// The Focus Student Scoop \\

**Example of Neville’s writing.**

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Recently, I have been gathering information on a student in my class. His name is Neville and I found certain qualities about him very interesting. He is in fifth grade and he loves telling stories and doodling. However, his love of story telling isn’t reflected in his reading and writing grade. His mid-year grade reflected an F in the category of reading and writing, and I found that interesting since his History and Science grades were such high As.

After informing Madam Hooch that I was interesting in Neville’s academic performance, she started providing me with information on his home life. She told me that his mother was an active parent in his education, and was easy to get in contact when necessary. She also informed me that Neville and another child was involved with a bullying situation. This situation had been going on since third grade, and when the school became involved to determine a solution, each student told a different story. They both explained that the opposing student was the one bullying. With the information that the school had, they came up with a suitable solution. However, when observing I noticed that he mentioned to his friends that nothing was done and that he would have to take care of it himself. Additionally, when I asked Neville a few questions, he automatically assumed that I was going to ask him about the bully situation, almost as if to offer this information proudly. When I informed him that that wasn’t the case, he didn’t say anything else about it. The only other questionable behavior that Neville displays is his gruesome twist on every answer he provides. I have heard how much he enjoys the TV show The Walking Dead and how much he enjoys Halloween, however I have never seen Neville display any aggressive behaviors so he couldn’t have a conduct disorder.

After asking Neville a few general questions, I found out that his father was a truck driver and his mother had two jobs–working in coat factory and working at a museum. I also found that he likes video games such as Call of Duty and Minecraft, his favorite subject is history, and along with other various pieces of general information. Additionally, I asked Neville how he learns best, and his response was that he likes to be active. From this I would think that his intelligence type developed by Howard Gardener is bodily-kinesthetic. All of this general information didn’t provide me with any indication as to why he was struggling in reading and writing though.

It wasn’t until I started gauging his demeanor and behavior in case when things started coming together. During writing or reading, in the beginning of the year, he would often ask Madam Hooch if he could go to the nurse because he didn’t feel well. Soon Madam Hooch caught on to this excuse, and stopped it. Also, I noticed that almost every day I was in the classroom, he had to work on the computer software “IStation”. When I asked Madam Hooch what this was, she informed me that IStation is for students who are below level in reading. They work on this program to practice reading skills such as comprehension. I found this very interesting and thought this was relevant information in my wonderings. Additionally, at the end of every Thursday at Hogwarts Elementary, students break off into their specific RTI (response to intervention) groups. I saw that Neville always left and when I asked Madam Hooch what Tier he was in, she said he was in Tier 1 (which is the level that requires individual one-on-one help). So not only does Neville receive assistance in reading through IStation, but also through RTI.

The only data that I’ve gathered so far about his writing, was his actual pieces of work. One time I was grading one of the class’ assignments, I came across Neville’s paper, and after trying to decode his answers for almost five minutes, I finally asked Madam Hooch what she wanted me to do. After seeing his paper, Madam Hooch returned a blank paper to Neville and asked him to redo it. Throughout almost every paper that I have seen Neville write, his writing almost appears as though it belongs to an emergent literate student. His writing shows signs of this because he doesn’t have spaces between some words and his spelling patterns are similar to students that are in the emergent stage. When I talk to Neville, he doesn’t show any signs of delay and if I hadn’t of known any better I would have assumed he was an excellent writer from the stories he tells.

After finding all of this out I found that it was imperative that I see what kind of scores Neville had received on his standardized testing that would require such extra help. When viewing his scores, I knew immediately why exactly he was receiving all of this assistance. Last year his first test scores–taken in the beginning of the year–indicated that he was in the 12th percentile for reading comprehension. In the end of the year, his test scores showed that he did make progression, however, it was still a worrying number. He had scored in the 35th percentile.

I’m still not sure what is causing Neville to struggle so much in reading and writing, which drives my determination to help him. I continue to seek an answer to this wondering and hope to break the silence of his struggle.

Reflective Questions:
1. How can I help Neville improve his reading and writing skills?
2. What can be done about the gruesome answers, and is it a problem?

