Abigail's+WikiSpace+Page

My name is Abby Bayer and I am a senior at Carlow University, graduating this May with certifications in Early Childhood and Elementary Education. I have just recently finished my Elementary placements, which were in 6th grade teaching Science and Social Studies and in 3rd grade teaching Math. I had a wonderful experience during my time spent with elementary aged children, however, I am looking forward to interacting with and learning from a younger demographic. Young children were my inspiration to become a teacher and, therefore, I am very excited to work with a young and sincere group of learners.

__Week 1: April 13, 2012:__

My final and Early Childhood portion of my student teaching placements is at the Children's School at Carnegie Mellon University. During my time at the Children's School, I will be working with a morning and afternoon group consisting of four year old children. In the morning, I am in the Puzzle Room during circle and the Green Room during Free and Activity Time, and in the afternoon I interact with students in the Green Room. Altogether, my first day, and my first week at the Children's School flew by. Because the day is split into two groups of children, my time spent with each group lasts for, what seems like, a very short period of time. Although the days go by fast, I feel like I am already starting to establish relationships with the children. I think the fact that the Children's School is a laboratory school has facilitated my ability to develop a connection with each child. Working with the children in such a research-based and progressive environment is refreshing, and I am grateful to be apart of such a school. The children are treated with respect, which is reciprocated to the teachers and other classmates alike. Based on this week's experience, I think I am going to have a wonderful time at the Children's School.

__Week 2: April 20, 2012:__

This week was the last week of the Space Unit in the Puzzle and Green Rooms. The culminating event was blasting off space ships to the moon and sharing all of the information the students learned about space. I was truly impressed by the amount of information the children had retained from the thematic unit of space. Some activities that we completed included: creating a solar system, making rockets to send to the moon, building an astronaut, making a telescope to view the stars, designing a pattern made of stars, graphing information regarding the students favorite space food after a taste test and writing a story and drawing a picture of what it would be like to visit space.

During this week I implemented my first Lesson Experience Plan. Although I had interacted with the children and facilitated activities up until this point, this was the first lesson that I had created and implemented. My Lesson Experience was focused on the skills of counting and drawing shapes. In this activity, the students would roll a dice and whatever number was rolled would be the number of bodies, heads, arms or feet the alien had. The children had fun creating their own alien while honing fine motor skills, rote counting and one to one correspondence.

Also, this week I was able to experience my first Parent-Teacher Conference. Two sets of parents were kindly welcomed me to observe, and contribute as necessary, to the discussion. Both families were parents of wonderful children and, therefore, my experiences were pleasant. It was interesting, though, to hear about parents previous concerns that had been resolved over time. For example, one set of parents were concerned about their daughters confidence level. However, my observations yielded the depiction of a young, outgoing and joyful girl. If nothing else, as a result of school, this girls confidence had increased exponentially. For me, it was really inspiring to hear that this child had grown emotionally in such a short period of time. Also, I learned some strategies to utilize during conferences in order to encourage a comfortable and non-threatening environment. Overall, my experience was positive and I believe it will benefit me in the future.

__Week 3: April 27, 2012:__

This week began the School's new thematic unit of The Rain Forest. Because I started my experience at the Children's School at the end of the Space Unit, I was very interested to see how a Unit was designed, implemented and actualized in order to obtain knowledge. Before the unit even began, the teachers had wrote an extensive plan for the unit, including the goals, activities, books, songs and forms of assessment to be used. After reviewing the packet, a schedule was made for the week and my activities were using eye droppers to recreate the rain of the Rain Forest, making moss for the Forest Floor, patterning with insect and bird stamps, finger painting friendship butterflies, reading a story and camouflaging a jaguar behind leaves in a picture.

On Wednesday, the friendship butterfly activity became available. Initially, my goal was for the students to create a butterfly using their fingers as the art tools. The experience began well, and the butterflies were colorful and beautiful. However, the artwork quickly became a swirl of colors, as the children were more interested in the sensory-motor experience of the activity. Subsequently, I was unable to reach my goal because the students just wanted to cover the paper with smears of paint. In order to reach my goal, I told the children that they could first make a fun, silly picture and, then, they would use their hands to create a butterfly. By allowing the children to experience the sensory aspect of the activity without boundaries, they were then able to create the butterfly. In the end, the students were able to enjoy themselves and create a beautiful butterfly to hang in the Rain Forest. __Week 4: May 4, 2012:__

As the children delved deeper into the Rain Forest Unit, the students learned more about the layers and animals that inhabit each layer. Specifically, the children learned about red-eyed tree frogs, pythons, sloths, caiman, caterpillars, butterflies and parrots. Some activities included recreating the life cycle of butterflies, stuffing nylons with paper to demonstrate the expansion of a snakes stomach during consumption, painting egg cartons to create butterflies and caiman and gluing feathers, beaks and eyes onto pre-cut construction paper in order to create parrots. While books are read and information and visuals are provided, it is interesting to see how much the children learn just by being engaged in the aforementioned activities. The students attention is so focused and engaged that the children's retention is increased exponentially, and this learning is enhanced through the conservation that occurs during these activities. Even more fun to watch is the sharing of this information with other friends. The knowledge gained during activity time traverses to free play, snack and outdoor time. For me, it is so neat to watch a thematic unit's information infiltrate itself into the daily lives of the children. This experience has solidified the idea that thematic units and projects can meet standards and objectives in a fun and engaging form.

