Kacie+Loparto

Kacie Loparto

Art Space Charter 5th grade Observer/helped guide student activities Visit 1: September 18, 2006

I was present during a lesson on adding and multiplying whole numbers and decimals and a mini-lesson on rhyming. Teacher wrote the step by step process working through math word problems. He explained that he puts a math concept on the board and explains it to the class. They are then asked to complete the problems listed on another board in the classroom. They work independantly on their math problems and the teacher walks around checking on the students and guiding them if they need help. Before the class moved to thier snack the teacher sped through each math problem demonstrating how the questions would be answered. There was very little students teacher interaction going on during the lesson. A few of the students were avoiding their work which the teacher described as a math phobia. His view on teaching math is that he gives the students the opportunity to gain knowledge and weather or not they take the opportunity is thier choice. He explained that the SCOS is so short that they have the time to spend on the math topics. He provides worksheets to students who finsh before the rest of the class. I would like to see how or if he teaches math in such a way that makes learning exciting for the students. They were not very enthusiastic about writing rhyming poems with different rhym schemes like ABAB. Many of them seemed to be fresh out of inspiration for thier poem. The teacher read a passage from a book to the students written by a man whose house they were going to visit on a fieldtrip.

10/2/06 and 10/4/06 Lately the class has been working on long division. Many of the students were having trouble understanding the process. The teacher had a hard time understanding why the students where not making the connection when it wasn’t the first time they’ve seen long division. Last time I visited the teacher was explaining that he would work on a certain type of math problem with the students only for so long and then he would move on even if some of the students weren’t getting it completely. This is because he figures that those same students might better understand the future math topics, this makes sense to me. He reasoned that he would have them all year long and that he plans to review what the students learn throughout the year so perhaps when he goes back to a topic that the students were struggling with they might make the connection at this later time. His story changed a little when it came to the long division episode, he was determined to get the majority of the students to realize their mistakes and to “trust the process”. He gives them a fun sort of acronym for the steps in solving a math equation and he keeps reassuring them to trust the process. This is his way of showing that he supports the students and wants them to succeed. It might be more effective for the teacher to try approaching long division from a different angle. Rather than writing more and more problems on the board and going over and over the process there might be a way to make the concept more concrete for the students. Is fifth grade a year where math starts to pull away for using manipulatives and other sorts of math resources I wonder? I found that a few of the students were having a hard time because their math problems weren’t written in a very organized or legible manner. I hear what the teacher is saying about the trust the process thing I think it just takes time for kids to realize that math is very process oriented. The students were finishing up their animal stories. I asked the teacher how he introduced the unit on civilizations. He explained that they began by reading the book Weslandia, looks like a really great book. Through reading the book students get a basic idea of the different characteristics of a civilization. Form there the students decide what the characteristics are and then they create their own made up civilizations. They made their own coat of armor for their civilization and other kinds of art based activities. Then they were asked to write an animal story based on an animal in their civilization. Their story had to have a lesson in it. They were first asked to create an idea web. (One student in the class uses a personal word processor because he has difficulty writing, I had never seen this example of technology in a classroom.) The student’s reactions and progress on these stories were extremely diverse. It was 10 minutes before the stories were going to be posted up in the classroom with their story boards and a few of the students had nothing written. Some who were really excited about their stories were already writing other stories too fill time. It seems like a fun unit/project but I am getting the feeling that sometimes students get tired of working on the same topics or units for weeks at a time.

10/30 Monday

My fieldwork host teacher studied humanities and is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about teaching them, especially history. His classroom is filled with history themed books. By looking around the classroom you can tell that the students have been looking at Native American culture or at least about cultures in general. The host teacher explained to me that he wants to the students to understand just how Eurocentric our culture is. By creating their own civilization the students learn what elements make up a civilization. There are guidelines that the teacher has the students follow; these guidelines help them to create a civilization, where civilization comes from ‘civilized’ as those Europeans who came to America and those in Europe are civilized. Soon they will be presenting their projects in a multimedia presentation. By understanding this kind of civilization the students will be able to better compare and contrast other cultures like that of the Natives and recognize how they clashed with “civilized” settlers. (This is the idea that I got from his explanation). Today the students began to practice entering the stage, at their recess time the teacher has them practice how they were going to walk on stage. Each student was to come up with a creative walk to do on stage in 8 beats. At art space they have dance class and art class every week, I’m not sure how many times per week. It is apparent just how integrated the classes are when it come to the humanities. But I see very little integration of math and science. I visit during math time each week. I would love to see some way that math and art could be integrated into their curriculum. Anyways, I spoke with the teacher today about with the students are learning by way of social studies/history and what is to come. The students, in addition to creating their civilizations, will be learning about the French and Indian war and hey will be learning about the states, Canada and Mexico. When learning about the states they do an activity called race across the states where they will be working with maps (from AAA). And they also each get a state to research and share information about the states symbols and history. They are learning about triangles during math time. On one board the teacher wrote the directions i.e. the definitions on isosceles, quadrilateral and right triangles and how to solve for each. At first I was sort of frustrated with because the students were having a hard time with a few of the problems and I didn’t think the process was explained well enough, but then I started to see how it might be good that they were being challenged to sit with the problem and try to figure it out without having the teacher explain each type of problem step by step.

