to the students that every box needs a sound. Some of the students really struggled with creating the new words and I think that would have helped them a little bit. Overall, I am pleased with how the week went and feel more comfortable with teaching language arts. I realized that it is important to incorporate children’s books into the lessons as it get the students more engaged and excited about learning. I look forward to continuing on with teaching language arts in the future.

Reflection Day Nine

REFLECTION & REVISION (This part is to be included in your daily reflections after teaching the lesson. How did I feel about my lesson today? If I feel successful, what did I see the students saying and doing that made me feel that way? What changes to tomorrow’s lesson need to be made as a result of today’s class):

     Today was pretty successful. The kids were really hyper because St. Nick had come. Plus, the students were excited to illustrate their books. While one student was illustrating the book, the other students and I were discussing how to write a reflection. This went alright, but the students were more interested in the pictures than they were in actually writing the reflection. There was a lot of times when I would have to wait for the students to finish their side conversations. I told the students that it was their assignment and not mine, and that seemed to get them re-focused. The students were able to answer each prompt that I have for them, such as "What was your favorite part?" and "What did you learn about folktales?" The students and I had a very good discussion. It also helped that I said the person who could illustrate next would be one of my best listeners. They seemed to like that reward. I would definitely do this lesson again. 

      The major thing that I would change in the lesson would be classroom management. Instead of having the student draw by the rest of the students, I would have the student go draw somewhere else. This was too distracting for many students. Also, I would of had them do a drawing sheet for them to do for homework so that everyone would of had a chance to draw on the iPad. I am excited to give the students their books today. 

Week 2 Day 4

Today’s lesson went okay. I tried to using the eye spy a rhyme sticks but they didn’t work out so well. I’m finding it very difficult to do certain activities with Kindergarten due to the fact that they cannot read. I am quickly learning that I have picked the right age level when I chose to become an elementary teacher instead of early childhood. I adjusted my lesson and had rhyme puzzles that they could put together which worked much better, I plan on using them again tomorrow. Overall, today went decent and I made adjustments as needed. 

5th Grade Reflections Day 2,3,4

Day 2:

Today in Language Arts I stressed the importance of getting to know your story

before you read. The pictures, titles, and vocabulary words all can help aid in

understanding. The students used five main vocabulary words to do a quick write

about what the story may be about based on the five words. The students did an

awesome job trying to figure out why those words were important. We opened

up the book and they were pleased to see their predictions based on the pictures

and title were true. I played vocab o gram and didn't feel successful because the

students kept asking which words they were supposed to put down. If I was to

redo this activity I would have the words and page numbers listed so they can

find them and make predictions using the context clues and pictures, but that also

takes away from their freedom to choose. We also played sparkle to practice

spelling words which was fun, but it always eliminated the poor spellers first

Day 3:

Looking back on my teachings today I felt like overall the lesson went really well. The students completed their vocabulary sheets and knew why we check out the vocabulary words before we read. They were looking at the pictures and actively questioning and comprehending during our readings today. If I was to do this lesson again I would still have the students make a reading web, but as soon as we were done reading I would have them put it down. It is a great feeling ending a lesson and having the students ask for the same lesson again tomorrow. They really enjoyed themselves today. I was happy that everyone was engaged during the reading because some of the students could have dazed off during the read aloud.

Day 4:

Today the students held themselves accountable for doing their vocabulary sheets and checking things off in their treasure folder. It was a great feeling knowing that the students were deciding for themselves whether or not they deserved their final grade. The students who were not listening on Monday or didn’t keep track of the days realized that they were supposed to read, comment, or question something in class each day and started complaining. I said that I had no control over their actions and behaviors and that they would only be able to get done what they could for today, since yesterday was done. They all were asking to read the story using the reading web and the students were good about passing the reading to struggling students. The story ended and they were able to summarize what happened. The students were challenged by summarizing the story into one word of their choice. Every student had a different word which was really neat to see that the story meant something different to everyone. I am going to point that out to the students tomorrow before we do our critiques. By their conversations about the book I know that the week of preparing and reading has really helped develop their understanding of the story.

Language Arts Day 4

Holy smokes time flies when you are having fun.  I am having a blast looking at all of the letters that my fourth graders have made.  Some of the first ones they have written were to family friends, or family members while others wrote them to teachers and to classmates.  Today they also started writing their letters to soldiers.  I was amazed at how well the students responded to this idea and how much fun they are having doing this.  I found out on Monday that this was my last day of English, and what a great way to finish.  The letters they have written have been amazing and I think they have enjoyed learning something new and writing a letter to someone they would have never thought of before.  I truly have had an amazing week with these students!!

