Monday Journal Entry #11

Today was the last day that Ms. Lisa would be gone. I taught math first hour. It was so frusterating because when I got to school I felt as if nothing was working. I wanted to print a lesson plan and a fractions pre-assessment and the printer wasn’t working from our classroom computer. I tried it from my laptop and that wasn’t working either, so I made my way down to the computer lab. I saved the information I needed on a zip drive and then inserted it into the a Mac to print. The computer said that I needed an administrator’s password to add the printers. So finally I just forgot about it and taught with my laptop up at the front of the classroom for me to look at.

Later on in the day when I was trying to get some information off of the shared server, we lost power in our room and the computer needed to be rebooted. When it was up and running again I asked an Information Technology employee to help me access the shared area because it was not working. He came up to help, but it didn’t seem to help, I still couldn’t access the area once he left. Ah, gotta love technology – I just think it wasn’t my day. Despite all of the problems everything ended up working just fine.

Since Ms. Lisa was gone, I was pretty much full time in the classroom for year six. I taught two language lessons today as well. We continued our lesson on how to create persuasive statements. I was encouraging the students to use “connectives” in their sentences and emotive language to improve their writing. For example, despite the fact that the animals are being taken care of at a circus they are being deprived of their natural habitat where they can run free, enjoy the fresh air, and lead a natural life. The students will eventually be doing some persuasive writing pieces and end the inquiry with debates.

During my two free periods today when the students had Spanish I wrote up some “sub/cover” notes for Ms. Lisa to inform her what had been going on in the classroom for the last three days. I would post the notes, but they are pretty lengthy and boring…a lot has happened in three days! =] However, writing the notes gave me a good opportunity to reflect on what has happened the past three days, and realize where we need to be by the end of the week. In the cover notes I also noticed myself reflecting on my own teaching, which was helpful. In addition, I made sure to write any questions I had for Ms. Lisa throughout the week on the “cover” notes.

Tomorrow I was asked to go on a field trip with a year four teacher and students. They are going on a trip to the recycling center. It fits nicely in with their unit that they are studying. Ms. Bell the teacher asked if I would like to come along as another chaperone. She thought it might be nice to have a little variety and interact with some other students at the school. I’m excited for the trip.

Bye for now.

Marbella Weekend

Saturday morning I slept in until 10, it felt so good after a long week. Shortly after getting up, Mireille, Brittany and I walked down to the beach. I did some sprints in the sand to train for softball. Ahhh sprints in the sand are a struggle! Mireille got some softball gloves and a ball from the PE department. The only problem is that I think the gloves were made for a five year old and the softball barely fit inside the glove. The three of us played catch for a little while then I decided it would be a good idea to go in the Sea. Most people in Spain including Mireille thought that I was crazy going into the ocean at the end of November – their winter. However, I didn’t think it was that cold; just my head and ears were a bit cold. I didn’t last more than five minutes though and that was enough.

In the afternoon Mireille drove Brittany, Annika, and I to Marbella. Marbella is a town of about 105,000 people whereas Estapona is 40,000 I think. Marbella is only about 30 minutes from Estapona, but even farther from Soto. In Marbella we went shopping at the La Canada shopping center. It was a pretty big shopping center. My favorite part was the escalator ramps! One of the stores that I really liked was called Zara. I got a couple shirts and a black dress. Definitely out of my comfort zone, but I really liked it.

After shopping we ate dinner at a Spanish restaurant inside the mall. I had potatoes with hot sauce and toast with grilled mushrooms and garlic mayonnaise. It was really good. We then made our way to a hostel that we would be staying at for the night. Finding it was definitely an adventure. Mireille was hilarious when calling the hostel for directions. Ironically the name of the place we were staying was called Berlin, so we kept joking about how we were going to tell people back home that we went to Germany. On our lost adventure to find the hostel we passed a sign for a beach called “The Funny Beach.” Mireille said, “Funny beach? You get there, and start giggling…and you can’t stop until you leave. This next beach is the serious beach…no laughing.” =]

Finally we found where we would be staying. I have never stayed in a hostel, but Brittany who has stayed in quite a few thought that it was pretty nice. We hung out in our rooms for a while and then went out on an adventure around Marbella port.

Sunday we made our way back to Estapona where we relaxed, watched movies and worked on lesson plans and standards.

Journal Entry #10 - FRIDAY!

