Letters+to+Dr.+McKool

=Mid-Semester Letter of Reflection=

toc Dear Dr. McKool,

I feel I have really learned a lot this semester so far. I may not have been able to teach that many lessons yet but I feel the observations are just as useful to me. Watching my cooperating teacher command the classroom gives me the chills knowing that one day I hope to command the attention of a classroom the same way.

For the first bit my teacher had me do read-alouds to the children. When I read the books before hand, I predetermined my stops to ask students certain questions at that point (Chen, 34). I also always ask the children for a prediction based on the cover, I think that it is important for children to make a prediction so throughout the story, I can revert back and we can modify our predictions if we need to. The children have gotten use to me asking for predictions that know when I read stories to them they raise their hand and tell me it or tell me how they changed their prediction based on the new information we just read. They do this because I have established a comfortable risk-taking environment, which is very important for the kids (Chen, 36). I find that students love to tell what they are thinking and they get discouraged when they don’t get to share their ideas. To solve this problem, I find that pair-share or turn and talks work great. Each student gets to tell their idea to someone even if it is not to the whole class. Turn and talks as promote deeper thinking of the story through reflection and response (Chen, 35). I really like reading to the kids, I think that even though each kid reading individually is important, reading to the children is just as important. One book titled, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle, that I used had a look of repeating words in it which allowed me to get the children involved in the reading by having them say the repeating words with me when they came up in the story.

The first lesson I taught had a lot of learning for me. It was an English lesson on quotation marks. I used the book, //__Ship of Dreams that__// was previously read during a read aloud, so the students could work with a familiar piece of work. I thought that I did a terrible job teaching but upon reflection with my teacher, it was not as bad as I thought it was. She made me see the positives in my lesson and moved my focus away from the negatives that were bothering me. Because it was first official lesson, I was very critical of myself so for future lessons I can correct my faults. Mrs. Trzasko was very impressed with my classroom management though. Every time I wanted to know if the student’s agreed with each other instead of have them shout out, I would ask them to put their finger on their nose, or a peace sign etc. I thought this was a great idea, but after a while I think it lost its purpose because I used it too much. Mrs. Trzasko offered a suggestion to use thumbs up or down or half way to gage the students and it was easier to look around the room and see quicker. I really like that idea and I want to use it next time. I would also have the students put their hand on their head when they were done with the worksheet so that it prevented them from distracting other students still working or getting off track. I also used hand quotes when reading the sentences, which we learned about in class. This had two purposes for me, the first one being it physically showed students where to put the quotes, and it was a form of differentiation for the visual learners. The second was to keep the students paying attention, they needed to know where they had to use their air quotes, so they needed to stay paying attention or I would notice. I used the document camera for this lesson, and engaged students by allowing them to come up to it and putting their answers on the worksheet. I think students pay attention more when they get the chance to come up and use a cool piece of technology.

During this lesson, I thought that maybe I was not loud enough but my teacher thought otherwise. But I do need to be more animated. The more excited I seem about a lesson, the more excited my students will be to learn it. I think that next time I need to think out more what I want to say to children when they pose an incorrect answer, so that I am not caught off guard so much. This happened to me with a student, and when I gave my first explanation and prompt questions to get her to the right answer, she stuck by her opinion. This was difficult for me because I did not want to tell the student she was wrong but I wanted her to come to her own realization of why the correct answer was the way it was. It is delicate how to prompt and question them into the correct answer. She was wrong and there was not gray area to say maybe you could be right. So in my reflection of the lesson that night, I thought of great ways I could have handled the situation. I think with the next lesson plan it is important in my scripting to add more “what if” questions to give myself a little edge if something does not go my way or I get a tough question from a student. This is where the set up of the lesson plan really helps me out. Scripting all parts of the lesson plan really gives me an edge in teaching because I am forced to think about everything I want to accomplish and what I need to say to accomplish them. It is a lot harder than people think, to convey the right ideas correctly. So when doing the lesson plan if you do not like how something might come across you still have time to go back and change it and make it more effective. In the same direction of lesson planning, guided practice is really helpful. I remember back to my time in school and how teachers just handed out papers without going over the first one or two to guide and model students. So when I did guided practice with my students I thought that they were able to grasp the concept more effectively. It felt great after my lesson when students were by themselves working on their independent writing and they came to show me that they had used quotes in their story and correctly too. This was a true assessment for me that students grasped the concept and could apply it correctly to their own writing. Which was my stated assessment in my lesson plan. After this had happened, even though I had thought I did a not so good job at teaching it showed me that maybe I did do a better job then I had previously thought.

