Final Entry

Looking back over this semester and this year, it is amazing to me how much I have changed in terms of my understanding of teaching. Teaching a unit, for example, was much more work than I ever thought it could possibly be. It makes me reassess my anticipation of the workload when I actually start teaching--not that I thought it would be small, but it some ways it seems monumental now (although not insurmountable). I think, however, some things have not changed: my teaching metaphor still seems to hold true for me. In fact, there are instances when I think about it consciously, when I am teaching in class: as a "tour guide", do I tell them what I want them to know, or let them discover it for themselves? Sometimes it is tempting to just tell them: there is so much information that must be conveyed in such a short period of time. My metaphor, however, keeps me conscious that this is not effective. When discussing learners, either with my teaching partner or with various other people with whom the topic comes up (since I am, after all, a teacher and it is inevitable), I find that this is how they learn best as well. I specifically remember a conversation with my brother, who is now in community college. In high school, he stopped trying because it seemed pointless to him after a while; he got fed up with the system. But he is a self-motivated learner: if teachers made things available to him to discover for himself, rather than telling him everything he needed to know, he probably would have done much better. It is a relief in many ways to me that even after all the experiences I have had this semester, my basic understanding of teaching still holds up, as I believe it will continue to do so in the years to come.

Lesson #5/Summative Assessment

For our final lesson, Katie and I created a market day for the children to participate in. This required lots of prior preparation, and we were still very concerned because it the kind of thing that easily degenerates into chaos, but we really liked the idea and so we pursued it. In fact, it ended up working wonderfully well. We laid out beforehand the idea of "two strikes and you're out," and explained to the children exactly what a strike would be. We also modeled for them how to do the activities, then allowed each group to go to their respective places. I think it might have helped to have decided beforehand what their jobs would be; we really wanted our teacher's help on that, but there was some confusion on the kids' parts about where they should be. If we had decided beforehand, we could have maybe have made little index cards with a 1 or a 2 on them, and written their job on it as well for when it was their turn to be the sellers. Some of the children also had a hard time doing their jobs, and if we had known the students as well as our teacher does and had been able to do the assignments we could possibly have prevented that problem as well. Once the market day got going, however, it ran very smoothly. The children were very engaged in what they were doing, and I heard lots of economic language and excited discussion. We provided directions at each station for what the buyer should be doing and what the seller should be doing, but they largely didn't seem to need them.
Another issue arose when we transitioned; because of the way we set up the market, we had the children who were buyers filling out the summative assessment sheets during this time, and we had to reprice everything that had been bought. The fact that we had to do this made us very strapped for time, and the children who were sellers first also didn't really have much to do. We let the children help us a little with repricing, but they still needed to be told the amount to write and for which items, so it didn't save much time. One idea that I had to fix this would be to maybe make a laminated sheet for each store, and have the item written down or a picture of the item (or both) and an extra price tag stuck on top of it. That way the children who were sellers first would be able to reprice items by just sticking the price tag on its respective item. I don't think this was really feasible this time around, but if you did this activity yearly (which I will do if I ever have a first grade classroom) and therefore had the same items year after year, this would be a great way to save time and engage everybody.
The other large problem that we had was with the summative assessment, which was confusing because they weren't sure exactly what parts they had to circle and didn't answer all of the questions. One of them problems with this was time; in a regular classroom, I would probably have my students return to it the next day and fill out whatever they hadn't had a chance to fill out the day before. We also really needed to lay it out more clearly so that each question was more clearly delineated on the sheet. After the lesson, we actually went back and did this, so hopefully in the future we would receive more information and it would be clearer. We were actually able to tell a great deal of information from the sheets, however, and I was really pleased with how much the children knew. The format of the market day allowed for a lot of demonstration of knowledge; for example, some of the children at the various stores took their money to the bank and deposited it there, which we had not anticipated but showed really wonderful understanding of how the economic system works. Another little boy looked at a purse on the table and said, "That's a really cute purse I understand why so many of the ladies wanted it." While that was a cute thing to say, it also demonstrated an astute understanding of supply and demand, and why things sell. This lesson overall was one of the most rewarding I have ever taught and I would love to teach it again in the future, with the improvements included to make it work even better. In the future, I might also use it as an instructional tool as well as an assessment tool, perhaps setting it up and discussing all the related vocabulary and concepts, so that children could see it in a very concrete setting. It would then also serve as a better assessment tool, I think, due to its familiarity to the children.

Lesson #4

For this lesson, Katie and I decided to use the book "Alexander, Who Used To Be Rich Last Sunday" to talk about the idea of saving money. Katie read the book to them and then took them back through the book and let them each take some of the dollar as Alexander spent it, so they could see how it disappeared. I think this was a really good idea but a lot of the kids got restless, because only one of them was doing anything at a time (similar to the sort we did for goods and services). It might have been more effective to do something like give them each a sheet with the places Alexander spent all his money, and as we went through the book, have them write down the amount he spent. Maybe as a class we could then discuss how much he had left. Maybe also, as we read the book, we could have transferred money from a coin pouch or something, showing them the full coin pouch to begin with, to a jar or something like that. That way they could watch the progression, but maybe not have to sit still for as long. By the time it was my turn to talk with them about different ways to save money, they were getting pretty restless. I should have had them get up just to shake it off; that is something I have done before. We also could have limited the discussion more; at the same time, I was aware that reading the book had taken Katie much less time than planned, and I wasn't sure what we would do if we got done too early. Despite these issues, the discussion was still interesting to me in a lot of ways, and I hope beneficial for the kids. It was great that they arrived at the fact that, if you carry your money with you it is much easier to spend it, and so if you hide it under your bed, for instance, you won't spend it as much! It was also nice that we had the piggy bank as something concrete for them to look at, and many of them also had stories to relate about piggy banks or savings accounts that they had. Following the discussion, we had them write a journal entry about something they would like to save up their money for, and give an example of a way to save their money. The direction-giving on this activity was a little disjointed and not well thought out on our part; next time we should wait until we have all of their attention and then go thorugh the entire prompt, before telling them to go ahead and write. Another problem that we had was that many of the children didn't answer the second question, only the first. One way to resolve that might be to put one question on either sided of the paper, or to even more clearly dilineate them on a single piece of paper. When the children were done, many of them made lists of things they wanted on the back of their paper, which was great although not something we had planned. A lot of the things they did on the back provided us with a lot of information about what they knew as well. I am not sure, however, that even if the kids had answered all of the questions that we would have known exactly what we wanted to know. Even if they told us something they wanted to save their money for, I think we were more teaching them about reasons that they should save their money, and the assessment should probably have been more directed at that idea.

Lesson #3

For our third lesson, we did a concept attainment lesson on wants and needs. Concept attainment had worked really well with this class in the past and we thought it lent itself well to the ideas of "wants" and "needs" as well. However, at the very beginning of the lesson one of the little boys saw the two categories, and kept insisting on sharing them. We eventually realized that our plan was not going to work, and revised our teaching mid-lesson, so that we used the examples we had to help develop their ideas of wants and needs, discussing for instance why a winter coat is a need, or why shoes might be a want as well as a need. We talked about whether a television is a need ("I need a television so that I don't get bored!") and how if you only have one outfit, do you really need any more clothes? ("I can't wear the same thing to school every day, that's ugly!") I was proud of our flexibility and our ability to make use of the materials to develop the understandings further and in new ways for the children. Following the lesson we had them play a game that I borrowed from an activity we did recently in our social studies methods class. The children would be in groups and would have to go "shopping" for items which were on little cards. They would then have to glue what they bought on their worksheet and color in the amount of pennies it cost, and they were not supposed to spend more than ten pennies. They also had the option, at the side of the sheet, of choosing to color in any leftover pennies underneath their piggy bank. We quickly realized, however, that we should have realized that first graders need something more concrete than coloring pennies, because there was no way for them to know when to stop. When we did the activity of course, counting ten pennies was no problem for us, and so it was not a problem that had occurred to use beforehand. The activity was intended to get them to think about wants and needs, and also to start thinking about the idea of saving money, which we would address during the next lesson. However, without constraints, the concepts we wanted them to take away largely fell through I think. Next time, each child will have concrete pennies to glue down, and there will only be ten, so when they are out of money, they are out of money. That will be much more comprehensible to them. Because we had time, I also had them draw a picture of one thing they wanted and one thing they needed, and write a sentence about which one they should choose to buy if they had to choose between the two. I really like this as far as assessment; I think it tells the teacher exactly what they want to know, and in a way that is easy for the child to express. One thing I might do next time is provide them with a journal prompt for the back of their paper, so that they have something to look at. I think also when providing prompts, it might be nice to stop the class, write the prompt on the board while all are watching, and read it aloud, and then have them read it back to you. That way everyone can be clear on directions. Overall, however, I thought that this was one of our most effective assessments.

