The Week of October 15

This was an extraordinary week! On Tuesday, I volunteered to help out at Family Fun Night and read a picture book in Spanish. Turns out my principal was very impressed and asked me to help out again the week of Halloween. Then, I was offered a co-leading position for Math Club! To think that they would ask me, the student teacher, was really rewarding. I know that there's a lot of work to be done now, but it's worth seeing students succeed in the long run! 

For the week, we had our usual subjects, but there must have been an energizer bunny in my tea this week! I felt overly passionate about every subject we covered. I'd start talking about something and the next moment I found myself doing something weird and exciting. I even got a comment, (but I'm not sure it was really a compliment) he raised his hand and said, "Miss Sanchez, you teach funny!" In my head, I thought, "What does that mean!?" I brushed it off and just took it in. 

Every Wednesday we have 5th grade teacher meetings during our planning period. This Wednesday I felt like part of the team. We were all exchanging ideas of how to teach different things and I think I had a lot to contribute. I had just finished teaching multiplying multi-digit numbers and for some reason it was hard for my students to understand. So I told them that the bottom numbers were popular numbers and that they wanted to high-five everyone! 
For example: 
 897
x 23
Would be 3 high-fives the seven, nine and eight, but then the two gets jealous and also wants to high-five everyone also. they really liked that concept. The teachers did too. I had a few of them tell me that they incorporated it into their teaching. I felt sooo cool! 
I also had the opportunity to visit another classroom and see them teach math. It's really odd that many people know who I am. I walked in and I heard, "That's Miss Sanchez." I really hope that was a positive remark. 

Something out of the ordinary happened this week. One of my students was punched in the face by a sixth grader. It happened during recess so I wasn't there. But I had gotten really overprotective over my student. My teacher said I had to just let the office handle it. So I did. I told my own students that we needed to focus on things that would help them and focusing on the punch wouldn't help anyone. That went over well. After the day was over, I found out that my student hadn't punched the other student back. He stood his ground even if he looked like a wimp. I'm so proud! :) 

Schmidt
Writing. It's a subject that you like or don't like. There's never an in-between. Many people (myself included) are so traumatized from the red ink on the paper, there is never any motivation to write. One solution Schmidt gives to that is to use "highlighting improvements." She says, "The more yellow, the better." How was this ever a good thing? Back in my day, the more ink the more you had to fix. However, I really like the positive approach she takes to this method. I think this is definitely a method I would love to incorporate! 

Currently, I'm not teaching writing because we are just starting writing workshop and my teacher is in charge of that, however, I since last week, I have been asking them to write out some scenarios in their writing journals. It is so great to have them write something out and then act it out. It has inspired them to write more and more so the skit can go on a bit longer. 

With this being said, I also have some of those minimalists in my class. The always ask, "How long does it have to be?" I can't wait to try and test those minimalists. One approach I've used is to say that I'm looking for "fifth grade sentences/ideas" not third grade. Taking an approach like that really does challenge the kids to do a better job. Standard 6 states, "The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge."

Something Schmidt pointed out that I had never thought about was the fact that writing is a subject that causes the student to be vulnerable. Whether it be mental, emotional or social, they are sharing a part of their life. It's really a beautiful thing that should be used to the teacher's advantage. Being in a placement of low-income, it is really an eye-opener for me to see some of the issues my students are going through. For example, in health I had the students make a flip-book of different emotions and on the inside flap, they had to write me a story about that specific emotion that they had experienced. It had gotten really intense for some and really personal for others.Writing really is important. 

In the students' writing, I have found that they make a lot of spelling/ grammatical errors, but I try not to focus too much on those. I want them to be able to express their ideas without having them focus on their conventional mistakes. After all, the big idea behind writing is " capturing and preserving ideas."