Engineering Lesson

The picture we used during the lesson. 

          This last Tuesday we had our lass class period and last lesson at Brigham Early Learning Center. This class period we split the students up into groups of three or four students and presented our engineering lessons. The Engineering lesson that my group gave was centered around the Next Generation Science Standard:  K-2-ETS1-2.      Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem. 

          Our problem was that we could not build a tall tower that would stand. The tower that we were building kept falling over. We needed the students help to build a tower that was tall and could stand by itself. We brought in a picture of different tall buildings for the students to look at. This picture is included in the post. While the students were looking at the picture we had them examine the shape of the towers. The students all said that the towers were larger at the bottom than they were in the middle. We told them to keep this in mind when they were building their own towers. The pictures of the towers we provided also turned in to a little bit of a matching game with the students (this was not planned). They noticed when examining the towers that each colored photo matched with one of the black outlines at the top. Each student took a turn matching the colored photo with its black outline. 

          After we examined the shape of the towers we passed out 15 pipe cleaners and 10 straws to each student and challenged them to build the tallest tower. The students were extremely engaged during this portion of the lesson! I could tell that they each want their tower to be tallest. However, not all of the students understood the importance of it standing by itself. This is why we stopped the students half way through their individual work time and had them look at everyone's towers and what shape or style was working. We told the students that it was not cheating because engineers often work together/share ideas! It was during this time that we talked about how important bases and supports are for towers. We told them the new vocabulary words, explained them and gave them examples in their own towers and in the pictures we provided. This helped the students make their towers taller and stronger.

          Throughout this lesson I did not learn anything new or make any progress towards my original goal. However, I took what I had learned from my pervious times in the classroom to make this lesson plan more engaging and developmentally appropriate for the students. I have learned how important visuals and hands on learning are to English Language Learners. For this lesson we used multiple different learning styles like oral, kinesthetic and visual learning. I think this helped the students better understand what they needed to do with their towers and how important a strong base and supports are. I also think for this lesson it was beneficial to have each teacher work one on one with a student to scaffold their learning while building their individual tower. 

My lesson at Brigham

Today was finally the long awaited day! I was able to give the lesson Julia and I created at Brigham. We were in the preschool classroom today. Our job was to wrap up the 5 senses unit we have been working on with this specific classroom. At first we thought that this might be challenging because we were not in charge of teaching and new content only reviewing content that had already been taught. However, after thinking about the different avenues we could use to review this content we decided on small group rotations. We were lucky enough to have five amazing assistants with us today in preschool. One of these girls manned each station. There was a seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling station. The eleven students that were present today were split up into five groups. Each group was able to spend about five minutes at each station.

At each station they were doing something different. At the hearing station the students were listening to different familiar sounds and identifying what sound they had hear using their ears. At the seeing station the students were categorizing many random items by color using their eyes. At the touching station the students were feeling items with their hands to decide if they were hard or soft. At the tasting station the students were able to taste salt and sugar. They identified each as sweet and salty. Then the students categorized pictures of foods into the categories salty or sweet. Last, but not least, was the smelling station. At this station the students were able to smell many different scents from bottles. They then matched the scent in the bottle to a picture of what it smelled like.

I think that the lesson went very well! It was evident that the students had worked in small group rotations before because they were so quick and quiet when we switched groups. The one aspect of the lesson that we were worried about was the transitions from small group to small group. We knew that this would either make or break the flow of our lesson. If the students had never done a lesson like this before I would be extremely surprised and even prouder of how well they handled the responsibility of traveling from one spot to another.

We also knew that the classroom had some English Language Learners in it so we were sure to include many pictures and hands on activities. We have learned this semester that providing visuals, modeling and hands on activities can be very helpful for second language learners. This way they do not have to rely so much on the language to show what they have learned or express what they want to say. Personally, I did not experience any students who did not understand the directions or what they were supposed to be doing. However, I was observing a specific child most of the time during small groups so I was not able to personally see every child.

If we were to do the lesson all over again I would change two major aspects of the lesson. First, I would have asked the teacher to group the students. We were only in the preschool classroom three times this entire semester. So while we were starting to know the students a little bit better I do not feel like we know them well enough to put them in appropriate groups. Today we put the students in groups based off of who they sat by on the carpet. Which, looking back on it may not have been the best decision. I know the students in my clinical placement sit next to their best friends at round up time which sometimes leads to behavior problems. Thankfully, today we did not have any major behavior problems. But I do feel like we paired some very outgoing students with some extremely shy students. What I found was that the outgoing students were answering all of the questions and at times talked over the quiet student. In one specific group a little boy would wait for the more outspoken student to answer the question that was asked. Then he would repeat whatever answer was just stated even if it was incorrect. I think if we would have asked the teachers in the room to pick the groups they would have been able to use their deeper individual knowledge of the students to form better groups.