What evidence (examples) can you gather and share about **how teachers …**
 * **__Visits 4, 5, and 6 will concentrate on how do teachers demonstrate agility and creativity in teaching that is based on their knowledge of academic subjects.__**
 * 1) Plan lessons and instructional activities based on their knowledge of subjects and connections between subjects?
 * 2) Demonstrate agility by adapting teaching strategies to the needs of students?
 * 3) Creatively prepare materials to fit the understanding of students in the class?

November 1, 2006 The students were working on creating their claymation videos. Two of the civilization animal stories were chosen, I'm not sure weather the students or the teacher picked which stories to use; I will ask next visit. (the students all read the stories and voted on two) The two stories were then broken down into about 6 scenes each. Students working in groups were assigned to a particular scene of which to create the claymation. The students created a backdrop for their scene and their characters and scenery out of clay. I wasn't there when the teacher initially explained how to go about making the video. Each group got a turn with the digital camera which was set up on a tripod. They were instructed to make sure that the camera stayed steady and focused on the same point, the students has a lot of trouble with this but once all of their pictures were taken and downloaded and converted with the software into the claymation, they were able to understand why it is so important that they followed the directions. The students had different views on the project some took it more seriously, one student says that he hates the multimedia projects, one group thought they took all of their pictures and it turns out that the students taking the pictures wasn’t pressing the button down completely so they had to take all the pictures over others seemed to be having fun. This activity really gave me a good idea of what to expect from such an involved activity. Although the activity was quite chaotic and students, no matter how many times the teacher explained what they needed to do to create a successful claymation, continued to do things how they wanted, the claymations came out pretty well.

November 7, 2006

During class students were learning about circle angles using the information given by the teacher about the angles and the diameter to try and figure out the missing angles. The teacher called this “circle math” which I think is his way to make is seem less threatening to the students. He kept reminding students that this math isn’t hard, it’s easy, it is simple substitution. And he kept saying something about logic but I doubt the students understood what he meant by that. Many of the students were drawing the circles really small so the teacher encouraged them to draw the circles larger to make the problem easier to read and solve.

November 8

When I got in the class was watching an episode of wishbone about Quasimodo (The hunchback of Notre Dam). I honestly don’t remember what the teacher said about Victor Hugo, he spoke for about two minutes and then had the students take out their spelling flashcards to practice spelling the states and naming the capitols to fill up the few minutes before they split up. The girls went out of the classroom first to make their sashes for the multimedia presentation with the costume lady while the boys stayed in the classroom. A few of the boys practiced their part of the presentation which was to play on the penny whistle. Each of the students was to write a song on the penny whistle and then the teacher read them all and put one song together taking pieces of the student’s songs. While a few of the students practiced the song the other boys just sat around. I asked then what they were supposed to be doing and the teacher looked at me and said something about how they students were missing out or doing something wrong but I didn’t quite get it. A few students read and I asked the other students if they had something to read but within minutes it was time for the students to leave the room. Things move so quickly in elementary school but especially at art space.
 * Thank you for all of these comments Kacie. I hope that your experiences in Black Mountain are better. You are taking away a lot of useful information however......so good for you Lynne**

November 25


 * __Visits 7, 8, and 9 will concentrate on how teachers demonstrate initiative and responsibility in managing and monitoring student development and learning.__
 * What evidence (examples) can you gather and share about** how teachers …
 * 1) Create and maintain a positive atmosphere for learning?
 * 2) Ensure that students are treated fairly?
 * 3) Assess and document student progress?
 * 4) Use information about student progress to shape curriculum and instruction?

