Morning Meetings Pt. 2

In class we do a morning meeting each class period. There have been many great ideas for morning meetings. As I experience morning meetings and collect ideas, my gears start to turn in my head at how I can use morning meetings in my classroom. Some may think morning meetings are a waste of precious time since there is so much to do in a day, but I think morning meetings are an addition of a way to enrich every aspect of the class, students learning, and students feeling accepted. Today my group did our morning meeting with the class. We did it around a theme and it turned out great. Our theme was Disney! I will outline what we did for you:

As students came into the classroom there was a poster waiting for them to read. The poster said, if you could live in any one of these ecosystems, which one would you choose? Listed were four different ecosystems. Ocean, Desert, Jungle, Forest. Students made a tally mark for whichever ecosystem they would choose. This poster was used for the end of the morning meeting.

We started with our greeting by standing up and singing one verse of the song "You've Got A Friend In Me" while patting our legs and clapping to beat. Each student would say, "Good morning _______" and whoever they said good morning to would respond, "Good morning _________". After each student was greeted they would sit down until everyone was seated. The last person would say, "Good morning friends!" and everyone would respond, "Good morning __________" Then we ended the greeting by singing the song one last time.

Here are the lyrics to the portion of the song we sang:

You've got a friend in me
You've got a friend in me
You've got your troubles, I've got em too
There isn't anything, I wouldn't do for you
We stick together and see it through
Cause you've got a friend in me
Darling, you've got a friend in me

We went to the next portion of the morning meeting which was share. For this we did a lightning share asking, "What is your favorite Disney movie?" After the lightning share we had three people sign up to share. We asked the question, "If you could be a character from any Disney movie, who would it be? and why?" Each person shared. After they shared they would say, "any questions?" After three people asked them a question and they responded they would say, "thank you! That was three." 

The third portion of the morning meeting was the activity. We played the game "Celebrity" with Disney character names. We prepared the slips of paper ahead of time with well known Disney character names folded up and placed into a bowl. 

Rules:

Each team has gets to perform for one minute increments.

Gameplay - Round One

In the first round, the clue-giver has few restrictions. He can say anything, as long as it's not part of the name, or a direct reference to the name.

Whenever a name is guessed correctly, the clue-giver sets that piece of paper aside and draws another from the hat, continuing until time expires or there are no names left in the hat. If an illegal clue is given, that piece of paper is set aside and another name is drawn.

When time expires, the team is given one point per correct guess, which can be marked simply by collected the correctly guessed names. Some players also like to subtract one point for each illegal clue.

Keep all of the correctly guessed names out of the hat, but return any that were set aside due to illegal clues. The next team then picks a clue-giver, and play continues until there are no more names in the hat. (Each member of a team must be the clue-giver before anyone is clue-giver for the second time.)

When the last name is guessed, make a note of which team is guessing and how much time remains.

Gameplay - Round Two

After the first round ends, the scores are noted and all of the names are returned to the hat.

Starting with the team whose turn was interrupted at the end of the first round, the second round proceeds in the same way as the first with one major exception: The clue-giver is limited to only one word (which can be repeated). Gestures are also permitted, as are sound effects.

Gameplay - Round Three

Starting with the team whose turn was interrupted at the end of the second round, the third round proceeds in the same way as the second with an additional exception: The clue-giver now cannot speak at all. Only gestures and sound effects are permitted.

Winning

After all the names have been guessed in the third round, the scores from all three rounds are added together. The team with the most points wins.

We did not do all three rounds due to time, but it was fun nonetheless. 

The last part of the morning meeting was news and announcements. We read the poster and made a bar graph using the tally marks from the poster. We talked a bit about ecosystems and which movies took place in which ecosystems. Overall, the morning meeting went well. 

What is Differentiation?

I am taking a class about differentiation. One of my big questions has been, "what exactly is differentiation?" Differentiation is a teacher reacting responsively to a learners needs. It means tailoring instruction to meet the needs of each of your students. Differentiated instruction is exactly that. Tailoring instruction to meet the needs of each individual, which are different for each student. The reading from this week came from a book called, Differentiation in Practice, a resource guide for differentiating curriculum. Part one of the book gives a great example of differentiated instruction, or parenting. It talks about how parents differentiate their parenting for their children because most children are not identical in the ways they approach life. Because each child has different needs, the parents work with each child differently to help them each succeed. We as teachers need to do the same. Each of our students will be different. Some students will be learning English as a second language. Other students will be amazing readers. Some will be struggling readers. Some students will excel in math while others will not understand even the concept of different operations. It is our job to know the needs of our students and help meet their needs so they can each grow and excel. Differentiating instruction will be harder than teaching straight from the book, but you will make a much bigger difference in the success of your students as you differentiate your instruction. Another book we read from this week was titled Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom. It suggests that a differentiated classroom can help all. Students who are learning at a faster pace, students who have difficulty learning, ESL students, students who have "given up", and students whose culture may be different from the norm. The book says that teachers need to take into account WHO they are teaching as well as What they are teaching. Differentiation takes active and consistent planning to help each learner move as far and as fast as possible along a learning continuum. Differentiation is definitely something I look forward to learning more about and hopefully become a teacher that will use it in my classroom!

