Again, another week rushes to a close. With this week being a shorter week, it really seems like I didn't have enough time to get anything done.
I was lucky enough this week to meet most of my class. I still have not met one student, but I have had the chance to meet everyone else. I realize again how great of a class I have. My AT really does a great job at making them feel like a community and making sure everyone is happy and enjoying school. I was worried that once we got the whole class back there might be a few more problems. I was definitely wrong.
This week I was able to do my art lesson. My AT had a great idea to incorporate creative writing into the lesson. He suggested that whichever the kids suggested (either an chick or a bunny) they would incorporate that character into a story some how. I was excited to add this aspect to my lesson. I took the bunny idea from this website.
I had spent most of the night pre-cutting oval shapes. I had pre-cut about half brown for the bunnies and half in different colours for the chicks. I also cut out one ear, bunny feet and the chick. I wasn't sure what their motor skills would be like so, I wanted to have a range of possibilities. Turned out it was a great idea. Most liked to have the option of not worrying about the cutting and spend more time on decorating. For decorations, all I did was go to walmart and bought some dollar store stickers and glitter. One thing I did notice was that I kept the glitter with me. Students had to bring their art piece with the glue where they wanted the glitter to my table and I would put it on. One glitter disaster was all I needed to realize that was the way to go. The students seemed to love the activity. Some students finished quickly and wanted to do both a bunny and a chick.
I was having trouble keeping up with all of my anecdotal notes. I was looking on pinterest and came across this blog that showed how she used Google Forums to keep track of her language anecdotal notes. I decided to try to make my own google forum. I added extra fields so it can be more versatile depending on what subject I am using it in. I also added all of the students names to make things a little quicker. The other original part I added was a choice for learning skills. This makes it easier to assess the learning skills that I am supposed to add to each lesson plan. The awesome thing about using google forums is that all of the data collected is put into an excel spreadsheet. I can sort the data by any category that I want. This makes it really easy to view and keep track of.
I wanted to try and make these perfect. For the writing piece, I got the students to do a rough copy first. I could tell the students really hadn't done much editing. I had to remind them over and over to use their editing checklist. Corrections were a little difficult with them. It took much longer than expected. It took about a day to finish the rough copies. My AT and I had talked about it and we decided we should get some egg shaped paper for the students to write their good copies on. I then wanted to make it colourful so I printed it on colourful card stock. The kids finished it on Thursday. I am hoping we can put them up on Tuesday and have a colourful classroom.
Throughout the week we have continued reading Tale of Despereaux. The students are loving it. Each chapter keeps them in suspense. They now ask for us to read a chapter all day. In the book, we have just met the main character, Despereaux. This weekend I introduced the activity that we will be working on a story board. We will be keeping track of the characters, problems, setting and super words. The kids had a blast retelling all of the information and seeing it up on the story board.
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I was having trouble keeping up with all of my anecdotal notes. I was looking on pinterest and came across this blog that showed how she used Google Forums to keep track of her language anecdotal notes. I decided to try to make my own google forum. I added extra fields so it can be more versatile depending on what subject I am using it in. I also added all of the students names to make things a little quicker. The other original part I added was a choice for learning skills. This makes it easier to assess the learning skills that I am supposed to add to each lesson plan. The awesome thing about using google forums is that all of the data collected is put into an excel spreadsheet. I can sort the data by any category that I want. This makes it really easy to view and keep track of.
I am looking forward to the long weekend to catch up on lesson plans. I must admit, I am looking forward to another short week next week! |