EDUC+3003+Assignments

From what I have observed in Mrs. Self's Kindergarten classroom, she lays out her whole year when planning her lessons. She makes changes as the year goes on because having a different classroom every year means that she has to adjust the lessons to meet the different student's needs. Mrs. Self has bins neatly organized in her classroom, and they are each labeled with the month that the stuff in that particular bin is used for. She has one for all twelve months in a year. Also, because Mrs. Self has been teaching for seven years now, she has accumulated a lot of activities and worksheets. Each week she plans in advance for the following week. She has her own schedule and way of accomplishing this, just like all teachers do. She stays after the students leave every day in order to make sure that everything (materials, worksheets, etc.) are ready to use for the next day, and she plans ahead for the next week. She usually stays the longest on Thursday evenings to pre-plan and be productive in order to leave fairly early on Fridays. She is very responsible and on task with everything that she does, which has set a wonderful example for me in my first field placement experience. Mrs. Self has explained to me that one piece of advice from her is that you have to learn to accept/enjoy change, because change is a constant thing in the education system. She said that her and the rest of the Kindergarten teachers all make changes daily, whether in a particular lesson or in the schedule of activities for the day. When the five Kindergarten teachers meet for their grade level meeting, they discuss change. When I attended a grade level meeting, they discussed how they were getting ready to go on the annual pumpkin farm field trip. Then they discussed certain things that needed to be changed this year with the trip in order to make this one even better than the one last year! At the meeting they also went over certain lesson plans that they were all going to do with their classes. I have learned that teachers in each grade level all collaborate lesson plans and activities so that the teachers are all covering/teaching the same standards throughout the year to their students. Even though each teacher has her/her own teaching style, they are all still teaching their students what they need to learn to successfully move up to the next grade level. From my experience in Mrs. Self’s class, and observing/speaking to the other Kindergarten teachers, I have learned that they plan with both remediation and acceleration in mind. They want to plan their lessons so that they can improve/correct the student’s skills (remediation), but they also plan their lessons so that the students can learn one thing in order to move on to another subject (acceleration). Long Branch Elementary uses Accelerated Reader (AR) books and tests, which is another example of acceleration. In the Kindergarten classroom, Mrs. Self has the standards she uses hanging up on her white board by her desk, but the students do not see the standards because they are printed off on computer paper, so they are not big enough to read. With that said, the Kindergarteners cannot read yet anyways, so that may be different in the older grades. I have learned that in order to be a successful teacher, you must plan ahead with lesson planning, you must stay on task, you must be organized, and you must learn to enjoy change. I have observed all of this in my placement thus far, and Mrs. Self has set an exemplary example for me to follow.
 * __ Writing Assignment __**


 * Possessive Nouns Lesson Attachment (that goes along with video on DVD): **