Friday already! Since Ms. Lisa is gone, I had the kids all day today. A cover teacher was with me for a couple of hours and Ms. Hartland took them for two hours of art in the afternoon so that was nice. In the morning they had Computer Tech and Music class, so I really didn’t have to teach that much. In math today we worked on story problems requiring either division or multiplication. The students had to decide which function to use and then the answer – with a label! =]

In the afternoon Ms. Hartland’s art was really cool, but somewhat chaotic. The students got into small groups and they had to create a one minute skit and then freeze the finish. The skits were supposed to show some kind of conflict. Some of them were quite good, while others were not planned and just turned into boys fake fighting in front of the class…typical. Then the students joined two groups together and went outside to sketch each other’s freeze frame shot. One group held their positions while the other group quickly sketched the position/shape of the students. They were only allowed five minutes to draw so their strokes with a graphite marker were to be large, not a lot of detail. I took a few pictures the students drawing and the conflict poses.

Today I also finished putting up my bulletin board; Mireille helped me because she had the last two hours off. This is probably them most elaborate bulletin board I have ever created! I strung the origami cranes the students made on fishing line and then hung them from the ceiling. I also printed pictures from my power point and added captions that tell abbreviated story the young Japanese girl, Sadako. It's not quite finished, but close. I plan to print off a couple Japanese peace symbols and put them on the black behind the cranes.

Its really funny because since the peace crane lesson I have students coming in with origami books and paper wanting me to help them make certain animals or objects. A few of them are really into origami now, which makes me feel good, I'm glad they liked it and now found a hobby. When I was putting up the cranes the students were so excited that theirs was going to be hanging up, they all were trying to locate their crain in the air or on the board.

After school, Annika, Riley, Mireille and I went to play paddle at the club. There were quite a few staff members there this week, and like last Friday, it was a lot of fun. I would say there were thirteen or fourteen of us.

Tonight Annika, Brittany, and I went back to Mireille’s apartment for the night. We are hoping to relax, catch up on some school work and maybe watch a movie, on a TV!!! (not a laptop) I’m really excited haha =]. Tomorrow I plan to work out, maybe go in the ocean if its not too cold, and then we are traveling to Marbella to do some site seeing.

Another amazing day in Espana, I could get used to this.

Journal #9

Thursday November 14, 2008 Today was a very interesting day. We did our last presentation of the play for the parents. Today I thought it was so good, even better than yesterday. Also, after break today, Ms. Lisa left for a education training class in Madrid with another teacher. She will not be back until Tuesday. At SIS they do not hire substitute teachers, they just get teachers to “cover” for them. We were supposed to have a teacher “cover” for Ms. Lisa, and then I was to continue teaching math. However, there was some confusion and our “cover” teacher had to be with year six for the last two hours of the day. This would not have been a big deal for me to teach three lessons in one day, however, I was completely unprepared, because on the “time table” I was only scheduled to teach math. Ms. Hartland was a lot of help and gave me ideas of what to do with them. For most of the time the students just worked on completing poems and story boards that they were working on and did some silent reading. At the end of the hour I taught them a song, and dance that they had a lot of fun with. In the end it worked out just fine, but it was a bit stressful.
After school I stayed and helped Mireille with her club football practice. She has about 30 girls out for the team. There are all ages, anywhere from 8-15. This is the first year the school has had girls football, so it is a bit crazy. I worked with just the younger girls. It was fun, but considering the fact that I haven’t played football since I was about 10, I don’t know much.

And, almost done with week 2…

Wednesday Nov 12 - Entry #8

Wednesday November, 12, 2008

Today was our first production of the play! The year six students performed for the primary students in years 1-3. I was excited because Mireille, Annika, and Brittany were there to watch with me. Right away in the morning when I got to school, the students had to change into their costumes. This was a bit chaotic and some of the girls were giving me their watches to wear. “They didn’t wear watches in Victorian times, Ms. Rachael, will you hold this for me?” In the end I was wearing two watches on my left hand, one on my right and another in my pocket that wouldn’t fit on my wrist! =]

I was very pleased with the performance and thought the kids did a great job. It was about a 45 minute presentation, so I also thought the young students were a great audience. It was a long time for them to sit, and they were also on a hard tile floor. In addition, the content of the play was way over their heads, but I do think that they enjoyed the songs.

After the production I helped out with P1 primary for the first ten minutes while my students had their snacks and got changed back into their school uniforms. Last night I gave Mireille all of my elementary education songs that I downloaded on my computer during my last placement. I also told her about the Tooty Ta!!! She wanted me to come in and teach it to her P1 (kindergarten) class. I asked Brittany if she would come to PE with her kids so she could help me demonstrate. It has been a long time since I have worked with that young of kids, but it was fun. They all loved the Tooty Ta, and looked ridiculous while doing it. Mireille wants me to teach it to her so that she can use it again. If you don’t know what the Tooty Ta is, it’s a song and dance that we learned during methods classes at Gustavus. It is a serious of actions that eventually has the students standing with their: thumbs up, elbows in, feet apart, knees together, toes together, bottoms up, eyes shut, tongue out, and turning around. While in this crazy position we sing together “Tooty ta, tooty ta, tooty tat a.”