The second major problem I would change is something that I have wanted to change since our first week at Brigham. I always feel like the end of our lessons are a bit choppy because we are unsure where the students are supposed to go next or what the teach has planned for them. This causes us to close the lesson and walk out of the room without knowing much of what happens when we leave. I think it would create a much smoother transition if we knew what was going to happen next and could transition the students into that activity before we leave.

All in all, I did not learn much more or make any advances toward by goal today. I feel like many of the students in the preschool classroom speak enough English to actively participate in our lesson that we had planned for them. This meant that not many techniques or tools were used other than visual and hands on approaches, of course. I have learned a lot about teaching in a preschool or kindergarten setting while at Brigham. Today I learned that if you give a preschooler a tiny taste of salt many of them will look at you like you lied to them or like they are going to cry! Honestly, this is something I did not even consider when writing the lesson plan because older students know what salt tastes like so it wouldn’t come as so much of a surprise to them. There are so many different considerations you have to take when teaching young children. But the number on consideration I have learned is how detailed you need to be about directions. They need to be repeated and modeled for them multiple times.

Exceeds: I included a picture quote and related my experience back to my clinical placement. 

Brigham Kindergarten

Today I had the opportunity to observe a kindergarten lesson at Brigham. This was my first time in the kindergarten room and I really enjoyed it. It seems like an outgoing and loving class. The students were not afraid to talk to and communicate with us. As far as I could tell most of the students spoke English pretty well! There were not any major language barriers within my personal small group. You could tell that their English was not yet perfect but neither is mine.

This week the students participated in a lesson on what plants, humans, and animals need to survive. The students started off in a large group on the carpet then split off into three small groups. You could tell that the students were somewhat used to small group lessons and the way that they functioned because there was not much confusion on where to go or why they had to rotate every five minutes.

All in all I did not hear as much Spanish being spoken in the kindergarten room as I did in the pre-k room. In the pre-k room the teachers would sometimes repeat directions in Spanish for some of the students so they could understand what we were saying to them. In the kindergarten room the teacher did not speak Spanish once the week that I was in there and I did not hear the students communicate using Spanish within the classroom. However, I did see many directions and labels in both English and Spanish. I saw this not only in the classroom but also in the hallways outside of the classroom.

As far as my goal goes, I honestly do not feel like I have made much progress towards my goal. I feel like what I have seen has been the basic tools that I already knew about coming into this experience. Tools like using their native language and having pictures and labels to help as visual cues. For example, in the lesson that we observed today I saw the most student collaboration and interaction at the habitat center. This center allowed the students to visually see each habitat and the animals they were categorizing. It also allowed them to physically place the animal where they thought it lived and explain why. This was an excellent activity not only for the English Language Learners but also for every student in the classroom because of the many different learning styles that were incorporated into it.

I feel like a main part of my goal was to get to know the individual students and their academic needs when it comes to their language development but I was not able to get to know any of the students on a deep and meaningful level, which has been frustrating. I have loved this experience and getting to work with pre-k and kindergarten students especially because I have not been in a clinical placement in either of these grades. It has given me the opportunity to create and implement lesson plans that concentrate on young English Language Learners and their specific needs. It has been interesting to compare the ELL students in my PDS clinical placement to the students I have seen at Brigham. No matter if you are a preschool, kindergarten, or second grade English Language Learner you are still learning, practicing and maneuvering new words and phrases every single day. Language is constantly changing and evolving.

Exceeds: I went  over the word count and compared experiences I have had with different English Language Learners.  

Clinical Science Lesson

Today I gave my Science lesson at Oakdale Elementary School. This year I am in a Second Grade classroom for my clinical placement. Today my Science lesson was part of a guided reading lesson since we are currently in the middle of our social studies unit. I have recently started taking over guided reading lessons within the classroom. This was the second guided reading lesson I have given so I was still learning exactly how to time everything and give each student the attention they deserve.

         I gave my first lesson this Monday, which was also a Science based guided reading lesson on ladybugs. The students really loved this book and lesson because it showed the different stages of a ladybugs life cycle. It surprised many of them that a ladybug is not born looking like a ladybug! They said it looked more like a spider when it is first born which is kind of true! This lesson gave me the opportunity to get used to this lesson format and style before giving my observed lesson.

         The lesson that I gave today was about ants! We read the book, “Thinking About Ants”. Before the four students read the book I asked them open-ended questions about ants and their individual experiences with them. The students had some great responses to this. They talked about how they knew an ant was an insect because ants have six legs! This was something that we covered at the beginning of the year during our science unit so I was very happy they remembered this.