One great piece of advice that I got from my cooperating teacher was to give more reinforcement throughout my lesson, more “good jobs,” and “greats.” I had written these into my lesson plan, but had failed to follow through on them. I also came up with a strategy that worked for me by putting key parts of my lesson plan on post-its on the back of my book that I was showing the students. This helped me keep on task and helped me remember the important points to say so that the lesson was effective as I could possibly make it. After a lot of reflection on this lesson, I think I learned a lot and cannot wait to do another one so I can use all of reflections and suggestions to give a better lesson. I think that Literacy in early ages needs to be effective. This is where they learn the fundamentals for the rest of their life. If they have a poor experience students can struggle with this for the rest of their lives. I also think that instilling in students that reading is fun and a great thing to do at a young age is important. I never had those experiences and I hate reading. Had I had more opportunities to read I would probably enjoy it more. It also shows that what the student does at home is just as important; my parents did not find reading important and did not encourage me to read, until later in life when it was too late. Students need to read and they need proper instruction as early as possible, the more they are exposed to literacy the better they will do later in life. It is easy to see such big effects later in life from little things that teachers do early in life. In my classroom I plan to give students the most opportunities to learn and read so later in life they have positive habits in Literacy and can pass them on to their children. It is also really important to give the students as much exposure to literacy and literature in the classroom because you never know what a child’s home life is like. You cannot assume the child goes home and reads, you have to assume that they only reading they get is in school. By assuming this and adjusting to that you are giving the students the most possibilities to have these experiences in school. Fondly, Michelle Lapointe

=End Of the Semester Reflection Letter=

April 27, 2011 Dear Dr. McKool, This semester has been a treasure trove of ups and downs. This was the semester that I really had to take a look at whether or not education was the career path that I wanted to continue perusing. It was hard that I needed to tackle this situation so late in my college career. I am I the spring semester of my junior year, deciding education might not be the place for was would mean starting from scratch, extra years at school, and more loans. This weighed heavily on my shoulders for weeks, a better part of the semester. At one point, after a lesson that I know could have been better, and an assignment I was not happy with I broke down crying. I could see it in all my assignments; it was something that was affecting me in a major way. Avoiding my feelings about where I should be at this point for so long, I had no other option but to explore my thoughts and come to a conclusion.

I have always wanted to be a teacher. I use to joke I knew my calling before I was even born. The only time I ever entertained another career path was when I wanted to be just like my mother. Needless to say that phase lasted about a week, if that. I struggled with the idea that something I have wanted for so long was too far out of my reach. Even as I sit down and write this letter to you, I am choking back tears a little. Something I have always loved, always was so natural at, was becoming extremely difficult. My first lesson or two were not what I wanted them to be. My first math lesson could not have gone any worse. How could it have got so bad so quick for me? The pressure I was feeling from knowing that one wrong move could make a child hate reading, or put them behind developmentally was weighing down. Literacy in a child’s young years can affect so much of a child’s life. To teach incorrectly could ruin so much. I was not sure I was up for the challenge anymore. Walking to class everyday I was scared. Listening to the lecture meant hearing more things that made me feel pressured, more things I had to remember so I did not ruin a child’s chance at greatness. I would sit there wide-eyed and quiet soaking it in, and trying to sort in my brain, before leaving class with more pressure.

I then started to realize all the reasons I came into the world of education. I wanted to be that teacher that changed the lives of students, to make learning fun, and to give the students all the opportunities for greatness that I could. I also took a look at how I felt when I was actually in the classroom. I loved it. I thrived. I loved walking in and the kids saying good morning “Miss Lapointe, I missed you.” And after a while when my lessons became much better and I could see the success on the faces of the students and in their answers, I felt amazing! I taught them something and there weren’t just blank stares across the room. I even had a chat with a student teacher at Wicoff and Dr. Bulgar one day at lunch. She expressed to me that she thought the same thing, and she failed at lessons too. You learn from it and you grow from it and you keep trucking on. Dr. Bulgar added one of the most important pieces of information that really sticks with me. We are not surgeons where if they are off an eighth of an inch it could kill someone. We are teachers, we get redo’s. If we think something did not go right, we get a chance to go back and correct it the next day, a chance to try again. I then realized that I am in school to become a better teacher, to make my mistakes now and to learn how to be the best teacher I can be. This is my time to take in my mistakes and to reflect, (although you never stop reflecting, it is a sign of a great teacher) regroup and try again. My co-op was also very supportive of me, she saw that I was hard on myself and was always reminding me that this is my time to learn, this is why I am in school. I told myself this is where I belong and it will get easier with experience.