I taught a lesson on how to use protractors. All of the students learned how to use them the year before; the teacher didn’t know that they had just learned last year. It can’t hurt for them to practice and it made it a lot easier for me, it being my first math lesson ever. After we practiced together, without an overhead, (it was very difficult to direct the lesson with out a projector), I only had a small protractor and the dry erase board, I had the students draw a house or a tree using the protractors and then I asked them to measure some or the angles. Some of the students really enjoyed that activity. Allowing the students to just do their own thing and be creative with the angles was really important. Some of the students had a hard time with it and just wanted to other things because they thought they knew what they were doing and they didn’t need more practice, but for the ones who did take the opportunity I felt that it was worth it. After my lesson the students proceeded to play this game called Zoombinis. Zoombinis are a race of little blue blobs trying to make there way somewhere I’m not quite sure where. I had never seen this game before this visit. It is a reasoning and logic game. The students really like playing this game working in group of about 4 or five students, taking turns and talking each other through the strategies to get their Zoombinis around. The students learn to recognize patterns and to try different strategies. As far as I know the teacher gives tests in order to get an idea how the students are doing and weather or not he needs to continue on teaching the same math idea or if they can move on to the next math topic. I’m not sure how exactly he assesses the students or documents the tests they take. As far as home work goes I don’t think he grades the homework because you can’t be sure what the students are actually doing themselves and If the students understand the process, I think the teacher would rather have the students work on the math problems in class spending the entire period working on the math problems he posts on the board; he believes that it is important for the student to work through the problems taking the time to get through them using the appropriate processes. He doesn’t seem to give the students multiple techniques for solving problems he says they can first learn it the by the process he gives them and then once they know how to do the problems a way that works every time they can choose to try their own methods. I would like to see the teacher trying different approaches with the students when they have difficulty with certain math topics.
 * Philosophy of Education impacts this very issue. How you view your role as a teacher and how you believe children learn will determine the kinds of activities that children do in your classroom. He was demonstrating a very traditional approach to education which is interesting in that he is in a non-traditional school. Interesting that you didn't know how he assessed children. This would have been a good question to ask! I'm looking forward to reading about Karen's classroom.....Lynne**

Kacie Loparto Black Mountain Primary 3rd grade Math lesson 12/5/2006

It was great to see a math lesson where the students were encouraged to have enthusiasm about what they were learning. To open up the lesson the 3rd grade teacher reminded the students a few times how they were to stay on task, keeping their chosen writing utensil in the compartment inside their desks, and then he carried on to explain to the students what they were going to be learning today. Arrays! She asked them if they knew what arrays were. They were unsure, so then she asked them when multiplication was. A few of the students raised their hands and made their best guesses- “add things” was one student’s guess and the teacher expanded on that idea. “Yes, multiplication is repeated addition.” She then gave them sort of a riddle- Pete and repeat were sitting on a fence, Pete fell off, who was left?” (“Repeat!”), the kids liked that. They also Hoorayed for arrays!!! She most definitely demonstrates a positive atmosphere for learning. This was the first math lesson I had ever seen in the classroom where the teacher used a projector. She used rainbow cubes and grid paper to demonstrate arrays. When explaining certain ideas I liked the way the teacher explained what she was doing in different ways ( i.e. 2x3=6

2, 4, 6

2+2+2=6) that was the students get different ways of doing multiplication in their heads. She had one of the students come up to the over head and demonstrate the next array after doing about three herself. She encouraged the students to “talk to us as you go”, I like that it is encouraging self talk. After doing a bunch of arrays she asked the students what shapes the arrays were in, they had a discussion on rectangles and squares. She asked the class to notice as they were doing their arrays, a patter in the shapes of the arrays. Each students received graph paper and rainbow cubes to practice their arrays; the students made one array at a time and we split up the room checking the arrays and giving the students the go ahead to color in their array and make the next. There was no homework tonight because the polar express was coming to the school, where the school community is invited to go in their PJs. In response to the last envelope prompt so far I’ve seen that the teachers at Black Mountain primary work together before the school year starts to plan out the entire school years theme and lesson topics for each week in each subject. Also last this week and last week each teacher is taking a particular native craft to teach and the classes are going around to different teachers; one teacher is doing corn husk dolls. Historically the third grades have worked together on certain units. The teachers share resources and interact in different ways. A unit the teacher had me look at that they don’t use across the 3rd grades anymore had the classes create a mini-society where they would have a common post office and send each other letters.


 * I’m glad you got to observe in 2 different classrooms this semester. It really gives a sense of how different teaching can be depending on the teacher. There you were at Art Space, a very non-traditional school with a distinctly unique mission, and yet your teacher taught in very traditional ways. On the other hand, at Black Mountain Primary, a fairly traditional school, your teacher was able to get her students engaged and excited about learning a new math concept. It goes to show you that though the school climate has a huge impact on the atmosphere of a classroom the way the teacher approaches the art of teaching plays, at times, an even larger role. --Lottie**