Day 4! -Morgan Lueck

Day 4:

Wow, day four already?  Time is running out!  The students kept working on their rough drafts today.  I met one-on-one with each one of my five students today to talk about their characters, conflicts, and settings.  I also looked through their rough drafts and helped them work on their spelling and grammar.  Don’t worry Dr. Keiper, I did not bring out the red pen!  I was very impressed with the stories my students came up with.  My students’ stories were very creative and interesting to read.  Each one of them had a different type of story and characters.  The stories range from a 38-year-old marine to an 11-year-old ice skater.  All of my students got to begin typing their stories on Scribble Press today.  I had them create their covers first and then I made sure to tell them to type up their stories before adding pictures.  By the end of class one student was almost done typing his story and another student was just finishing up her cover.  It will be interesting seeing how many of my students will be able to finish up their stories by the end of class tomorrow!  I can’t believe it is already my last day teaching at St. Paul tomorrow.       

Molly Dorth: Week 2 Day 4

Book groups were chaotic again today, but I should have expected this. They were practicing their theatrical presentations of the stories they have read all week. This got out of control with noise... I tried to pull it back together and let them know what my expectations were for noise, but they just got loud again. I understand that there are times for it to be loud, like when they are practicing a play, but I literally could not hear myself think. It was driving me crazy! And I'm just not quite sure how to make it quieter for activities like that, or how to make myself get over my problem with lots of noise. I realized that I got so fed up with the noise that I wasn't encouraging students when they were doing well. Even though they were noisy, they were doing really good things like working together to figure out different parts, making creative props and summarizing their stories. I should have ended the lesson by encouraging them in these things. Luckily the teacher did this for me so all positive reinforcement was not completely lost. I need to work on positive reinforcement in a meaningful way. Mrs. Schmidt models this really well. She constantly is encouraging her students, having side conversations with them and acknowledging the great things they do.  Also, in the beginning part of the lesson I did an impromptu class summary of the book we read. I had a good idea and I went with it, which I was really proud of myself for. It went ok, but I realized that it would have been better if I had each student say one word, rather than 3 words. It was just too confusing! But they still did a really good job with it. Tomorrow we will see their presentations and I think I will have one last looney tunes clip to reward them with since they really have done a great job this week.

During writing they presented their trickster tales. They had been so loud and excited I thought for sure that they would have dynamic and exciting presentations. Instead they got all shy and quiet! I asked Mrs. Schmidt about it afterward and she hinted that when they aren’t confident of what they need to do that they tend to get more shy. This makes sense. And made me feel horrible. But it is right and a good lesson to have learned. I gave them a lot of structure when creating a trickster tale, but barely any structure about how to present it. I didn’t even think of telling them that! Silly things that seem so natural to us... but are really quite complicated to a 3rd grader. So tomorrow we present our book group stories so I will make sure to give them LOTS of guidelines for that.

Molly Dorth: Week 2 Day 3

In reading on Wednesday, we talked more about trickster tales and introduced the concept of inferring. I am realizing that I absolutely love reading aloud to the students. It is fun to interact with them and make the story come alive for them. I loved Dr. Kremer's suggestion to have pictures of the illustrations up on the smart board while I am reading. This would definitely help students to stay more engaged and be able to better interpret the text. My biggest struggle, with reading has been the book group time. I love that they are working in book groups and able to have more of an opportunity to explore and experience differentiated text on their own. But unfortunately, the class simply cannot do group work. They do not work well together, they are needy, mean to each other, and constantly off track. I did not give many parameters for book groups because I would prefer to let them do whatever works best for the individual group, but I am learning that for these students I need to provide way more structure otherwise it will be chaos.
In writing, they kept working on their trickster tales and pic collages. I showed them a few other cool things about pic collage and let student come up and show the class things that they had discovered about the app on their own. I think this was good because it reaffirmed their exploring. I'm excited to see the presentations tomorrow!

Day 3 at Hope

Today went very well.  I'm getting more used to using the Mimeo board and making fun Mimeo slides.  My cooperating teacher loves them and the kids seem to also.  The sounds we covered were /v/ and /y/.  I showed two videos, read them two stories, and played a game covering these sounds.  During the story there are sections where the students say the /v/ or /y/ sound five or eight times.  I noticed that the students sometimes say the sound more than five or eight times, so I told them to repeat after me.  I said the sound the correct number or times and I held up one finger for each time I said the sound.  Then I had my students do the same thing. This helped them stay on track and not repeat the sound an extra two or three times.  