With this going on, I would like to reflect on a few of the things you have had the chance to teach me. I would never be able to write them all down, I may not be able to explain them with justice, but I would like the chance to try. I think the most important thing that was stressed to me this semester was the importance of reading in a young child’s life. Reading can offer a child the world. Even simple reading can have such a big affect on students. I remember the first day of class when you asked us if our parents read to us, and I was the only one standing on the side of the room for no. This had a major impact on me. Both my parents worked and at the time, lived paycheck to paycheck. The last thing they wanted to do when they came home was read something. This is an important thing to remember. Many children today have that same situation and do not get a rich reading experience at home. Because of this it is important to offer children as many opportunities throughout the school day to be able to read. To be able to read a book that is just right for them, and the opportunity to read an anything book just because they want to try, whether or not it is too hard or easy. With reading it is also important to teach children to comprehend. Do not just read the words on the page, but what did you just read, and did they understand it? (R & C, p. 154) Offering children strategies for compiling the information they learn while reading helps with comprehension, one example is graphic organizers (R & C, p. 170). It is also important for teachers to model these strategies so the children will know how to properly use them (R & C, p. 158) Children will never know how to correctly be able to comprehend to their fullest if they are never shown how to.

In order to achieve the best level for comprehension, students need to attain a certain level of fluency. Fluent readers can decode the words in the text correctly and effortlessly. They have correct volume, phrasing, intonation and a reasonable rapid rate, where essentially reading becomes automatic. When this occurs the reader is free to focus on the comprehension of the text, and not struggles on the decoding of the specific words. Fluency provides the gap between word recognition and reading comprehension (R & C, p. 65). We can do a very effective and quick assessment of a running record to help us see the students fluency, and we can take it one step further by asking questions that would elicit the level of comprehension.

Choosing the right book for students to read is essential. If you chose a book that is too hard for a student to read, it may turn them off to reading for the rest of their lives. Choosing a book that is too easy does not challenge them enough to become better. However it is important to remember that it is not a bad thing to read books that are two easy sometimes, as long as it is not all the time and students are exposed to just right books (Miller, p. 26) In my co-op classroom children get the opportunity once a week to go to the media center an pick out a book. This book is allowed to be any book they want. This is to encourage reading no matter what it is. This is very beneficial to my students. They always had their nose in a book.

Vocabulary learning is very important in a children’s life. To make reading the most effective it can be children need to learn vocabulary. Research shows students should learn about 8 to 10 new words a week, to learn them to their fullest potential. Teaching every unknown word in a book could take up to much time, and the large amount takes away from the success of each word (R & C, p. 117). You want children to spend the bulk of their time reading, not memorizing. Reading is a great way to learn vocabulary. Expose the children to books that will challenge their skills with harder vocabulary. A book that take that harder vocabulary and sets them in a rich sentence, with context clues the students can use those to figure out the meaning of the word (R & C, p. 115) However I learned this semester that many of the vocabulary words that kids use come from speaking. It is more common for students to in counter a word they do not know in talking, because they have more opportunities to be in conversations. So I have learned that when teaching it is important to offer students opportunities to talk, with adults and with peers.

As a teacher in training, I completely under estimated the power of read alouds. It still gives students the model of fluent reading and they can enjoy a story. In addition to these amazing benefits, I under estimated the many uses of a read aloud. There are so many mini lessons with so many possibilities that you can base off a book you just read (Chen, p. 36). During read alouds it is also important to know your book. A good teacher will know where, or mark where their predetermined stops in the books are (Chen, p. 34).

Also in the book Kidwatching by Owocki and Goodman, I really got to learn the benefits of how much you can learn just by observing the students. I also really think that the reproducibles in the back of the book are going to be very helpful one day. They really lie out and cover effect checklists and worksheets that I one day might need to create.

In Caulkins’ book for writing workshop, the chapter about conferences and their important was really helpful to me. Learning that conferences are important for the student was helpful because it was something that I had always written off. But I learned that it give the teacher the opportunity to be one on one with the student and teach them a strategy that maybe only that student needed help with (Caulkins, p. 63)

Overall this semester, I learned so much. It was a trying time for me but I think that I came out at the other end a lot more knowledgeable. I learned that like I need to keep working at things to become better. And practice makes perfect. I also learned that it takes years of experience to be just like the seasoned teachers I see everyday and at one point they were in my shoes too. I look forward to next semester in hopes that this is behind me and I can put one strong foot in front of the other as I go through out the semester. Sincerely, Michelle Lapointe