Holiday Lesson Reflection

In IPET we had to make a lesson that had something to do with the holidays. My activity for my music class with 3rd and 4th graders was to teach them the 3/4 time signature and introduce to them how it feels to sway side to side to the beat of the Waltz. Having them sway side to side and count the rhythm out loud helped so that they could actually feel the beat of the 1-2-3's and not just count the numbers out loud. After we learned how to count and feel the beat I gave them all 2 plastic plates that they would put under their feet so they could skate around on the carpet. The music I used to teach them the time signature was "The Skaters Waltz". So they ice skated and danced to the music and the rhythm of the 3/4 time. I think that I did a good job teaching the lesson for the most part because they really understood what i was saying and they had a lot of fun. The only thing that I had trouble with was getting their attention to go from one activity to another. Because they had fun, they were really rowdy and it was hard to get them to sit down and listen to what I was saying. My teacher helped me with that. Overall I had a lot of fun(:

Junior Achievement

On friday November 19, 2010 I was given the oppertunity to participate in teaching the first grade students at Terrace Elementary. I particpated with Junior Achievement and I absolutely loved it. The curriculum was amazing. My partener Amanda and I both learned and went over our plans for what we were going to teach these first graders. Our activities were tons of fun and all the kids enjoyed doing them. Over all I believe that our first grade class has a better understand about how to work with their families in helping and understand money. They also learned a lot about helping around the house, which could be very helpful!(:

Websites for elem. teachers

Seeing and playing these games today made me realize that its not really that hard to plan a lesson. I thought it would take days and days to make just one for one day. But just in the few minutes playing these games and looking at these sites I made a couple mini lesson plans. The first website i went to was http://www.wordle.net/ Its a site that lets you create your own word maze or scramble or word poster with helpful and encouraging words. Maybe even some words of wisdom. Its cool because all you have to do is type in some words and it lets you make your own personal word wall. I absolutely love that and will definitely be using it in the future. The second site I went to is

http://mathplayground.com/ this site allowes you to play math games unlimited and this would help me in teaching and reviewing math problems with them but it wouldn't be boring becuase they would have fun(:

How can a teacher influence a child's development?

Teacher's have huge impacts on a childs live because one, they spend so much time with them. But developmently, teaching a child something will make them look at the world differently. The world will kind of make more sense to them. The child will go outside the classroom and think back to class and say "Oh, thats a bluebird." as something they learned in class. Also, being in high school I can now see that elementary school helped set down the basics of what I was soon to learn in middle and high school.

Day Six

Well, luckily we have not had any conflict issues with the students, teachers or parents so I haven't really seen it all in action yet. But when I do I will be interested. What I did see going to the elementary school yesterday was that two teachers kind of got in a small disagreement but they worked it out like civil adults and they seemed to be totally okay after that. Which was pretty cool because I don't really see a lot of that in high school because people don't know how to act but I am slowly learning how to be come a respectful adult because of this experience.

Day Five

This week we have been talking about communication, body language and how to talk to adults and children and how to treat them differently. We made interview questions to ask the teachers we are currently working with. One of my questions was 'how do you communicate with parents when they are upset?' She responded with, "well because I am a music teacher I don't have many parents that come barging in my door screaming at me so it really is not a big deal." She also told me that a teacher has to be straight to the point and not get caught up in what the parent is saying. When talking to a parent you only can talk about their child and not about any other students because if you were to get into it about another student it would be considered 'gossip' and if a teacher is in on the gossip that's probably not a good sign. I also asked her about how she deals with a misbehaving student. She said that she doesn't really have that problem anymore because of the routine that she has had for many years and how they already know what to do when they come into her classroom and they know exactly how to act while they're in her room. But, when she did have that problem she usually just was very stern with the children. She told me not to be afraid to be too strict with them because they will behave if I take authority. Another thing she said was that I should use 'silence.' If the students are having a problem with talking, which is usually the case, I should tell them that if they dont know how to be silent then we'll just have to practice. So she'll set the timer for about 5 minutes and leave them in silence so they know that she means business. This was a great expierence for me because I learned early on how to deal with angry parents and with misbehaving students and this is something that I will already know to go into a classroom and teach my own students.

Day Four

When you are a teacher, it is important to be "child centered" because a teacher is solely working with children, wether they are older or younger. If a teacher is not child centered they would probably not want to be around children very much and if they were, they'd be miserable. Also, when you are a teacher it is so important to have the best in mind for your kids because after all that's the reason you're there, right? Teachers in our community are held at a higher standard because they are what the children have to look up to and as the kids are spending so much time with their teachers they'll probably take a lot from the teacher, and not just school knowledge but in their behavior and attitude. Where as if there was a teacher that didn't really care for the students and who had a bad attitude towards them and above all didn't care for them at all, the kids would probably get a negative experience from that. Therefore, yes it is very necessary and fair for all the teachers to be held at a higher standard. All the teachers in SBISD have new "Activ" boards. These boards are very high tech and a teacher would have to have a fairly good knowledge of technology. Also, all the kids these days are using their phones and they're all very technologically advanced and as a teacher, I would have to keep up with that to understand everything that is going on in a child's life. Teaching would definitely be an option for my career because I  absolutely love working at Westwood. I love the kids and I love to see their faces when they learn something new. Being an elementary teacher you would have to have set down the basics for what the student will learn later in their life and that's a huge thing. Its so amazing to me and I'm so excited to go back.(: