Marymount Week Three

Ah! I just look so forward to going to school every day! The kids are just so adorable and so silly. This is definitely showing me that I definitely want to do the older kids. My favorite part of the day is reading to them. We are reading Tale of Desperaux. It's cute! It makes me think that maybe I want to be a librarian later in life! hehe! Today, Monday, during social studies we were analyzing quotes for Confucius. And my teacher and I really had no idea what one of the quotes meant and of course these kids are just so brilliant and they told us what they thought it meant and they were so on point! Today I also got to watch a DRA for a student who really struggles with english and reading. He was really good at the oral reading but he really struggled with comprehension. Part of me thinks that maybe he understand things when he reads them out loud, but doesn't understand it at all when he reads to himself. I found that very interesting. I also gave them a spelling test and I graded them and they did very well! But I do notice that the boys are very aggressive with each other!
On Tuesday, my teacher did a huge nonfiction reading lesson. She follows the Lucy Cawkons book. The main point of this book is that you, the teacher, model the thing you want the students to learn, then you do it together with the class, then you send the students to their seat to do it on their own, (while they are doing it on their own you are suppose to go around and make sure they are on track), and then you bring the class back together and get someone to show how they were able to successfully do it. For her lesson, she was showing the students that when they read nonfiction they become like "little teachers." They all did a great job! During math, we were learning how to draw an angle for and obtuse, acute, and right angles. Then we worked on polygons and perimeters. I really like how my teacher puts a quick review on the board each afternoon to check to make sure the students know what they learned the previous day! That is something I definitely would want to implement in my own classroom. I also did a DRA with one of my lower level reading students. When the student was doing the oral reading part, I think he was really focused on speed because after he finished he kept asking me "how fast did I go." Sometimes I wonder how accurate some of these literacy test really are. I just don't understand how students can all around the world can be ranked in a certain number. Although I do think they are necessary because students need to be placed in accurate reading level. Hmm...I dunno...clearly I am still forming opinions about these tests.
On Wednesday, my students had a orchestra recital. It was adorable! There were all different skill levels but they all did a wonderful job! There were violinists, pianists, and a trumpet player and singer! Just the fourth grade classes were there and there parents of the kids who were performing. Following the recital, the students worked on letters and they continued to work on their news reports about an event from school. They have to get quotes from various students and teachers. I think this is a very cute idea. I also think it would be fun if they ended up placing them in a newsletter format just for the class! Then we played "Sporkle" This is a game to learn their spelling words. The students are standing in a circle and then I give them the spelling word. The first student says the word, the second student says the word in a sentence, then each student around the circle says one letter to spell out the word. I love this activity and students get really into it! Then during math, we worked on cylinders, spheres, triangular prisms, square pyramids, and triangular pyramids. We were finding the faces, edges, and vertices.  Then I got to make a math test for the students! That was really fun, and it made me get a real feel for what it is like to be a teacher to make a test!