How Do Children Learn?

Preservice teachers are always finding creative ways to teach the students, while still following common core and the curriculum, but do they really understand how children learn?

When teaching new vocabulary I always want to try to connect to the child's prior knowledge or background. Anytime I can hook onto something they already know, I know they will learn something new. I will go over the words again and again and again and have them use the words repeatedly. I want them to be able to speak and write the words. I teach explicit strategies through word work for example. By using new to known, repetition in context, deeper processing, use/application and explicit strategies I'm confident students will learn new words.

Thank you Dr. Slattery!<-------Helped me to understand how children learn : )

Kindergarten

Each semester for school we are to complete 35 hours in a classroom. I happen to be placed in a kindergarten class and I absolutely love it! Not only do I love this grade but the teacher I am with is amazing. I'm hoping I'll be given the opportunity to student teach with her next spring. She's going to be the perfect mentor teacher for me as it seems our philosophies in education are very similar. 

This year has been has been mind-blowing! It's the first time I had the chance to be with the kindergartners from when they first arrived to school to the near end. I can't believe all that they have accomplished. I mean some of these kids went from not knowing letters of the alphabet to reading books! I enjoy the time I get to work one on one with the students, improving their reading and writing skills. Each week I am given a lesson plan with a word chunk focus that I work on with different students. I go onto Pinterest, of course and look up all the different activities that relate to the word chunks. Here are a few of my recreated examples that I did with the students:

When the students did this activity, only the picture would be showing and the word would be covered by folding the paper over and clamping it with a clothes pin. The students knew their focus was on -all words, so they had to look at the picture to figure out what the the -all word was. Once they thought they knew what it was they would make the word then write the word. When they finished making and writing the word they could undo the clothespin to see if they had the correct word. 

Here the students worked with -sh words. They would look at the picture and then write out the word in the sound boxes. I was excited when the students were able to identify the -ar sound in shark because that was a sound we had worked on a few weeks before this.

The students and I had already worked on the -or words, so here the students had to choose if the word had -ar or -or in it by saying the picture that was on the popsicle stick. They would place the clothespin with the star over the -ar or -or. You could make this a self correct activity by placing a red dot on the other side of the popsicle stick behind the correct answer. I'm not a fan of self correct, I would probably have them fill out a graphic organizer and then I'd  look at their answers instead.You can get them from http://www.classroomdiy.com/2013/02/r-controlled-vowel-sticks.html

I also wanted to share what I experienced while at my placement. A couple weeks ago the school had a major water break! Thankfully a church in the community welcomed the students and teachers to resume teaching there for almost two weeks. The teachers did a terrific job with adjusting to their new temporary classrooms. While they weren't quite able to follow the curriculum, they still focused on common core standards. Lets just say I saw adaptation at its finest. The students even did a wonderful job with the adjustment. One student said she wished they could have school at the church everyday.

CAAEYC Conference 2015

At Shippensubrug University I am a member of the club SU CAAEYC. SU CAAEYC is a branch of CAAEYC, which stands for Capital Area Association for the Education of Young Children. CAAEYC is then a chapter of NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children). Each year CAAEYC holds a local conference that serves as a professional development for educators. 

CAAEYC Mission Statement

The purpose of the Capital Area Association for the Education of Young Children (CAAEYC) is to enhance the lives of children by providing support for adults working with or on behalf of young children.

more can be found at www.caaeyc.org

Group Photo of us SU CAAYEC members at the conference

The conference was held at Messiah College. Registration started around 8:00 and after you registered you were able to go enjoy a complimentary breakfast in the cafeteria. At 9:00 the first session began. My schedule looked something like this:

8:00-9:00 Registration/ Breakfast

9:00-11:00 First Session: 

STEAM: This was my favorite session from the conference. I already knew about STEAM and what it meant (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math), but this session gave me ideas to incorporate  into my future classroom. Activities that we did included:

Math- Addition Towers: 

Here you would have students use blocks to build two towers (size depending on age group). After building the towers they would count the number of blocks in each and then create an addition sentence using those numbers. So for example if the first tower had 4 blocks and the second had 5 their addition sentence would look like 4+5= or 5+4=. They would then combined the two towers to make one. After they had the one tower created they would count the number of blocks in that tower. This would show them that the 4 blocks from their first tower plus the 5 blocks from the second would equal 9.

Science- Magnetic Painting:

We took paint and put it onto a cookie sheet, then put something metal on top of the paint. When we put a magnet under the cookie sheet, right underneath the metal object we were able to move it all around causing it to swirl the paint around the cookie sheet. 

Engineering- Gum Drop Structures:

We had to build a structure given 10 gumdrops and 20 toothpicks that would be strong enough to support a large textbook. 

Here was my gumdrop structure:

Art- How do you turn a drawing of a show into a fish?

After tracing a shoe onto paper you could use crayons, colored pencil or paint to make it look like a fish. A book that I thought was super cute that they paired with this activity was called, Swim Swim by  Lerch.

Technology- Web Cam Zoo Keeping

We watched a panda live at one of the local zoos from a webcam. The idea of this would be to check to see what the panda was doing throughout different times of the day and to record the pandas behavior on a chart. This could be done with any animal that was available on the webcam. 

After we completed these small activities were had to do a group challenge. Each group had to pick 3 supplies to use and try to create the highest structure. My group chose paper plates, styrofoam cups and wooden spoons. We didn't use the wooden spoons, however we did use the paper plates and styrofoam cups and won the challenge!!

11:00-1:30 Lunch/ Keynote Speaker:

The keynote speaker was Jason Kotecki. He's a writer from Wisconsin and let me just say he is hilarious!!! He had me in tears, he was so funny. He talked about how once we become adults we often suffer from adultitiss. He wants to help us adults realize that sometimes it's ok to be a kid again and to laugh while having a good time. You should defiantly check out his books. He has a new book coming out June 23, 2015!!

1:30-3:45 Second Session: PA One Book, Every Young Child-

My second session was suppose to be Reading Between the Lines, but unfortunately it was canceled. I ended up attending a session called 2015 PA One Book, Every Young Child. Each year the program chooses one book that they hope will reach every child in PA that year. This years chosen book was Number One Sam by Greg Pizzoli. For this session we talked about how this book could be used across all curriculum areas for different age groups. A kit is made to go along with each book to help get the readers be engaged and to become interactive with the book. These kits are only available through local libraries, but can be borrowed to become a great asset in the classroom. The kits often include games, manipulatives, big books, etc. 

This was the second CAAEYC conference that I attended and each time I go I find it to be beneficial. While sometimes the sessions end up being on something I already have knowledge about, I still find myself learning more information to build onto what I already know.

Grammar Matters

Last Saturday I attended a presentation on the book Grammar Matters by Lynne Dorfman and Diane Dougherty. These two ladies are amazing at teaching grammar. Grammar is something I've always struggled with, but just by attending this presentation and reading the book my confidence with grammar has improved significantly. I always wondered how I would go about teaching grammar so my students would really understand it and so it was relevant to them. Grammar Matters provides numerous amounts of activities and little lessons to use when teaching grammar in the context of reading and writing. Now I'm excited to have the opportunity to teach grammar!

Tips for teaching grammar:

• Teach grammar in the context of reading and writing Grammar should not be taught in isolation. You can use mentor texts to demonstrate how writers use grammar throughout their writing. 
•  Learn what your students need by examining them as readers and writers When embedding instruction on grammar you should look to see what it is that the students need to learn. These lessons can be taught to the entire class if they are on errors that are repeated and frequent among a significant number of students in the class. Mini lessons with small groups can be done for students who have errors that are not seen as frequently among other students in the class. 
• Community Building This must be a continuous priority throughout the year. This community helps with student relationships and gives them a better chance of becoming committed readers and writers. They begin to learn from one another during shared writing and peer conferences. During shared writing time ask the students to share something that a peer had tried out that they would like to try, too. 
• Reflections Before sending the students to work on their writing independently be sure to discuss what it is they are to be thinking about while writing. This will be the grammar focus from the lesson. Now when they go to share their reflection on their writing, it will be relevant to the lesson. This will show what it is they have learned about writing/grammar and how they applied it to their writing. Reflections can be used as a closing for a lesson or it can be used to make an anchor chart to record the students' thinking. 

Teaching Grammar develops a love of words and learning grammar means learning the language of literacy<3

I highly suggest reading Grammar Matters, to learn how to teach grammar in an effective way to our young writers. 

Busy, Busy, Busy....

I have been crazy busy with school, clubs, work and taking care of the little one! I finally found the time to sit down and do a blog post on this snowy day (I wish this snow would be over with already!!). So I have a ton I want to talk about!

Persuasive Writing Lesson

On Tuesday I presented my mentor text lesson to one of my education classes. It was for second grade students learning about how to be persuasive and to write persuasive pieces. When creating the lesson we had to focus on teacher prompts and we had to include an activating strategy in the beginning and a transition at the end of the lesson. 

The book I used for the persuasion writing lesson was Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin.

My activating strategy (how to get the students engaged in the lesson) was me acting as if I was a student trying to persuade my teacher to get a pet hamster for the classroom. 

After the activating strategy I explained to the class what persuasion was and then we went over how to persuade people. We focused on using the signal word because and then coming up with strong supporting reasons that go along with what we are trying to persuade our audience to do.

Some teacher prompts used in the lesson plan were:

Content Prompts: Telling the students what persuasion was. 

Rehearsal Prompts: Turn to your table partner and discuss a time when you tried to persuade your parents to do something. 

Praise Prompt: Good... I heard some of you say you wanted a later bedtime or to have McDonalds for dinner.

Strategy Prompt: (using the book) Here is a note from the cows to the farmer. While we read the note listen for what the cows are trying to persuade the farmer to do. (strategy prompts could be used as a think aloud.)

For the transition to wrap up the lesson I told the class we were going to take a vote on something we could use for our classroom.  I asked the class to come up with one thing we could use for our classroom and to make sure they use their signal word because and then to follow up with three supporting reasons. After going over this, the class was then asked when would you need to try to persuade somebody and why?

When going back and reflecting on how the lesson went I realized that I need to work on not reading right from the script I had written out and to just go with the flow. This will allow me to interact with the book more and t not seem so stiff. (I was nervous since this was my first time teaching a writing lesson.) I also want to find more ideas on classroom management. I was teaching the lesson to adults and they still got off task!! 

Book Club

I was sad book club was canceled on Tuesday due to weather conditions, but we did receive our books orders yesterday! #goscholastic I got these great books for super cheap! You probably recognize some of these award winners!! I even got my hands on the book I used for my persuasive writing lesson for only $1!

I also finished The World According to Humphrey. We did our readers theater skits and recorded them during our last meeting. I can't wait to see how those turned out. We also made a short video about how readers theater benefits children which I talked about a few posts ago. I am now reading the clubs next book Sahara Special by Esme Raji Codell.

Grammar Matters 

This saturday I will be attending the Franklin County Reading Council's Grammar Matters Lessons, Tips and Converstations presentation which will be presented by Lynne Dorfman and Diane Dougherty. I am super excited for this presentation because the book, Grammar Matters by Lynne Dorfman and Diane Dougherty talks about using mentor texts to help teach grammar. I love anything that involves using mentor texts!!

I'll let you know how it goes and I'll even share a few of my favorite tips!