Lessons #1 and 2

For our first two lessons, we had to combine lessons because originally we were going to teach on Tuesday and Friday. Last minutes, however, we discovered that while the teachers will be in school on Friday, the children would not, the confusion due to snow day rescheduling and so on. Because the children already had a strong grasp of math, we decided to make the math lesson we originally intended to do on Tuesday into a mini-lesson, and make our main lesson be about goods and services, the lesson we had intended to do on Friday. It was also nice, though, to combine the two, because the book we used to introduce the goods and services lesson also served as a very nice practice counting money. Katie largely ran the money lesson, and I missed most of it because I was making copies of a sheet for our activity afterwards. However, I returned in time to see her finish reviewing money with the children. We especially focused on how to write money and the fact that you need to use the cents sign--a symbol, something that they have talked a lot about throughout the year in their classroom--because we noticed on the preassessment that while the numbers were largely correct, a lot of them weren't really using the conventions of writing money.
After Katie finished, I read them a book called "The Penny Pot," and then led a concept development lesson on goods and services. I found, however, when I asked them to tell me some things that they would have to pay money for, that the majority of things were goods, and I had to scaffold a lot in order to get them to think about services as well. I should have anticipated this since, as first graders, they operate largely in a concrete world, and also probably don't always see their parents pay for things like doctors' appointments and haircuts and so on. One of the little girls' moms was a hair stylist, however, and so she was able to relate that when we mentioned that people pay for them to do something for them. We talked a lot about the fact that a good is something you can touch, and a service is something someone does for you, and it was helpful for them to have simple definitions in concrete language, so in order to determine whether something was a good or a service, we had only to ask them, "Is it something you can touch or is it something somebody does for you?" Some of them still had some trouble associating the correct vocabulary at times, and ideally I would want for this not to be a question that I ask them but a question they ask themselves. Following the discussion we passed out index cards that had either a good or a service on them, one to each child, and the children lined up and one by one sorted them into the categories, with help from us. I like the kinesthetic qualities of this activity but I feel like it wastes lots of time because of the children just standing or sitting around while the one child is considering where his or her index card goes. Another way might be to pass out the index cards while they are sitting on the carpet, and then have them discuss with a buddy what they think it is. Then they could maybe bring their cards up to the board one at a time and we could discuss as a class whether we thought that was the right placement and why. We would then have created an artifact, taping the index cards into their respective categories, and the children would have that for a reference. After the lesson, the overwhelming sense that I had was that we had tried to do too much in a single lesson, and we would need multiple lessons in order to ensure that children were able to fully explore what are actually pretty difficult concepts for them. In my own classroom, I would like to put up on the wall the definitions we came up with as a class for a good and for a service (which in fact I think our teacher did), so that the children could use those as a reference until it became more engrained in their own thought process. As assessment, we attempted to use exit cards and have the children write down one thing they would remember from the day. Writing is difficult for a lot of them, although not impossible, and in lieu of any better ideas I would at least want to ask them a more specific question next time in order to get a better idea of their understanding.

Preassessment

We discussed our preassessment beforehand with our teacher, and she really liked the fact that it was very open-ended. Although she could have told us information about every child's money knowledge, we decided together that we would rather she didn't tell us until after we had administered the preassessment. I felt a little strange about administering such a structured worksheet to first graders, but I couldn't think of any other way to get any kind of comprehensive understanding of their prior knowledge before teaching our unit. I tried to make the preassessment as child-friendly as possible, with large letters, and dividing the sections clearly so they could move from part to part easily and not get confused about where one question ended and another began. When we arrived, the children had just returned from specials, and were at their seats eating snacks. We waited for them to finish eating before getting their attention (although I'm not sure we had everyone's) and explaining what they needed to do on the worksheet. We told them that we just wanted to see what they knew about some things and they could put whatever answer they wanted, and that there was no wrong answer, and we went through question by question. Then we passed out the assessments. As the children worked, the three of us moved around and talked to them about it. Some of the children needed help reading the directions; others weren't sure of what they were supposed to be doing even when they knew what the instructions said, and so required a little bit more explanation. A lot of them also needed prompting in order to really fully get what we wanted out of them. For instance, they would have drawn a store, and people coming out with things, and we would have to ask, "How did they get those things?" and use other scaffolding questions in order for them to explain to us that people had given money in order to get those things. For some of the children, we also had to write about their drawing for them, or write down a sentence that they told us. One of the little boys recently moved from a country where he had no writing system, for instance, and so the entire idea of text is new to him. But he was able to explain to me what was happening in his picture and understood the concepts pretty well. I told our teacher what had happened, and she nodded and said, "See, that's differentiation!" That was a big lesson for me during this assessment, because it had never really occurred to me before that it could be as easy as that (although that is not to say that it should stop there). Regardless, despite the various supports needed by the children, many of which we did anticipate, overall the session was very exciting and gave us lots of interesting information about the children's thought processes. We also found that, as far as money goes, the children as a whole understand it pretty thoroughly. One thing we did not assess, however, was their knowledge of quarters, which might have been better because as we talked to the teacher we realized that that was something that they had discussed less and that fewer of them had a strong grasp on. That was also something we really should have realized might be true to begin with.

Observation #2

My second time observing in Lisa's room I went in alone. The kids were actually in "Think Tank" during the time I was there, so I was able to observe some alternative ways of thinking and how the gifted education teacher pursues that during her time with the children. She first read the class a book about a girl who used her imagination to picture all the different things a ribbon she found might be. Then the children were given a piece of paper with some lines drawn on it and asked to imagine what it might be, and to incorporate it into a drawing. The teacher showed me several examples of what some kids had done, and it was fairly obvious when a child demonstrated gifted tendencies. They were able to see in the image things that one might never expect. One child, for instance, drew a dog's head, visualizing the space much differently than most people would. Many of the children drew a boat or a dragon or a snake, all of which were images easily suggested by the shape of the lines. It was really interesting to observe assessment of an entirely different kind than anything we think about; usually we want to measure something concrete, social studies concepts or science ideas or reading or writing ability. This teacher was attempting to gain an understanding of how different children think, which although it was part of the gifted program may be something I want to consider assessing in future classrooms as well.