Week 1 (Monday September 15th and Wednesday September 17th)

In the morning I was able to see the interactive read aloud and I was
given my own copy of the book. During the interactive read aloud, I noticed
every child had their reading journals with post it notes. One thing I observed
was that some children added on to their illustrations of the porcelain rabbit by
adding long whiskers when that detail was read to them, even though they
werent told to. I had the opportunity to read the book I brought in to read
aloud to them, Sick Day for Amos McGee, a few of the students were familiar
with it. At the end of the story one child pointed out how it was like a circle story,
which I thought was a great connection that I wasnt sure beginning of the year
third graders would recognize.
Ive seen math and social studies only at this point. I dont have too many
opportunities to take over at this point, so I walk around and help children I see
struggling or walk around those I notice are off task to at least help with class
management. However, for the student that I have seen the most behavior
issues with, he really kept himself in check during math when we were playing
math games with partners and I was working with him. It just shows how
problems are subdued when doing an interactive activity that actually holds
student attention and interest versus worksheets.
Week 2 (Monday September 22nd and Wednesday September 24th)
Started a new math unit and a new social studies unit. The math unit is
completely over the students heads, so it was interesting to see. And the social
studies unit is one that my co-op teacher has never taught before and only has
the materials from the previous teacher so that was also interesting. She had a
packet of information that we both felt was pretty irrelevant/ unnecessary so I
offered to turn it into a web quest for the students to explore towards the end of
the unit. This week I still will just be in math and social studies.
I was in a different third grade classroom because my class went on a
field trip. I got to see my math kids working on social studies and worked with the
one child that has been identified with behavior problems. On Monday they
had implemented a new motivational technique, whenever he was to follow his
own set of directions and listen, he would get a dash on a paw print cutout. The
interesting thing that I got to observe is that his behavior was significantly
different from math. In math he is completely disengaged unless being worked
with one on one. In social studies he followed directions and willingly completed
everything. I worked with him one on one with a Map Skills packet that he had
to make up.

Week 3 (Wednesday October 1st and Thursday October 2nd)

I taught one of my lessons for the first time. It was during social studies and
we did a web quest. The students had never done one before so I talked to
them about it and asked them what they thought it was. They were extremely
excited to be doing this. I pulled up my website on the smart board and
explained the navigation to them and how it works and we went over the
worksheet I created. Technology had failed us a bit, none of the classroom
computers or iPads would originally show the website due to a block, which is
when I took the students whole group and explained how to use the website
using the smart board until we had tech support. Another mishap was for some
reason certain items were missing from the website, so the students were only
able to complete half of the worksheet. Only completing half the worksheet had
worked better with the time constraint, so in the end the experience was still
positive for everyone.
This week was also the first week I was able to see language arts. I saw the
reading and the writing workshop, and they have a block of core extension.
During the core extension a group of students showed me the word sort they
were working on. They were doing a blind sort with the ending ing. The cool
thing was that they were able to explain the process to me very well as they
were doing it. I even noticed that they corrected themselves once and
explained their thought process out loud naturally to each other. We were
working on writing endings to their stories so after their mini lesson, while the
teacher was working with one student I walked around and helped the others.
Most wanted help spelling but I told them to try their best because we were
going to work on that later and instead we should really focus on getting our
ideas out. Some students needed help continuing writing so I would have them
read what they wrote to me so far and I would ask simple questions such as
and then what happened next? Or what did you see when you were doing
that and they would get excited and tell me so I would tell the student that
they should include that into their story.
Week 4 (Wednesday October 8th and Thursday October 9th)
I took over the interactive read aloud this week and I did it on the spot, so
as I read I had to decide what stopping points and what to do with the students.
I thought it went well and it made me have to think on my feet which I enjoyed.
However, at my last stopping point which I wanted them to record in their post
it's, I asked them to write down the characters Bull and Lucy and I said
something along the lines of the new characters Edward is with and some of
the students were upset with me because they technically werent new

characters, however they didnt understand that I meant that Edward was in a
new situation with them, and no longer with Ernest. It was interesting to see their
reactions over something like that. That same day a substitute took over
because my co-op was benchmarking. I stayed with the substitute for several
minutes, but it was clear the students knew how to work their way around a sub.
I was able to bench mark a couple of students with my co-op which was really
great to experience and practice. It was a lot easier doing it in person than
when we listened to an audio recording during class. We benchmarked two
gifted students and then an above average student, who happens to be my
case study. When benchmarking it was nice because we both would mark the
papers and then compare what we had. I of course would miss some things,
especially since I didnt know all of the markings yet but it was great
collaborating in that way and sharing what we both thought especially on the
comprehension section.
During Readers workshop we began with the mini-lesson which was
about revising our mental images when we learn new details about characters
or the setting in our books and to use our post its while reading. I went around
and conferred with two students about the books they read, and their most
recent post its and I also was able to use the iPad app Confer, which is an app
my co-op uses and showed me how she used it. While the teacher
benchmarked some more students I walked around to students I havent met
with to see if they were incorporating the new mini lesson, and using their post
its. I noticed that I had to remind a lot of the students what the mini lesson was.
During Writers workshop I sat in the back of the room and did some final editing
with students who felt that they were done their story. I had each student read
me their story aloud and most of the time they caught or self-corrected their
mistakes. The only thing was that I didnt know if I had to correct their spelling, so
I wish I had more of an opportunity to discuss with my co-op exactly how she
would have wanted me to edit the students papers.
Week 5 (Wednesday October 15th)
This week I did some planning with my co-op teacher and we figured out
when my next observation can be and the subject matter. We also discussed
some classroom management that she was implementing into the classroom. I
did the interactive read aloud with the students in the morning and we focused
on the movie in our heads to continue our good practice of one of our most
recent mini lessons. The students are engaged but I want more students to
participate in the future. I also feel like I could have added another stopping
point. I wrote this interactive reading as a lesson and even though it made me
prepared, I felt like I did better when I first took over the reading and had to

make up the stops on the spot. We continued the unit on Explorers during social
studies. One of the strategies we use with the students to encourage them to
follow along, focus and stay on task is to skip key words in the passage and let
the students as a whole say the skipped word. In math I helped students one on
one that were struggling with the concept of mental math still and helped them
use their number lines. We also started word problems so I focused on having
the students write the equation that the word problem is describing. I noticed
that today a lot of kids were having some behavior issues and I think some part
of it had to do with it being spirit week with all of their silly hats, so it was
interesting to see that. A few hats had to be taken off during instruction.