In the Classroom!

Finally I have been able to actually interact with the students in the classroom that I am observing in. The first few weeks all I did was sit there and literally observe what the students were doing, their interactions with each other and the teacher, and watch the different techniques that the teacher is using in her classroom. On Friday though, the teacher let me work directly with the students both as a whole class and individually. In the morning during math, we had a review game in order to help prepare the students for the test they would be having the following week. We played multiplication bingo which worked on their multiplication facts. I called out the multiplication facts and they had to find the product of the two numbers on their bingo board. When the students won, they were able to get a prize from the prize box. Then, for language arts, the students were working on writing a book review for the book The Cricket in Times Square. In this book review, they were required to answer the questions who, what, where, when, and why. Once they wrote their rough drafts, the teacher, the classroom aid, and I worked with students one on one to correct the content, the grammar, and spelling. Once the review was "teacher approved" the students got to write their final copy and then draw a picture that they would like to have as the cover of the book. Finally, the teacher assigned two questions that went along with the reading for The Cricket in Times Square and the students were required to answer these on the classroom wiki. Once the students finished up their own work, the wiki was projected onto the Smart Board where a few students read their responses from. I found this really interesting and beneficial. In class we have been talking about the use of wikis in classroom but I have never used one when I was in school and I have never seen one in the classes that I observed. The kids loved it! They were so excited to share with me what they had worked on. They even took me on a tour of their wiki. Later on, I looked at the wiki from home and found that not only were the students doing their work, but they were also commenting on each others work. I saw comments such as "I love your opening sentence!" as well as some constructive criticism like "I think you need to do a spell check" or "Why don't you try re-wording the last sentence so it makes more sense?" I love the interactions between the students as well as the drive and excitement they had with working on the wiki.

Yours Truly,
Missy