Below are pictures and comments from my student teaching placement at Brookview Elementary in Warren Township. This is a First Grade classroom.
We implemented Read Alouds multiple times a day, with an emphasis on Critical Literacy. Often, these texts were closely related to what we tried to achieve in Writer's Workshop. Read Aloud texts were integrated across curriculum, including math and science concepts.
Reading and Writing Conferences were conducted on a daily basis. I met with each student at least twice per week to discuss what they were working on in reading and/or writing. We often made connections between what we read and what we write. I provided very specific and immediate feedback to each student during these conferences.
These students are doing Word Work at one of the stations in their Daily 5 rotation. Words included their weekly vocabulary and spelling words, as well as math and science terminology. We also included words the class came across and found interesting or exciting.
This is an example of a mini-lesson I taught in Math. As a result of school wide ISTEP+ scores, we emphasized problem-solving strategies at the beginning of math every day, using the PISA model. This encouraged a gradual release of responsibility to students throughout the week. This particular strategy was Making a Table in order to solve.
This bulletin board showcases the students' inquiry project on habitats. To meet Indiana State standards 1.4.3 and 1.4.4, the class investigated differences in animals' habitats. Students worked with partners to create dioramas to showcase what they learned through research. After completing the dioramas, students became interested in how natural disasters affect habitats so we began an inquiry project which culminated in an invitation on how natural disasters affect habitats.
Below are pictures and comments from my student teaching placement at Crestview Elementary in Lawrence Township. This is a Fifth Grade classroom.
Crestview is called The Communications School because it has an emphasis on building communication skills among its students and staff. In our fifth grade classroom, I implemented a letter writing station between other fifth grade classrooms. This allowed students to explore communicating through letter writing, requiring them to know the elements of a letter, practice grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as well as having a fun outlet to their writing. The students really enjoyed this as an option for writing during Writer's Workshop. The long-term goal is that this letter writing activity would expand throughout the intermediate grades, and ultimately the entire school.
During Reader's Workshop, I met with small groups to read and discuss novels. This is a photo of a Theme Board created by a group who read Maniac Magee. Students differentiate between plot and theme, while also inferring the big ideas or themes. Students would discuss something that happened in the book, and then infer what the theme might be from it. This chart was ongoing and student-led. The best part of this strategy is that the students really took ownership and discussed with one another what they believed to be the theme and why. The discussions that ensued by the end of the book were very thoughtful and purposeful. At the end of the novel, students decided the main theme was a sense of belonging and family because it was what Maniac longed for throughout the book.