// Teaching Reflection \\

When you are observing a lesson or another teacher, it is really easy to just pass judgement on all of the things that they are doing wrong and say what you would do instead; however, it isn’t until you physically take on the task of teaching when you truly understand the challenges that are involved with teaching. On October 8th, I taught a small group of six a math lesson. The lesson was centered around the strategy draw a diagram, the students would then use this strategy to solve word problems, more specifically division word problems. Before hand, I had my entire lesson planned out and I felt confident about the material that I was going to cover. I even included a hands on visual for the students to use involving food. Once my collaborating teacher was splitting up the class for the math lesson, she decided to give me the students that struggled with the homework from the previous night, rather than the students I had lesson planned for. She also told me to go over any homework problems they had before starting the lesson–which I hadn’t planned on doing before either. At first, I thought I would be fine and all would still go as planned. When my small group and I sat down in the library, I decided that I would go over a few homework problems that they struggled with before recording my actual lesson. I realized that this was a larger task than I initially thought because almost every student in the small group got every question wrong. After going over two long division problems in depth, I looked at the clock and saw I only had twenty minutes before lunch. The realization that I would definitely not finish my lesson, made me panic. Even though I really wanted to assist these students with their questions, I had to teach my lesson.

When I was teaching my lesson I felt a bit flustered and rushed because of time restraints. I felt that I wasn’t making myself clear. Additionally, I think because I deviated from my CT’s math routine, the students didn’t understand the process I was trying to explain. My CT doesn’t teach math using “I do, We do, You do”, instead the class all works together along with her. Next time, I might try to more closely match the lesson routine that my CT does so the students know exactly what to do. Also, I’m not really sure why the students weren’t writing anything down because I think that they normally do in class. So next time, I might emphasize writing notes by writing on a white board or an ELMO. In addition, I also was really discouraged when I saw that the young man in the back literally wasn’t even paying attention. He was writing something on his write board. The only thing I could make out was, “I stink at…” I couldn’t read everything he had written, but regardless, it truly makes me upset when I see or hear a student say they stink at something. I feel like he may have thought this because I wasn’t able to fully explain his homework to him because I had to do my lesson. Next time I will ask my CT if she would like me to do a reteach lesson for struggling students. Conversely, I felt as though the two girls on my right and the girl sitting right beside me, understood the method that I was trying to teach. One of those girls actually made a connection though the explanation saying, “I think we did something like this last year”. Also while teaching, I was trying to include all of the students, but after watching the video, I noticed that many of them weren’t really paying attention. I am going to reflect upon various ways that I can include all of the students and have them actively engaged throughout the lesson without embarrassing them.

Before I had even watched myself teach, I felt a little bit like a failure because I didn’t even get half way through the lesson. When I discussed this with my CT, she was explaining to me that that’s what happens sometimes when teaching. You have to be flexible because most of the time things aren’t going to go as planned. She also mentioned that review is all a part of lesson planning, so even though I spent more time reviewing than I initially planned for, it wasn’t in vain. I think that the next time I do a lesson that requires a review of previous information, I will definitely include it in my recording.

After I watched the video, I was actually surprised with my demeanor and articulation throughout the explanations. As I had said, I thought that I felt rushed and flustered, but when I watched myself, I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. Also, I felt as though I articulated the material I was trying to cover well even with the time constraint on my mind. I think that the hands on activity that I was going to have the students do would have worked really well because when I was using the gold fish to demonstrate the strategy I felt as though they were paying attention and as soon as I poured each student fish, many of them seemed to perk up.

Having the ability to reflect using a video was a lot more useful than I initially thought. I actually gained a lot of understanding and knowledge through watching the video. I would like to teach the class another math lesson because I would really like to see how it would go when I can plan better to get all the way through the lesson. I would even like to do a reteach because I think that a lot of students in that class may struggle with math and I never want to see a student get left behind.

