H.)+Spring+2012+-+Student+Teaching+-+Claxton+Elementary+School

Claxton Elementary School - First Grade! I had a unique student teaching experience at Claxton Elementary School in Anderson County. I had the privilege to work with three excellent teachers over the course of my student teaching. media type="custom" key="17510330"

** Mrs. Goins ** I worked with Mrs. Goins for about 4 weeks and then she and her husband were blessed with the adoption of a beautiful baby girl! This classroom consisted of 8 boys and 9 girls. There were no students with IEP's in this classroom. Several students had just completed reading recovery when I started in this classroom but all but one had achieved grade level reading abilities. This was a lively bunch of kids with a lot of ideas that they loved to share. This was the biggest management difficulty with this group. They wanted to please and responded really well to positive reinforcement. Students had to sign "The Book" and lost 5 minutes of recess time if they misbehaved. They were also able to earn a trip to the treasure box if they avoided "The Book" all week.

I picked up two guided reading groups from this classroom which I worked with for the entire semester. I took on the highest level readers, a group of two, on boy and one girl, who were on a level L-M. They were reading books such as Cam Jansen Mysteries and Horrible Harry. We worked on comprehension and summary skills. We used sticky notes to keep track of important or difficult words as well as important ideas in the story so we could remember them for our discussions. We also worked on predictions based on the the title and book cover or predictions based on what we read. My second guided reading group was just one little girl who was a struggling reader. I worked with her on sight words, creating a concentration game that gave her some incentive to work on reading her books so we could get to the game and also to concentrate on her sight words. She had trouble with consistency from one day to the next. We worked on breaking words down, pulling words out of the book with white boards, and magnetic letters, once she could identify words this way then we searched for them in the book we were reading. I was fortunate to be able to observe several reading recovery sessions and to talk to the reading recovery teachers about literacy and about my struggling reader. She had completed one round of reading recovery and was now working in a SIMS small reading group. I tried some movement work with her on days when she seemed especially unorganized. It seemed to help her make better connections. But there were days when she was just off and had a very hard time reading things she had read well on the previous day. She was already an RTI level 1 and there was some discussion of possibly having some testing done for her when she got into second grade.

** Mrs. Minardo ** Mrs. Minardo's classroom is the inclusion classroom for the first grade. I really enjoyed working with these kids! There were 17 total students 4 with IEP's. Mrs. Minardo used lots of positive reinforcement. Students were given a treat for turning in homework, and a treat if they got through the day without any behavior issues. I felt like this type of frequent positive reinforcement worked really well with these children. I plan to incorporate these types of rewards in my own teaching. I did my two weeks of solo teaching in this classroom. I had to move on to my third classroom because Mrs. Minardo got a special ed. intern.

Unit Lesson Plan



Shared Reading Activity - //New Shoes for Sylvia// After a week of activities with the book //New Shoes for Sylvia// students were grouped into four groups and retold a part of the story. Student wrote and illustrated their section of the story, beginning, middle and ending. The Voicethread was created by allowing each child to read part of their groups section of the story. Each groups illustrations are shown as they retell the story. If I did this activity again with younger kids I would probably include a still picture of the child with a recording of the child's voice. I think it might give a nicer finished product. The kids loved seeing themselves on the big screen.

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Mrs. Mallery

Mrs. Mallery has a classroom consisting of 6 boys and 11 girls. I spent my final 4 weeks with Mrs. Mallery. I loved working with this class too. It was interesting to see the different personalities of the classrooms. The different groups of children along with the different styles of the teachers made for very different learning environments. This really allowed me to see that although each teacher was very different in the way they presented the material they were all very good very successful teachers. That gave me some confidence in using my own style because it will work for me.

We got to visit the wetlands with Mrs. Mallery's class. We started a unit on living vs. non-living things and we took a trip to the wetlands with clipboards and pens to record things in each category. The kids loved getting outside and looking for interesting creatures. I was also fortunate enough to attend a professional development session on the wetlands. There are so many great activities that can be done outdoors.

I had an excellent experience at Claxton. The first grade team was a very tight knit group who worked together very closely. This made it possible for me to move between classroom easliy and without a huge amount of adjustment time. These teachers planned together and taught the same lessons each day. Each teacher put their own spin on the lessons but the learning goals were the same. I was welcomed into each classroom and allowed to teach as soon as I was comfortable.