         Next, we looked at some of the trickier words in the book so they would understand them when they read the book individually. The words that we looked at were larvae, pupae, and aphid. Before pointing out each word to the students we looked at labels because all the words were in labels. We discussed how important it was to read the labels on pictures and how they should not be skimmed over. The students all agreed that there is valuable information in the labels.

Just as I had expected these words were harder for the students. But because I was with the higher reading group they did not have trouble sounding out these words but they did have a rough time explaining what the word meant. We looked at different picture clues and context clues to figure out what they meant. We then discussed the ant’s lifecycle because larvae and pupae are both stages in the ant’s life cycle. Next, we talked about how the book asked us questions on each page and how we should pause before continuing to read to think about the question that was asked. Before the students started reading their books I told them to write down at least one interesting fact they learned about ants on their post it because we would be sharing them after we read the book.

While the students were reading their books I had them whisper read to me one at a time. While they whisper read I looked at mistakes they made while reading and prompted them to fix those mistakes or used reading strategies to help them fix any future mistakes. For example, one of my students used the wrong word while whisper reading, which completely changed the meaning of the word and did not make any sense. He continued to read the paragraph and did not even realize that what he read did not make sense. So when he was finished reading that page I asked him to go back and read that sentence again paying close attention to each word. This time he read each word correct. When I told him what he read he almost didn’t believe me! It was a learning experience for him and showed him that it is important to pay attention to the beginning and end of each word he reads.  

Another way I prompted conversation with each student was by using the questions the book provided. As the students read we paused after each question that had to do with ants and the way they eat, work, look or act. We would discuss what they thought the answer to the question was before going on to read the answers. This not only allowed me to see what previous or background knowledge the students had on ants but also allowed me to scaffold/prompt their thinking. It was interesting to see what some of the students had to say on each topic.

The students really enjoyed reading this book about ants and took a lot of new information away from it. I know that they took a lot of new information away based off of our discussion at the end of the lesson. Each student wrote two if not three new or interesting facts on their individual post it note. The students found it so interesting that ants no not have ears or a nose. At first they thought that this meant they could not hear or smell. But they learned that ants hear and smell with their feelers. Every time the students would talk about the feelers they would take their pointer fingers and put them on top of their head. It was adorable and a good kinesthetic motion and reminder for the students that ants hear and smell with their feelers.

Overall, I believe the lesson went very well. Based off of my own personal reflections and the notes that Mrs. R took while I gave the lesson I would only change a few aspects. First, I would have gone through more of the tricky words with the students before having them read individually. But when I was giving my lesson we were on a time crunch because three of the students in my reading group were with their ELL teacher and did not come back on time. I was worried we would run out of time at the end. I would have also thought about the different prompts or scaffolding methods I would use to help the students identify a tricky word. When they were reading and mispronounced a word or didn’t know how to pronounce it at all I struggled to come up with appropriate ways help them decode or figure out unknown words. In future guided reading lessons I will be prepared with ways to chunk or decode unknown words. I will also ask more open-ended questions that will allow the students to answer with more than just a yes or no answer.

Second week at Brigham

        This was the first week I was in the classroom to see someone's actual lesson. The topic of the first lesson was sense of touch! I think this lesson was well planned out and organized. It was also hands on which was very beneficial to the students in that classroom who are English Language Learners. You could tell that the students loved being able to hold the tubes and smell each individual scent.
        One of the goals that I had made for myself while in the classroom was to try and get to know each student on a personal level so I could create a trusting and open relationship with them. I knew this was going to be a challenge because we are only in the room every few weeks. However, I ran into another obstacle with this goal. As a class we are talking anecdotal notes on each of the students behavior and actions while we are in the room. This is such an important tool to have especially when dealing with such young children. But it makes it hard to get to know each student on a deeper level. I found that I was either concentrating on two students during the hands on time or trying to watch the entire class at round up.
        I believe I mentioned in my last post the fact that we were not sure which students were English Language Learners and how it negatively affected the way in which we implemented our lesson. This week I think we had a much better handle on which students were not native speakers of English. However, there was one new girl that was not there the first week. I am not sure exactly what language she speaks at home and I would love to find this out. This little girl was in my small table group and it was evident that she did not understand much English. She was very shy, did not like to look you in the eye, and did not answer one of the multiple questions I asked her. But after many different attempts on my end of rephrasing questions or asking different questions she looked up and pointed at her brown crayon and said "Brown!" with an enormous smile on her face.
        Although, it was a one word sentence I could tell that it was much more that that to this child. It was the only way that she knew how to communicate with me and she was so proud of herself for that. But this encounter made me realize fist, how advanced the English Language Learners are in my clinical placement and second, how difficult it can be to have any communication with a child when you do not speak the same language. As adults, I feel like we are more apt to use body language to get our point across when we encounter situations like this. But I am not sure that children know that they can and should use body language or movements to aid their communication. I think this would be an important tool to teach English Language Learns in my future classroom.

