WOW it has been a while!! I am so excited to finally be able to write a blog post about all the amazing things I am now getting to do in my practicum! Let’s start with some background information. The last week I went to Jere Whitson before Christmas break, my cooperating teacher and I had a conversation about what the spring semester would look like for me. She said that she wants to take advantage of the time that I have and therefore asked me to teach every Monday and Wednesday that she doesn’t have something for me to do. She said that it doesn’t need to be a prepared lesson every single day because I am still in high school, but that I can work with small groups and/or the whole class and do activities to strengthen their current struggles. My first topic was sentence fluency/comprehension. The students are having difficulty with reading a complete sentence and understanding it. Luckily, there are numerous activities, worksheets, and crafts that have to do with sentences. Here’s how this week of teaching went:
Monday I asked to be placed in a small group during RTI to work closely with a few students. Prior to class, I created a simple foldable from blank paper. I folded it into five sections horizontally so that each student could write a sentence in the space provided. I passed out the folded papers (which the kids thought was SO cool) and instructed the students that I would write words in a random order on my whiteboard and they had to unscramble the sentences. Another thing that the first graders are currently mastering is recognizing capital letters and punctuation marks and where they go in the sentence. With that being said, I put one word with a capital letter and one with a period at the end along with a couple other words for the students to choose from. I worked through the first one with them and for the next four, they figured it out as a group. Not only did this activity help in understanding the order of sentences, but it also strengthened their ability to write a comprehensive sentence with a capital letter and punctuation mark. My favorite part of the time I spent there was when a girl from my small group ran over to her teacher and said “Mrs. Whitney! That was so much fun with Miss Megan!!”
Wednesday I came in prepared to do a fun worksheet about sentences (it was a dog themed activity) but I was asked to work one on one with a student who wasn’t receiving help at home. Normally at the beginning of class, I help with morning work but today I got Play Dough and letter cutters and worked with a student to practice the spelling words for this week. After that, my mentor teacher wanted to jump ahead to the read-aloud portion of Skills because I was available to help. In my small group, I read the page for the students and then we reread it together by letting each person read two or three sentences by themselves. I typically have to leave before they get to the read-aloud section of Skills so being able to work with students on reading and understanding was a very cool experience.
This week was so much fun and I truly look forward to Jere Whitson every week. It is little things like teaching a small group that make me confident that I am positively a future primary educator!
Positively Primary 