I'm Grouchy When.......

• I have used The Grouchy Ladybug in connection with the California State Standards for telling time. I am a Kindergarten/first grade teacher and have found the book to be a great source for teaching time. I have the students each make a small clock at the beginning of the year. They are time keepers for the rest of the year, taking note of our assembly or special occasion times. The book lends itself to telling time by the half hour which is perfect for our needs.  
  We also did many ladybug activities and art projects.  The one and am going to share was exploring the concept of "Grouchy" and the different things that make you feel grouchy.  Each student colored their own ladybug.  We sat in a circle on the rug and each student had a turn using the microphone to make a complete sentence about what makes them grouchy.  I took notes and later typed them up to be added to a bulletin board about all the different things that made the children grouchy.  Here are some silly little things that made our class grouchy.  Hope you enjoy!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Grassy Guys

I love to plant the seeds of science in my classroom.  I can't think a better way to do this than to get our hand dirty and learning while doing.  Gardening provides magical opportunities for students to learn hands on science as they explore the outdoors and watch a seed grow to food.

This unit, we having been learning about the parts of the plant and what a plant needs to grow.  We have been learning that a plant needs soil, seeds, water, sun and love to grow strong and healthy.  We have also been learning about the life cycles of seeds and critters, how to respect our environment, the seasons, weather and much more.  

Meet our grassy guys.  I recycled all the milk cartons from breakfast time, brought in some good organic soil, purchased some grass seeds, and let the children decorate the eyes, nose and ears of their grassy guy or gal.  Here is what we came up with.  

Everyday the students are responsible to take their guy out to the sun, give it a little water, lots of love and watch it grow.  We also made hypothesis' about what would happen if we did not give a grassy guys water, love, soil or sun.  Students were able to see first hand that the grass did not grow as well if these important ingredients are left out.

It took about 1 week for the grass to start growing.  The students were so excited to see the grass growing.  At about 2 weeks I let each student give their grassy guy a hair cut.  They loved this activity!

As you can see, some left their hair long, others got a mohawk, and some even got a buzz cut.  We had these displayed for open house and students were able to take them home that night.

My Student Teaching Experience

Wow!  My student teaching has been rich with experiences.  I feel that I am leaving this experience with many tricks and tools to stash in my teaching toolbox of wisdom.  This experience has been incredibly rewarding.  I have been able to apply much of what I have learned as an elementary education student at National University to develop effective and engaging strategies in both my Kindergarten and 4th grade classrooms.  The areas of success within my experience involve creating a warm, safe and welcoming school environment, a positive rapport with students, differentiated lesson designs and implementations, effective classroom management strategies, effective types of assessment strategies, and practicing multiple modes of instruction.

I feel that there were many experiences this year
that have had a strong impact on what I will do in my future classroom.  Throughout my student teaching experience I sought out to design lesson plans based on the individual needs of each student.  To design these lesson plans, I conducted different assessment techniques to see what strength and weaknesses each student possessed.  Also, within my lesson plans, accommodations for students who were advanced and those who were struggling were always employed in each lesson.  My student teaching experience gave me first hand experience with how to successfully design instruction so that all types of learners are reached.  I feel that I am now comfortable organizing ideas through graphic organizers, creating cooperative learning groups, conducting ongoing assessment and creating visual rich displays to help language learners to successfully follow along.  I frequently spoke with students one-on-one, fostering a caring and welcoming environment while at the same time discovering individual learning needs and styles.  The students were comfortable approaching me as well as one another for help and input, an essential element to any successful learning environment.

This year I experienced creating, designing and delivering inquiry, technology based lessons.  I was lucky to have a Smart Board in my classroom and feel that it is a very valuable tool for teaching in this day in age.  Students always seemed very engaged in my interactive lessons.  They loved being able to take a turn and come up to the Smart Board to manipulate the answers.  100% of my students this year were English language learners (ELL) so the Smart Board contributed to their English Language Development (ELD).  I just hope that in my next teaching assignment I will be one of the lucky teachers who will have access to this tool of technology.

Classroom Management Techniques for Unmotivated and Disruptive Students

     While there are a number of different philosophies of behavior management, I feel the most important aspect is to have a discipline design that is carefully planned and easy to execute.  Classroom management starts on the first day of school when the students walk through your door.  I believe is important to  create a learner-friendly environment right away. I will strive to create a pleasing environment for students to grow in and if you invest time to get to know them for who they are, I feel like classroom management will be much simpler because you will have gained the students’ respect.
      However, an unruly classroom can begin with just one unengaged student and escalate into total classroom disruption.  I believe that keeping students active and engaged makes managing a classroom much easier. I have found that it is those students who are acting out and disrupting the lesson that are yearning for attention the most.  These students are the ones that teachers so easily decide to give up on but are the ones who need the attention.  For a teacher, this can be extremely frustrating.  Often times, it is the students that are unmotivated and disruptive that are given the most attention during a lesson.  Unfortunately, the rest of the class has to suffer from the time that the teacher spends of dealing with these students instead of instructing. 
     From the first day of school, I present my classroom expectation; be respectful, responsible, and have a positive attitude. Once students know what my expectations are, I will have the class come up with specific examples how ways that students can meet these expectations.  They will come up with three to four examples for being respectful, responsible and having a positive attitude.  I believe that it is important for students to know have access to consequences for classroom disruptions.  This will be done by having a consequence chart posted at the front of the room.  This will not get negotiated and will already be created by the teacher.  As a class, we will go over what happens after each step.  I want to remind disruptive students that “every day is a new day!”  The consequence chart will list:  1-  Verbal Warning  2-  Pep talk  3-  To the Office.
     There are a wide variety of practical strategies that I plan to keep in my classroom management toolbox for unmotivated and disruptive students.  First, I think that it is important to create win-win authority relationships.  Also, I aim to make success possible for ALL students.  I will do this by accommodating a large range of acceptable learning behaviors for a wide range of academic behaviors.  All students need to make authentic connections with their teachers.  So for the students that are disruptive and unmotivated, I will do my best to find a connection.  Maybe this is playing soccer at recess, having them be helpers in another classroom, or finding an activity that will make them feel successful.  My classroom management revolves around positivity.  This means that non-traditional learners' needs must be supported through a variety of creative solutions.  After all, learning and teaching should be fun!  Disruptive students need to be taught how to follow the discipline code that is rigorously and fairly enforced.  Classroom management is about procedures becoming routines.  Routines give structure to the instructional environment.  According to Tomlinson, (2001)  differentiation addresses variance in content, process, and product.  Tomlinson states that this approach is “responsive” teaching rather than planning instruction that reflects “one-size-fits-all” students.  Differentiation is delivered to help all students, no matter what age, learn efficiently as possible. Improved achievement is promoted when teachers are attentive to students’ preferences of learning.  Tomlinson reports that student motivation and student attention to tasks increase when the topics of study reflect personal interests of students.  So for unmotivated and disruptive students, it is important for the teacher to differentiate.  This allows teachers to focus on essential skills in each content area, be responsive to individual differences, incorporate assessment into instruction, and provide students with multiple avenues to learning.

References:

Tomlinson, C.A. (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classroom. ASCD

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