Audubon Teaching Journal

I was able today to spend some time in 4th grade classroom. Completely different teacher style than my MT at ether placements. Very animated, and very participative with her kids. At first I said “how is she going to rein these kids in” after a rather animated introduction to a lesson, complete with a few celebration rah! rahs! Yeeks. She did it. She got them settled right down with some sorta psychic power or something. Amazing. I enjoyed her style, and her enthusiasm with her kids. Just goes to show you, that you can be effective in different ways. Even a fun way, and still have your kids still respectful, and knowing where the line is drawn.

The game that got them going was a literacy exercise that they do first thing every morning called “Caught Ya!”, which she calls “Gottcha!”. A sentence or two are put on the board complete with punctuation, spelling, and syntax errors. The students job is to correct all the errors. It took a couple dizzying rounds of checking 25 papers before the first student got it all right, and gradually more and more got it. It certainly jumpstarts the students mind and the teachers stamina.

• Math exercise was an area measuring one where teams of students measured a number of things in the room using yardsticks, and rolled up tape measures. They needed to find the square area of the objects.
• Card flipping is used as classroom management tool.
• Class library includes the following authors Bev Cleary, Judy Blume, Louis Sachar, and Roald Dahl.
• I learned the math card game of Salute. 2 or 3 kids use a deck of cards, they take the kings out, the jacks count s 11, and the queen counts as 12. One card each is passed to the two player by the dealer who without seeing their own card place it on their forehead so the other player can see. The dealer does the math and called out the answer to the multiplication of the two cards. The players look at the card on the other players forehead, and does the math in their head to determine what card is on their own forehead. I am making it sound more difficult than it is. Ex. One player has a 5, and the other a 4. The dealer does the math and ay 20. If I am looking over at my opponents forehead I might see a 5. I would answer 4, as 5x4 = 20. Whoever answers 1st is the winner of that round.
• Back in the dyad class Leia did an awesome job on short notice in doing a lesson on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I especially liked how she started the lesson (since this was a theme based lesson on things in December) by having the kids close their eyes and imagine a visual landscape for instance, glistening snow falling, cold blustery wind, etc..
• Tomorrow I will do a lesson on post cards. Leia did one last month. I also hope to work with Tyler, a kindergarten student, and accomplish my emerging literacy project with him.