When I was teaching my lesson I felt a bit flustered and rushed because of time restraints. I felt that I wasn’t making myself clear. Additionally, I think because I deviated from my CT’s math routine, the students didn’t understand the process I was trying to explain. My CT doesn’t teach math using “I do, We do, You do”, instead the class all works together along with her. Next time, I might try to more closely match the lesson routine that my CT does so the students know exactly what to do. I’m not really sure why the students weren’t writing anything down because I think that they normally do in class. In addition, I also was really discouraged when I saw that the young man in the back literally wasn’t even paying attention. He was writing on his write board something like “I stink at…” I couldn’t read everything he had written, but regardless, it truly makes me upset when I see or hear a student say they stink at something. I feel like he may have  thought this because I wasn’t able to fully explain his homework to him because I had to do my lesson. However, I felt as though the two girls on my right and the girl sitting right understood the method that I was trying to teach. One of those girls actually made a connection though the explanation saying, “I think we did something like this last year”. Also while teaching, I was trying to include all of the students, but after watching the video, I noticed that many of them weren’t really paying attention. I am going to reflect upon various ways that I can include all of the students and have them actively engaged throughout the lesson.

Before I had even watched myself teach, I felt a little bit like a failure because I didn’t even get half way through the lesson. When I discussed this with my CT, she was explaining to me that that’s what happens sometimes when teaching. You have to be flexible because most of the time things aren’t going to go as planned. She also mentioned that review is all apart of lesson planning, so even though I spend more time than I initially planned reviewing, it wasn’t in vain. I think that next time I do a lesson that involves review, I will definitely include it in my recording. After I watched the video, I was actually surprised with my demeanor and articulation throughout the explanations. As I had said, I thought that I felt rushed and flustered, but when I watched myself, I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. Also, I felt as though I articulated the material I was trying to cover well even with the time constraint on my mind. I think that the hands on activity that I was going to have the students do would have worked really well because when I was using the gold fish to demonstrate the strategy I felt as though they were paying attention and as soon as I poured each student fish, many of them seemed to perk up.

Having the ability to reflect using a video was a lot more useful than I initially thought. I actually gained a lot of understanding and knowledge through watching the video. Next time I would like to teach the class another math lesson because I would really like to see how it would go when I can plan better to get all the way through. I would even like to do a reteach because I think that a lot of students in that class may struggle with math and I never want to see a student get left behind.

// Fifth Grade Zing \\

The tone of the classroom was set early on by Madam Hooch today. She wasn’t having a good day because she has been sick all week. Before school started, one of the students, Ron, came into class and sat down. He then took out his Nintendo 3 DS and began playing it. Since third grade Ron has been at risk of failing every year. Some days he will do some work, but other days he refuses to engage. Madam Hooch has been very patient with him throughout the year in order to gain a relationship with in to increase his motivation. However, today Madam Hooch’s patient lacked. When the school bell rang to begin the day, Madam Hooch gave instructions to take out their math book. When she saw that Ron still had his gaming system out she took it out of his hands and shouted at him loosing her cool. Throughout the rest of the day, Madam Hooch had a short temper and I could tell that the students were walking on egg shells.

Even with this set back, the students were excited to start to build their roller coasters for the science Olympics. The last couple of weeks, the fifth grade curriculum has been working in a LDC roller coaster physics work book (FEAP 1A). The final assessment is to build a mini roller costar applying the ideas they learned about including: acceleration, inertia, force, kinetic energy, and potential energy (FEAP 1D, 1F 3B). Each fifth grade class chooses one group’s roller coaster in their class to compete in the science Olympics. The winner is determined by the distance the force of a marble coming out of the mini roller coaster pushes a cup. I was excited to have the opportunity to watch the students sketches come to life. As the groups began their designing process, I was able to walk around and discuss with various groups their reasoning behind their design (FEAP 1E). When I came to Luna and Susan’s group, they were experiencing difficulty with their coaster. The marble keep stopping before going around the tear drop loop, since they should be in-between Piaget’s Concrete and Formal Operational Stages, I questioned them asking: “why do you think this is happening?” (FEAP 3F) Luna’s logical response clearly showed an understanding for abstract reasoning because she said: “the marble doesn’t gain enough kinetic energy before entering the loop.” She then hypothesized a change of design, theorizing to place the loop closer to the initial drop. Susan, on the other hand, was preoccupied with the fact that she might loose her teacher directed P.E. because they were having to redesign their roller coaster. I reaffirmed them that if it came to that, then I would stay in the class with them while their working. Luna proclaimed right away, “that sounds like a deal!” I told them that I would check back in with them so I could see what the other groups were doing. The difference between Susan and Luna seemed as though a difference in their self-efficacy. Luna appeared to have a much higher self-efficacy and was self motivated to figure out why the roller coaster wasn’t working. She seemed determined to be successful in the task at hand, whereas Susan didn’t seem to care if she was successful or not. She only wanted to play outside. This could all be influenced from their past experiences within this field of education. After reflecting on this activity, I was pleasantly surprised by how much creativity and initiative the students had. Also, until today I never really had gotten back such a positive reaction to my presence in the class. The students never seemed phased. It gave me joy to know that the students actually really enjoy me being in there!