In the puzzle room, each friend is chosen to take the "Sharing Bag" home and bring it back to school and share the chosen object. Once the student brings the "Sharing Bag" back to school, the student will provide three clues to the other students in order for the other classmates to be able to make an educated guess about what object is in the bag. The friend that brought the "Sharing Bag" into class then chooses other students to make their guesses, and the student who brought the bag in will respond with a "maybe" or "perhaps" so that every student is allowed the opportunity to make a guess. Once everyone that wants a guess makes one, the child shares the object and tells a little bit about it. After, the circle will again opened up for questions about the object. Since each child has had several turns this year with the "Sharing Bag", the students are rather familiar and practiced with this routine. However, some children still struggle with responding with "perhaps" or "maybe" rather than "yes" or "no", which is really adorable to watch because, obviously, the surprise is given away and, then, every child guesses what was given the answer "yes"--it is really cute and funny to see. But it is equally precious to see four year olds utter "perhaps" and shrug their shoulders in response to another friends guess like they really have no idea what is in the bag. It is a really fun activity and a great way for everyone to get to know each other a little bit better.

__Week 5: May 11, 2012:__

In the puzzle room this week, the children continued exploring the thematic unit of the Rain Forest. Specifically, my planned activities included measuring the rain, deciphering smells of the Rain Forest, creating Rain Forest Books or Autobiographies an d building a snake with the materials of nylons, newspaper, paper tongues and buttons. In the measure the rain activity, I pre-cut a piece of paper that was 100 inches long in order to demonstrate concretely the amount of rain that falls in the Rain Forest on average each year. During this activity, the students used rulers to measure 80 inches, utilized blue "Dobber Paint" to recreate rain drops on the paper and demonstrate the height of average rain fall and, then, measured themselves on the paper in order to compare how tall he/she was in relation to the average rain fall. For the Whats That Smell? activity, the students used only their sense of smell to discern different smells of products that grow in the Rain Forest. These items included chocolate, cinnamon, coffee, ginger and vanilla. While the students were smelling the fragrances of the Forest, I recorded their predictions on one column of a chart, which were later compared to the actual smells contained within the jars. I was very surprised and impressed at how accurate and developed the childrens' sense of smell was. Overall, and not surprisingly, chocolate was at the favorite smell. This activity actually initiated another activity that I will do next week, which is Tastes of the Rainforest, because the children wanted more than to just smell the rainforest! I decided to write books with the children because they had shown an interest in making books on their own, and it was really neat to see what the students chose to write about. While most children did write about Rain Forest animals, some wrote about their families and others chose a more fictional prose. They were all very proud of their writing and being an author. Throughout the unit, several children showed an interest in snakes, which is why I chose to create the studnets' very own three dimensional snake. In order to do this, the students stuffed a nylon with newspaper and then stapled the snake closed with a tongue in the mouth. The snake was completed with buttons for eyes, and some chose to use them as the pattern on the snake's skin. During all of these activities, the children become completely immersed in the process of the project. While all of the activities are designed to be developmentally appropriate, the children become so invested in the project that they are able to maintain the focus appropriate for that of a school-aged child.

__Week 6: May 18, 2012:__

This Tuesday I lead a circle that focused on the life cycle of a plant. The circle's activities included reading //The Mystery Seed//, and then retelling the sequence of the life cycle of the featured plant in the story, which started as a seed with roots, developed two leaves, grew a stem and bloomed into a flower. This story and sequence would be retold and the students' comprehension would be assessed by the children making their own books. The circle started by reading the story, then, verbally retelling the story together and talking about the four stages of the cycle that would be written about in their own books. Although I made a demonstration book and reviewed what I expected of the books, the lesson did not go as smoothly as I had planned; the students needed more visuals of the words to write and needed more instruction on the directional orientation of a book. While the lesson could have been more independent with more visuals of the words in the book, the students' books turned out good and they were really proud of their work. Luckily, I had another opportunity in the afternoon to refine the lesson and, the second time I read the book and wrote the words of the book that the students recalled and dictated to me on a large poster. By doing this, the students had a visual that everyone could see and use to facilitate the making of their own book. It is really nice that I have the opportunity to revisit a lesson so quickly so that I have time to reflect upon the lesson and implement changes as necessary.