week 14

Last week was an exciting week! On Wednesday I attended an amplify curriculum science workshop at Sor Juana Elementary with my host teacher and the first-grade team. The experience was so rewarding. There were many teachers from various schools that attended the workshop. It was such a learning experience. It was fascinating being in a room full of professionals and listening to their real classroom stories. One key lesson I learned from the workshop was that it is imperative to incorporate read-aloud literature in a science lesson and that students need to engage in dialogue about the topic begin discussed.


I also wanted to share a fun activity I tried during math on Friday. I used the website  Kahoot to create a math game. The goal was for students to answer doubles and doubles plus one equations. We only have six ipads so I had the students work in groups. Ideally, the game would have worked better if everyone had an iPad, but the students still had a lot of fun being in teams with their peers. I cannot express how excited they were to play this game! They were screaming and cheering and I had to actually stop the game a couple of times because they were getting a little too loud. I told them we were going to play the game again so they have to keep practicing their doubles and doubles plus ones equations and something tells me they are going to be more motivated to study!


Kahoot



 Fortunately, I was invited by my host teacher to attend a math workshop/class at the Children's Museum in Navy Pier this past Saturday. The class is called Playing with Numbers I have added the link in case you want to learn more about the program. Basically, experts provide teachers with engaging and fun strategies to introduce, reinforce, and deepen understanding of math concepts through, math work stations, hands-on activities, and math literature. The first-grade teachers at Calmeca were given this awesome book to use as a resource for their classroom. Mrs. E allowed me to take the book over the weekend so I can study it.



This upcoming week will be a short week. We have a field trip planned for Tuesday and on Wednesday we are going to surprise the students with a thanksgiving lunch/party! My goal for this week is to read the Math Work Stations book by Debbie Diller and pick a few centers that I can start implementing right away.

Classroom Confidential 

Based on Schmidt chapter seven, how might you use the community in your own classroom? Cite Schmidt in your response. What are the compelling reasons for doing so? Have you seen this modeled in your classroom experiences?

Our school is in a high crime community area, so I don't think it would be a good idea to take the students on a walk around the neighborhood. However, we can have discussions about our community and I can even invite community members to come talk to the students about their profession and their role in the community. We are also going to the Museum of Science and Industry on Tuesday and I'm already thinking of how I can incorporate some ideas I read in this chapter. I was thinking students could jot done some ideas on an explorer's journal. We can also brainstorm ideas of what they might observe at the museum and then we can get maps of the museum and observe if some of our ideas were correct. We will be visiting the Christmas around the world exhibit. Where students will be able to observe how families from other countries decorate their Christmas trees.