A read aloud about different types of communication

First day at Brigham - Preschool

I first wanted to start by saying how important it is that we were able to set goals for ourselves. It is great to have an overarching goal to strive towards every time we step foot into a classroom at Brigham. While I do believe having the goal is great it was extremely hard for me to come up with a goal without first meeting the students. The goal that I came up with is, “I want to be able to actively involve the English Language Learners in every classroom activity. I hope to learn the tools and techniques to be able to do that.” I made this goal based off of the English Language Learners I have at my clinical site because it is something we have to consider when planning every lesson or activity.

Sometimes I feel like these students do not receive the education or attention that they should get because they do not completely know the language. This often leaves them left out or confused. To me, an important part of teaching English Language Learners is to create an open and trusting relationship with them. This way the student feels comfortable telling you that they do not understand what is being asked of them or trying words in English that they are not used to using. I think I will make this my second goal while in the classrooms at Brigham. I have a feeling this goal is going to be harder to reach than some of the goals I have set for myself in the past because we are not in the classroom every week. It will be a challenge to build that relationship with these students because by the time I am back in their classroom two weeks will have past and they may not remember who I am. The second goal I am going to set for myself is to use the student’s first language whenever I can to help them understand what is being asked of them. I have taken six years of Spanish so I am able to speak some short sentences. However, I am not nearly as good at speaking, as I want to be. I know that I can use pictures, give longer wait time, and actively use my hands/facial expressions when I talk which can help them comprehend a little bit more. However, I still need to learn different tools/techniques that will aid my conversations with English Language Students

This week was my first week working within the preschool classroom at Brigham. So, it was the first week I was able to work on my goal within the preschool classroom. It was extremely hard for me to work on this goal because I did not know which students were English language learners. Looking back, I wish I would have asked before giving our lesson. Now that I know which students in the preschool class are English language learners I will be able to actively pursue my goal. The one aspect of the classroom that I noticed was that many of the items were labeled in both Spanish and English which is definitely something I will do in my future classroom. 

While I did not learn as much as I wanted to learn about my goal this week I did learn a very important lesson on time management within the classroom. Our lesson did not last near as long as we thought it would. This came as a surprise to all of us and showed me just how important it is to always have a backup activity incase a lesson finishes early or a students finishes early. As teachers we need to me masters of or minutes. 

Exceeds: I went over the word count and I incorporated experiences from my clinical cite. 

Science Autobiography

My name is Kayla Hamilton and I was born and raised in Morris, Illinois. It is a small town about thirty minutes south of Joliet. I attended Saratoga Elementary School kindergarten through eighth grade. I do not remember much about my science classes from when I was little. However, the science experiences that I can still remember were all hands on. I can remember planting seeds and documenting their grown in the younger grades. I remember building a boat, volcano, and bridge. The bridge and boat taught us about the displacement of weight and buoyancy. But my all-time favorite was dissecting owl pellets and frogs. I think I loved it so much because at that age almost all the girls in my class were grossed out by that kind of stuff and I liked being different. I think I almost wanted to show the other girls that they didn’t have to worry about getting their hands dirty.

Once I graduated from Saratoga I went to Morris Community High School. This was yet another small school with not much diversity.

To be completely honest my experiences with science in high school were not great. My high school is notoriously known for having a horrible science department. I can honestly say I did not learn a single thing from my sophomore biology teacher. My junior year we learned more from one guest speaker than we did form our actual science teacher all year. This particular teacher was retiring at the end of that year and all we did was sit in silence while he played horrible elevator music and sat at his desk. However, things took a turn towards the better my senior year. I absolutely loved my physics teacher. We did so many hands on projects this year and he allowed us to use our bodies to experience the different forces of physics. I remember building a parachute for an egg/ an air balloon, putting weights on a string to see how it affected its swing, building a tower out of straws/pins, and the infamous chair experiment. I found a new love for science after taking this course and found myself thinking about how/why certain things were taking place.  

This is why my teaching philosophy has a lot to do with hands on learning or mind on learning. I want my students to be actively involved in the learning process asking questions and guiding their own learning along the way. I never want to be the teacher that sits in front of the classroom and lectures the students for the entire period. This is the type of teaching I saw briefly growing up but mostly in high school. Despite some of the interesting teachers I had growing up I still managed to maintain my love for science. I find it very interesting and the experiment so much fun! I truly believe coming form a town where science was not the best subject has made me want to make science exciting and loveable for my students.

The two pictures I included in this post were taken during my physics class. The first was our egg that I am proud to say was the only egg that survived the parachute egg drop. The second is one of my classmates hot air balloons that traveled the farthest out of all the balloons.