Sunday, November 11, 2012

Horne Street Practicum: Week 3

This week, like last week, was very strange.  Monday had a two hour delay due to snow and road conditions, and then we had to scramble balancing getting the kids to do their wish lists for the book fair and making sure they got to see the fire safety presentation in the gym.  The kids were ecstatic.

The fire safety play was mostly the local fire department and a few volunteers dressing up as Shreik characters and putting on a sort of interactive play about fire safety.  I say interactive because they got the kids to stand up and dance and sing.  It was really quite clever and fun, and I have to say the whole day was really  not an all out school day.

The whole week was a strange one.  Friday the kids had off but we began the book fair on Wednesday and the whole time we were bouncing around taking care of that, talking to parents about their kid's wish lists and calling Scholastic angrily because they continued to not send us the books we needed.  A pity really, I think we just had a bad rep but every time they sent us books it wasn't what we asked for or it wasn't nearly enough.  Still, I think we might make the minimum we need to make overall.

There was little teaching, but I did manage to finish up reading the ladybug picture books to a few classes and then we had a voting session!  We used the SmartBoard for voting, the kids got to go up and mark the book they liked best from the Ladybug Picture books.  There was much discussion among friends as to what they were going to vote for and why.  I found myself having a discussion with one class about the importance of voting for yourself and not for what everyone else wants you to vote for, which was quite educational.  The kids seemed to get it, once I pointed out that their chanting their favorite book was influencing their classmates opinions and began to discuss other ways people tend to make you want to vote one way or another.  The election was a key example, of course.

Friday was a great experience conversing with parents, recommending alternate books to parents who were not as pleased with their children's selections, and trying to read handwriting that has not yet reached the maturity of legible.  It was an overall fun day (despite my feet killing me afterwards) and I had a nice break where I went into the library and caught myself up on reading pieces of the more popular series that were selling.

Next week I have two days, Tuesday and Wednesday (since Monday is a holiday) and then I pack up and move to St. Louis, Missouri!  My first practicum will be done, though I will have to put together my portfolio, a task that will probably take a few weeks due to the move and organization.  I have been putting things together as I go but, you know how life can be.  I'm still unsure which video of me teaching I want to use.  I don't think either is a really good example, but we didn't think to record me in other lessons and we ran out of time for another lesson I had planned.  Oh well, hindsight and all that, I'll make sure my next practicum is different.

Thanks for reading!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...
Monday, November 12, 2012

Your last week sounds exciting and quite the whirlwind! The fire safety presentation sounds very interactive; I am sure the kids learned a great deal! That's awesome you were able to teach students a little bit about voting at such a young age! I saw you wrote about parent interactions at the book fair; did you host a Parent Night or did they come at different times? Thanks for reminding me about the portfolio! I have a skeleton word press that could use some actual content! Don't worry too much about your lesson video. I had my librarian tape all day then I chose what I liked best and went from there. Best of luck on your move and keep us updated!

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