Apache School Practicum

The first thing that I hear when I walk into the classroom was that their was going to be no social studies class, which I need it to graduate. All I could do was cry. That was not what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning. By the time I left, I had a smile on my face, knowing that this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to teach. I had one of my two kids today, which this girl is super smart. I enjoyed every second working with her. Hearing her life stories that she can remeber and that are very dear to her heart were amazing. She did tell me a few very sad stories that I will keep with me and remember, but it also taught me that with my own students to sit and listen as much as I possibly can. I will never know what just listening might help them with.

I absolutely loved the way to write that was shown to us today. I will most defiantely use this way in my own classroom. It helped especially for organization, which I believe children have the hardest time doing. This is one way that students can set up a five paragraph essay and know exaclty where to go without any confusion. I do still believe that there must be a brainstorming step before doing this, but I have not seen a better way to oraganize a paper then this one that was shown today.

We started making our webs and four square for our family stories. I had Laceys two kids today which are much different then my one girl, (One of mine has yet to come to class) so I very much had to differentiate instruction today. My girl is very much on task at all times and just wants to get her story done and do a good job on it and that is what I was use too. Laceys boys LOVE to tell stories and a lot of them. So I really had to make sure that they stayed on task! I did still let them tell stories but there was times that I did tell them that they needed to focus on what the task was at hand, and they did, for a little bit. Before I even got there my girl knew exactly what she wanted to write about and nothing was going to change her mind. The boys had no idea. I had all three of them do webs, even though my girl had what she wanted to do in mind, I wanted to make sure that is exactly what she wanted to do. They each did a web and picked what their story was going to be about. They all started their four square about 10 minutes before it was time to leave.

This was a day of full differeintated instruction! My student that has not been here the whole time that we were doing this writing project was there today. We started off by doing a conference, which personally I feel that it was not worth doing yet! My students had little to none of their story done so their was not much that they could get feed back on. But that is ok! After the conference, we got right to work. This day was the most productive day yet. My girl finished her whole story and was very happy about what she wrote, and my boy completed his web, completed his four square and began his story. It was awesome he worked so hard, I was so proud of him. I took their papers that they had done home to type them!