La Comunidad

This past week was short and sweet. The school I student teach at only had school Monday and Tuesday before we got out for Thanksgiving break. During these two days I could tell my students (and teachers) were a little antsy because they were excited about their days off. 

We also wrapped up our unit on Indirect Object Pronouns, because we figured if we put it off until after break, students would have forgotten some of the information we had been going over. On Monday in class, we went over their homework, which was a little difficult, but good practice. Then, I tried an activity to help reinforce how Indirect Object Pronouns work. For the activity, I created several sentences containing indirect objects. I wrote one word (in Spanish) on each piece of poster board, as well as the each indirect object pronoun on each piece. In class, I took a sentence and handed one word to different students. Then I asked them to come forward and unscramble the sentence to make sense in Spanish. At this time, I also gave six students one of the six indirect object pronouns and asked them to come to the front of the room as well. Some of the sentences that students had to unscramble were harder than others, so I started with the easier sentences and we worked our way to the harder ones. After they formed the sentence, I would go through the four steps with them to finding the indirect object pronoun. First, we found the verb(s). Then we asked “who?” or “what?” based on the verb(s) (the direct object). Then we asked “to whom?” or “for whom?” based on the direct object (the indirect object). Then, we asked which indirect object pronoun we would use based on the indirect object was used. After we identified the indirect object pronoun (IOP), I would have the person holding the corresponding IOP put themselves in the right spot in the sentence. We then reviewed the sentence quickly before we started a new sentence. I think students really liked this activity, because they were able to stand up and be more involved in their learning. They were also able work through the steps and see the placement of the verbs as the students moved their bodies around. I was really happy with how this activity went and believe it helped prepare them for their quiz the next day.

Before I had students take their quiz on Tuesday, I reviewed their homework with them and then worked through a quick review for their quiz. For this review, I tried to model just how the quiz was formatted so there wouldn’t be any surprises on the quiz. Although they were doing well with the material, it seemed as if students doubted their abilities. They almost seemed to think that the way they were doing it was too easy, so it must be wrong. So, I had them work through the four sample sections and explained the answers after they were done. This helped students gain some confidence with the material and proved just how much they know. The grades on the quizzes were very good. There were a few students that I noticed were still having quite a bit of trouble with the material, but the majority of the students either made no mistakes or just small mistakes that they didn’t get much marked off for.

Last week, I set two goals for myself: to write at least four dialogues before break starts on Tuesday and to start using the new overhead projector in our room. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite reach either goal. I started on my dialogues before Thanksgiving break, but did not finish with four of them. I will have to keep working on these for this upcoming week. I also was not able to use the new overhead projector because the technology people are still working on getting it to work. I hope it will be ready to go for this upcoming week, however, so that I can start using it.

The goals I would like to shoot for for this upcoming week are to start planning the unit that will start the first Monday in December in order to better prepare myself to teach new concepts in Spanish, and to enjoy my last few weeks of student teaching while I am also trying to set up a job and finish various things I have left for school. In order to finish with the least amount of stress possible, I have to focus each day on getting things done and in order.

The word I chose to describe this week is anticipation. Not only were students and teachers alike ready for Thanksgiving break, but also it was evident that students were ready to be done with the various tests and quizzes they had to take before their break. I also feel as if the staff at Lincoln Hall is feeling anticipation for their new building, which they are working on designing. There have been, however, a few issues they have run into concerning the new building.  The community around Lincoln Hall is upset that the administration has not been keeping them informed of their plans. They feel like the district is trying to do everything without their input, which is making them mad. Currently, the community is trying to sue, because they don’t like how everything is going.

Throughout my student teaching experience, I have learned just how big of an effect the community can have on a school and vise versa. It is essential that they keep one another informed, because what each of them does has an impact on the other.

Parents and families of students are included in the community. While at Lincoln Hall, I have come to understand the importance of contact and communication with parents. Parents like to hear how their child is doing in school, whether it’s good or bad, so they know how they can help them. It is essential for middle school teachers to have communication with parents especially because a lot of middle school students avoid telling their parents a lot about school. Being able to conduct parent teacher conferences gave me a good chance to work on my communication with parents. Of the students’ parents I conferenced with, I can tell that it benefited their child (at least for the time being), because the parents were able to get their student back on track if they were struggling and/or we worked out a plan to help their child.

Parent teacher conferences were also interesting, because we met parents coming from a wide range of ethnicities. There were some parents that had trouble speaking English, which was sometimes a struggle. It seemed as if we were always able to figure out a way to communicate, however, and ended up on the same page. I noticed that many of the parents were extremely supportive of the teachers, which was great, because they realized that we want to help their child as much as they want to as well. While conferencing with parents and students, we were able to work out plans to help promote students learning and well-being. For example, at conferences, I pointed out to one parent that their daughter always seemed to do her homework and participated in class, but it was like there was some sort of disconnect with the material when she took tests and quizzes. I suggested some things to help their daughter and let them know I was always available to help her and explain things further if she was having trouble explaining. She decided she would start coming in to go over her homework more thoroughly and to ask questions about material she was struggling with. We all decided this would help and everyone was happy with the decision.

I have not had much of a chance to collaborate with students with disabilities and chart their progress because I don’t have any students with disabilities that disrupt their learning. I have a student with ADHD, but she is on medication and is very bright. I also have a student that uses a michrophone because of her hearing, but she does well in class too.

When I have my own classroom I will make sure that I communicate with parents often, be it good information or bad. I think it’s important to inform parents on how their students are doing and to gain their trust and support. When the school year first starts, I would like to try to call all of my students’ parents just to introduce myself and let them know they can contact me if they ever need anything. Then, I will try to call parents right away when I notice a student struggling in hopes to correct the problem quickly. I think it’s nice to contact parents when students do well in school too so they don’t just expect it to be a bad thing when the teacher calls home. My cooperating teacher suggests that I keep a record of when I contact parents, just in case they try to act like I never tried to contact them, which I think is a good idea.

In our Schmidt reading this week, I learned even more about the community and relating it to school. The thing that stuck out most to me in this chapter was using the community to connect to student learning. Learning does not only have to take place in the classroom, but can go beyond. When a teacher incorporates the community and students’ lives into learning, it can benefit learning greatly. One of the most important aspects of using the community as the classroom is that students are the ones in charge of their learning. It gives them the chance to explore and ask questions, which they can learn from. It is also active learning, which is always a good change of pace, which students enjoy. I also really like how Schmidt explained community based learning as life and learning being “fused.” This lets students use real world situations and connect it to their own knowledge and learning.

Using the community as your classroom has endless opportunities, which students will most likely never forget. Relating real life situations to learning helps students comprehend the relevance of learning and makes it more interesting. I look forward to using the community in my lessons as a teacher whenever possible.