Additionally today, Madam Hooch had to finish up assessing the easyCBM reading fluency assessment. She advised me to sit in on the rest to give me experience in how this assessment worked. The easyCBM is a system that allows to progress the development of the student’s reading fluency (FEAP 4C). Every few weeks the school will give the teachers this assessment to give to their students and afterwards the teacher will send in each student’s results. At the end of the year, each teacher is able to see the progress that their student’s made in their reading fluency (FEAP 5B). I am glad that I got the opportunity to see how this official assessment worked because I will eventually run into these types of things when I am an official teacher with my own class (FEAP 5D).

Reflective Questions:
1. How can I help increase the self-efficacy and self-regulation of every student? Even those that aren’t motivated?
2. What can I do to have students think for themselves when asked higher order questions, instead of pulling answers out of them?

// Just Jump In \\

When I stepped onto the grounds of Hogwarts Elementary School, my thoughts as to how the day was going to play out were nothing like what actually happened…

Arriving before the students, I took the silent opportunity to discuss a few things with my collaborating teacher, Madam Hooch. As I mentioned an observation lesson, she–without hesitation and unexpectedly–suggested that I should just teach today for practice. Almost immediately my heart rate escalated. Madam Hooch, sensing my anxiety, reassured me that she would be right here and that they best way to learn is to just jump in. Although “just jump in” is often clique, preferably I like slow, steady, gradual steps; However, even with a slight uncomfortable feeling, I listened tentatively to her explanation of the guided reading lesson she wanted me to do. Since reading is the last subject covered in the school day, I was able to briefly review the questions throughout the day. After she finished explained the guided reading to me, she went even further to ask me (excitedly) if I wanted to teach the math lesson as well. At this point I was feeling slightly overwhelmed, and the day hadn’t even started. Nevertheless, I proceed to ask what they were learning about. When Madam Hooch responded with “I don’t know, let’s go see”, I began to understand why she suggested me to “just jump in”. As we both reviewed the math workbook for the first time, I politely but bluntly told Madam Hooch that I really needed to be prepared to teach math since it can be difficult material for many students. With great relief, she understood. As the day carried on, the time gap for reading was drawing closer. Before starting, I passed out character roles to each group since the guided reading was a play. For each scene the character roles were going to rotate between the groups so that every student that wants to read had the opportunity to. As the class and I progressed through the reading, I sensed that the students were quieter and weren’t exactly themselves, but we made it through and the student’s responses to the higher order questions throughout the story were impeccable (FEAP 3f). There was never one time were I didn’t have hands raised to answer a question. When Madam Hooch and I were reflecting on the guided reading she gave me a few pointers that included: walking around the class to prevent behavioral problems, allowing the students to reflect upon a question as a group first, and various phrases that the class is familiar with–i.e. turn and talk indicates to talk to your neighbor.

After the day ended and I was able to clear my head and think about the occurrences of the day, there were many tips and reflections that were extremely useful.

When the students arrive in the morning, they have a routine to fill out their agenda with the following information: topics that will be discussed in each subject, homework, and spelling words. Madam Hooch informed me that her motherly instinct was her drive for this this routine. It is so essential to keep parents involved with your student’s education, and I think that this is a great routine because it not only informs parents of homework, but also about what their children are actually learning about and doing throughout the day because it increases the parental participation. When I’m an educator I’d like to create a weekly newsletter that informs parents or guardians what they can expect in the coming week. I would include information for volunteering opportunities in an effort to increase parental involvement because research in EDP 3273 showed that the expectations and involvement varies greatly on cultural values (FEAP 2d). Parental involvement can do wonders in a child’s education. It can increase attendance, increase positive attitudes and behaviors, increase willingness to do homework, and increase a student’s academic achievement. This is why it’s is so vital to try and reach out to parents and inform them of their child’s education. Another great resource that Madam Hooch presented to me was a Pandora Internet Radio station called ‘Classical goes Pop Radio‘. She was informing me about how students enjoy listening to music while they’re working quietly, but a lot of the Pandora stations aren’t radio edited (Radio edits are when all profanity is taken out). Classical goes Pop offers the tune of familiar songs without any of the words. I always loved when my teachers played music during individual work, so I’m thankful that Madam Hooch provided me with a family friendly route for popular music!

