Daily Journal 3/18
This morning I came into class and Mrs. Cupka went over the lesson I would be doing with the class when she is out next time. When the class came in from P.E., I noticed that they were exceptionally quiet. I found out that they are on “probation” because they were out of control yesterday. Today Mrs. Darnell showed the class about levers and fulcrums. They are working with forces on a balance which I thought was really interesting since I was just covering this topic in physics. The class had to test the amount of force used to lift the load. The students would move the fulcrum around to change the amount of pennies that would be needed to lift it. I walked around and helped answer questions as well as make sure the kids stayed on task. Jessica and Landon were goofing off for a while until I asked them to focus. Elle and I talked through her conclusion once she had gathered all her data, and I could tell she really knew what she was doing. I am taking a workbook and packet home with me so I am prepared for next class.
Daily Journal 3/25
During my excused block I finished the lesson I had started yesterday when Mr. Goodson was observing me. Lillian was having a bad day so Mrs. Cupka had to call her mom and she wasn’t allowed to participate anymore with the catapults. I gave them five more minutes to add anything to their designs and then I took them outside to the garden to test them. I bought new marshmallows that were less sticky so they could actually be launched. Before testing, each group talked about their design and why they thought it would shoot the marshmallow the farthest. Then, as each group tested, we measured how many meters the marshmallow was shot for each trial. William started bragging when their group won and so the class got mad at him so Mrs. Cupka had him apologize to everyone. Michael and his group’s catapult broke after their second trial and so Michael got really upset and stopped being a part of the activity so Mrs. Cupka had a talk with him. After that we all went inside for math rotations which is the classes’ favorite. Mrs. Cupka would take a group in the back while another group did bookwork, answered questions scattered around the room or practiced their multiplication facts until it was time to rotate. I walked around and helped a lot of students with the bookwork since they were new to fractions.
Daily Journal 4/15
Today instead of sitting in class I went with Mrs. Darnell who took a few kids out of each third grade class who did well on their fraction pre-test. We went into the art room and started an alternate experiment. The kids had to test how much water was used when brushing teeth for 2-3 minutes versus only having the water on when needed. It was really interesting to hear all the different ideas the kids were coming up with and being able to observe new kids. One kid, Charlie who is from the class Brooke is observing was really funny to watch because he was really fidgety and chewed on his shirt. Even though it looked like he had no idea what was happening around him he was really smart. Something I learned that was interesting was that not all the kids pulled out were gifted but rather had to be tested out and then they all had to sign a contract saying they wouldn’t brag about what they were doing to the rest of their class.