Day 4 at Hope

Today my students were very chatty and all over the place.  Some of them were in their desks, some had their heads down, and a couple were crying.  I had to use a lot of classroom management strategies which worked, but it took awhile.  I've noticed that when the students are like this much of my cooperating teacher's lessons are filled with classroom management interruptions.  There is no way around this because Hope believes in 100%, which means that the lesson does not continue until 100% of the class is giving the teacher their full attention.  Sometimes this means that a student needs to stand in the back of the room or stand in the hall during extreme cases.  I did end up getting through the lesson with was on the -le ending.  I had some fun Mimeo slides for them and then I gave them a worksheet.  

Day 4

At the beginning of English class we were experiencing technical difficulties.  The application, Fotobabble, which we needed for class today was not on the iPads.  When searching the application we couldn’t find it either.  Mrs. K tried downloading it onto the Ipods and it worked there perfectly.  The students created a digital presentation of one of their poems using Fotobabble.  They had time to work on their six poems from throughout the week.  They used their time wisely.  One of the students that is normally very talkative was hard at work the entire class time!  The students also took some time to create their poem book cover so we can assemble the books tomorrow. 

We took some time to go through a digital poem presentation.  We looked at a few different ways to digitally present poems using YouTube and discussed the advantages and disadvantages to digital poetry readings. The biggest thing the students noticed was that you cannot hear the author’s voice in certain digital poems.  You cannot tell what they are feeling.  I am excited to hear the students read their poems tomorrow. 

Reflection Day Eight

REFLECTION & REVISION (This part is to be included in your daily reflections after teaching the lesson. How did I feel about my lesson today? If I feel successful, what did I see the students saying and doing that made me feel that way? What changes to tomorrow’s lesson need to be made as a result of today’s class):

    Today went pretty well. The students were in charge of writing their book today. The students and I went around in a circle and wrote a page based off their brainstorming. The students really liked writing their books. They were really engaged and interested. The students even helped each other out with spelling and other grammar aspects. This sometimes made the student who was writing mad, but I was able to calm them down. When we were discussing how to write the page, the students would shout out ideas, but I reminded them to raise their hands. Then I took each of their ideas and tried to condense it into a sentence that we were all able to agree on. The book was only supposed to take a few minutes to write the book, I got halfway done with one group, one book done completely, and one book three-fourths done. I cannot wait to print out their books and give them as presents. 

     There are a few things I would change to this lesson. One thing would be time. If I had more time to work with the students, I could do more organizational aspects in order to write the book. The best I could do is have them think of ideas or write down things in order to be prepared for the next day as homework. Another thing I would change is having the students type. This went a little slow, but I wanted the students to experience the app ScribblePress. They really enjoyed making their own book. They are very proud of it. This was a very successful lesson that I would do with the students again. 

Day 3! -Morgan Lueck

Day 3-
We watched a short version of “The Ugly Duckling” to begin language arts class today.  The students were really engaged in the video.  After the video I asked them if they could point out the different character vs. character conflicts in the video.  I got all of the answers I was looking for from two different students.  This really showed me that they paid attention to the video.  After the video we talked a little about conflict.  I asked each student what their specific conflict was in their stories.  Every student seemed to have somewhat of an idea of what they wanted to write about.  The students worked on their rough drafts for the remaining time.  I walked around the room observing my students, and I made it clear that they should sound out a word if they got stuck while writing.  Many students worked independently and got pretty far during this time.  I had one student, though, who kept sighing.  I asked him what was wrong and he said that he had no idea how to begin his story.  I gave him a couple of ideas after listening to him tell me about his characters, setting, and plot.  He seemed to like one of the ideas, but I realized that he was still stuck on what to write.  He sat at his desk with his hands on his head and his pencil on the desk.  It was a real struggle trying to get him to write.  I knew he was creative, but I think he was just being lazy.  I cannot wait to read some of these rough drafts tomorrow and see what the students do on the iPad!    

Day 3

          English finished early today but the students had plenty to work on.  We started class by watching a clip from the Dead Poet’s Society. After the clip I asked the students what they noticed.  I got the majority of the responses I was expecting.  For example, poetry can mean different things to different people.  I took it a different direction and talked about how God gave us this beautiful world and yes there are trial and hardships but the world is still beautiful.  The fact that we have life is beautiful!  We write poetry because God gives us the ability to write.  I think it really made the students think. 

            I can tell from looking at the students work that they are giving it their all and are a very creative bunch.  Their poems are great and their illustrations are as well. One of the girls wanted to read one of her poems out loud today.  I tried an experiment today.  Mrs. K. had told me that the group had a difficult time picking their own partners and working.  I allowed them to choose their own partner but I let them know if they couldn’t work together or were messing around I would be picking their groups from now on.  They worked hard with their partners and created some great Acrostic poems.