Morning Meetings

We had a guest speaker come to our class this past week and talk about morning meetings and what they have done for her and her students. I have seen morning meetings be done in a class and saw much success. One thing I really enjoyed about the guest speaker was something she said that really hit me and made me want to use morning meetings in my classroom because of the truthfulness of the statement. She said morning meetings are the only time throughout the day where 100% of her students are successful. Other areas of the curriculum you are going to have struggling students, but morning meetings make it possible for all your students to be successful in something. I will write more about morning meetings in another post.

21 April-My Beliefs

I believe that technology should definitely be used in the classroom. If we don't use technology in the classroom, how will our students be prepared for the future technology that is coming about? Technology is something our students are growing up with. It revolves around our lives and the lives of our students. I believe that using technology in the classroom can make a more ideal learning experience for our students because we will be using what our students are used to.

I believe that technology will continue grow in different tools we will be able to use in the classroom as teachers. As the years go by, more and more technology will be implemented into the classroom. Some things that are already invented, and somethings that are soon to be invented. I know that I will need to keep up with all the new stuff.

I believe that there are some forms of technology that do not need to be used in the classroom. This includes calculators. I know that people rely on calculators and don't use a piece of paper to figure simple math problems out, but I do believe that everyone needs to know how math operations work. Each student needs to know how to do their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems so they know how it all works.

21 April-Lessons Learned

I learned about media mobility. Media mobility is making media accessible and available anywhere at any time and how technology is getting closer to more media mobility.

I also thought the Did You Know; Shift Happens-Globalization; Information Age video was pretty cool. It brought up a lot of things I never thought of. Information such as: the 25% of China with the highest IQ's is greater than the total population of North America. I also found it interesting from that same video that the top 10 jobs for 2010 didn't even exist in 2004. It brought to my attention that we are preparing our students for jobs that don't even exist yet, preparing them for technology that hasn't been invented, and preparing them for problems that aren't problems yet. This means I need to stay up with all the new technology so I don't fall behind.

I guess I'm concerned with how fast technology is moving forward. It is growing exponentially. I am concerned with being able to keep up with the fast growth of technology. I feel like technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but as it exponentially grows, some may fall behind and then will be left doing things the hard way, or will make things more difficult trying to use the new technology.

21 April Strengths and Weaknesses

I'm not a pro at technology, but I do know the basics to some parts of technology. I have grown up with a computer and other technology so I don't feel as behind as maybe my mom might feel. I know that technology is growing though, and that I will constantly have to learn new things to keep up with the growth.

Strengths

*I use email when required for classes, check it regularly, and maintain my folders in an organized manner.

*I use a word processing program for all my written work. I feel like my work looks professional.

*I use lists of web resources and make profitable use of web search engines to explore.

Weaknesses

*I don't know any trouble-shooting techniques.

*I don't use spreadsheets

*I don't use graphic organizers

Goals:

I want to be able to use spreadsheets and graphic organizers better and to be able to use it to help make teaching easier.

The teacher that I did field with used spreadsheet to keep track of all the books she had. She organized them in different categories and recorded it all in spreadsheets. This would be cool to integrate into my own classroom.

Tutorials:

These two tutorials will help me learn the basics of spreadsheet and after learning the basics, I can eventually use it to store data and information.

Google Spreadsheets Tutorial #1

Google Spreadsheets Tutorial #2

14 April- Field Experience weeks 1,2, and 3

I did my field work at Scera Park Elementary. My cooperating teacher was Mrs. Becky Weatherly and a teacher of the 4th grade. My field experience was different than everyone else because my situation is different. Right now I am only doing the program part time so I was not assigned to any school or teacher and only had to observe a classroom for the 3 week period. Because of this I was able to choose the school and teacher. That’s when I decided to go to the elementary school I attended when I was elementary age. I volunteered in Mrs. Weatherly’s class for the time everyone was doing field work.

As I was in the classroom, I learned a lot. While being in the classroom I got to do many different things. I graded papers, helped with all the paper work of being a teacher, I got to work in small groups and with individuals, and I was also left in charge of the class at times. This class was a very social class and loved talking with their neighbors. This made it challenging when the teacher left me in charge because they knew I wasn’t “boss”. As the week went on and the following weeks came, they started to know that when the teacher left the room, I was in charge.

From this experience in the classroom, I learned a little bit about classroom management. I realized that classroom management takes a lot of practice and planning. I learned that you need to know your students and you need to know what works best for your class. From comparing my experience with this recent field experience to other previous times in the classroom, I have realized that each class is different and each teacher is different in their techniques for management. There will be different students with different personalities and from different backgrounds each year. Each class will be different to manage.

My favorite part of the field was working in the small groups of students. When I worked with the small groups it would be anywhere from 3 students to about 6 students. I think this was my favorite part of field because I got to teach these students and help them learn. Since I wasn’t doing the same thing as everyone else in this class, I didn’t get the opportunity to get up in front of the class and actually teach a lesson. Working in the small groups was my opportunity to teach just a little bit. My overall field experience was definitely a good one. I learned a lot of things and took a lot from this teacher that I can use in my own future classroom.

This classroom didn't have very much new technology in it. the technology they had included: a projector and screen, and and ELMO, they used cd players to listen to reading, and they had a computer lab at the school. The technology they had at the school wasn't much different from what I had when I was in elementary school besides the ELMO. I had never seen an ELMO and thought it was pretty cool. It had the same purpose as an overhead projector. I didn't even know it existed until coming to this class. I do know that the amount of technology is increasing at elementary schools and that I need to keep up to date on the new technology. I know that I will need to know how to use the new technology.