Questions for further development:
1. How can you get a child to do their work without continually asking, if they aren’t really interested in anything?
2.In an upper elementary classroom, how do you include your ELL students without making exceptions that lower expectations?

// First Day Reflection \\

First days are always stomach churning, but when you have a pack that is in the same situation, you know you have people to support you. From the first few minutes of bring in the class, I felt at home. The collaborating teacher did her best at making me feel comfortable and at ease. To give me a chance to learn all the names of the students, my teacher had us get int a circle and play a name game. The games essentially went like this: the first person said an adjective that began with the same letter as their first name followed by their name-for example, marvelous Mindy-then the person to the right repeated the previous adjective and name combination and then added their own combination. As each student repeated what their previous peers had said, the list becomes longer. Naturally, my teacher placed me last so that I was able to recall each student. This short introduction game was perfect for the students with limited English proficiency that are in the class. In TSL 4080’s textbook, The Cross-cultural, Language, and Academic Development Handbook – A Complete K12 Reference Guide, there is a strategy of having every student pronounce their name when schools starts. This mitigates the pressure ELL students may have of mispronouncing their peers names or their peers mispronouncing theirs. (FEAP 2d, 2e, 2f) Creating a safe and respectful environment can do wonders on ELL students. When any individual feels safe within a classroom, they’re much more likely to participate and be engaged with classroom interactions, activities, and lessons.

When my collaborating teacher handed me their weekly schedule, I examined the time slots allocated to each subject. I became concerned when I saw the amount of time was assigned to Social Studies. On Mondays, Social Studies is a thirty minute period; the remaining four days each have a twenty-five minute time slot. I’m not sure who is responsible for creating a teacher’s daily schedule-whether it be the county, the school, or the teacher them self-but I believe that Social Studies isn’t an academic elective. If I wasn’t able to control the amount of time that each subject is given, then I would cross my Social Studies content material into various other lessons throughout the school year. (FEAP 2g, 1b) As the year goes on, I am going to observe if my collaborating teacher uses the cross content strategy within her classroom.

Throughout the day, as the class walked in a line, my collaborating teacher would either comment on how wonderful her “fabulous fifth grade line” or question the students where her “fabulous fifth grade line” was. Her explanation of her frequent line management strategy was actually a tip, educator to educator. She was advised while she was an intern that a teacher’s line is a clear indicator of their classroom management skills. (FEAP 2b, 2c) Although I have observed within an elementary classroom before I never had the chance to examine any classes walking in a line. I think that her tip has real meaning behind it, if a class is having behavior problems while walking in a line, how is their behavior while in class? This is one suggestion that I will definitely carry out in the future.

Towards the end of the day was when their reading lesson was scheduled. During this time my teacher would work with students individually was the remaining students were to work on an assigned analysis task. The class was instructed to either work on their math homework or read if they finished their in-class analysis assignment. Although to a studious student this may seem like a perfect opportunity to finish their homework or catch up on reading, in reality every individual has different attention spans. As the case played out, many students finished their analysis, however very few of them stayed on task afterwards. It got to the point that my teacher first asked me to go around and ask each table how they were staying on task. Then as the talking didn’t stop, she asked me to hand out their version of token economy to students that were on task. I think what could have been done to keep students on task would be to implement the strategy of The Daily 5. RED 4312’s textbook, The Daily 5, describes how a classroom can stay on task with minimal sound level by having the students rotate tasks of their choice as their attention span starts dwindling away. By continually changing the task when the students start getting distracted, it creates an environment that doesn’t allow students too loose focus altogether. (FEAP 2a, 2b, 2c) Implementing this strategy into the classroom would foster an environment where students are able to be independent while the teacher works with students individually.

Knowing that this is only the beginning is an exhilarating feeling. I already know that this journey will provide me with the opportunity to uncover the most effective strategies, activities, and management skills that will guide my future students to success.