I taught during maths again today, and we continued to work on division. They are doing fairly well. Today we moved on from doing long division into changing the remainders in their answers to a decimal point. When I look at their practice problems at the end of the hour I record how many they were able to complete and how many they answered correctly. This gives me a good idea of where the students are at. Tomorrow I will need to prepare some extra problems who have division mastered. They need some challenge problems.

Since today was Wednesday it was their crazy activity day today. Ms. Lisa and I had some time to sit down and discuss her “tracking and monitoring” plan. It is very different from what I am used to. For example, for math there is a section for division. Within division there are specific areas are being monitored for example, can the students divide without remainders, with remainders, can they change a remainder to a decimal, can they relate division to story problems. For each of these questions I colored a red (not mastered) yellow (partially mastered) or green (completely mastered) dot.

During this time I also worked on putting up information from my lesson on origami cranes on a bulletin board. It’s going to be pretty elaborate so it has been taking me a while. I cut out pictures from the PowerPoint, added colored backgrounds and laminated them. I also shortened the story I told about Sadako so that I can tell the story through picture captions. Finally, I am going to attempt to string and hang the origami cranes that the students made. I will take a picture of the finished product and post it when I am finished.

After school the Primary Years Program had a staff meeting. The objective was to look at academic planners of other teachers and see if their central ideas and points of interest correlated. The planners that the teachers use are revised and reused throughout the years so it is important for the summative assessment to still match the central idea as well. We split up into small groups of three. I was assigned to work with Olive, a year five teacher and one of the nursery teachers. I found this meeting and discussion very helpful for understanding the IB planners and structure. It was flattering when the two teachers decided to take some of my suggestions about how to improve the planner we were working on.

The planner we were asked to look at was for a year 4 class. The central idea was: past civilizations leave us with a legacy which influences the way we live today. The lines of inquiry that the teachers planned to cover include: roman technology and infrastructure, roman settlements, and roman life and how it helped and developed our culture today. Our question was, why only the Romans? What about other past civilizations in Spain such as the Moors? We wondered if the questions of inquiry should reflect more than one civilization. Also within the summative assessment section of the planner, the students needed to present information about Roman soldiers and gladiators. We agreed that this was a good assessment of what they knew, however, I made a point that that does not connect back to the central idea in that how does it influence the way we live today. Possibly the students could have been asked to make a connection between soldiers in the past and soldiers today, this would have required a deeper level of processing and explaining this connection would also prove that they know information about the past and present.

We came to the conclusion that we liked the central idea. It is very broad with a lot of room for flexibility. However, when we studied the points/lines of inquiry and guided questions they were too specific relating only to the Romans. It gave the students no room to be inquisitive and explore other past civilizations. In conclusion, the planner was too teacher – centered, it was sent up in such a way where the teachers would just feed the students information. Instead, the focus of IB should really be student – centered where the individuals have the opportunity to let their curiosity and interests guide their learning.

I cannot explain how helpful this meeting was for me. First of all it helped me to understand the crazy format of the planner. It basically looks like this big grid with questions and interest points and assessment all over in random boxes. But now, I think it is a little more familiar. It also helped me to understand how teachers plan, and what they do with their students to meet the central ideas. Looking at a planner and “picking at it” would have been very helpful in IB training. It is very realistic and something that would have helped me a lot upon my arrival. Maybe I will make this suggestion of the training for the future.

Back to Estapona for the night with Annika, Brittany and Mireille…the week is just flying by!

ps. look Mom! I got a tatoo ;) just kidding.

Tuesday Nov 11 - Entry #7

Today I continued teaching division in math class. We worked on long division and I also made some word problems with pictures. Hopefully the visual learners will benefit from the pictures. It is somewhat difficult for me to plan math lessons because I do not have a curriculum or textbook to follow, but the flexibility is nice. Tomorrow hopefully I will help them change a remainder into a decimal.

In language Ms. Lisa put up a piece of persuasive writing by Winston Churchill. It was a speech convincing his people to join the war. The students were asked to highlight certain parts of the speech. What parts of the piece made it persuasive? How do you build up points to make your argument persuasive? Ms. Lisa explained a format called the skeleton framework, they are going to use this format to help them create persuasive writing and eventually in their debates at the end of their period of inquiry.

In the afternoon Ms. Lisa allowed me to observe in a P3 classroom with Ms. Clare. Ms. Clare is a vey good teacher with a lot of IB experience. P3 is the same as second grade back home, so it was fun to compare their social and intellectual levels with my class at Cleveland. In their afternoon lessons they were just at the beginning stages of their newest points of inquiry, our place in time. Their central idea is time is a unique resource. I talked with Ms. Clare about this idea and we agreed that time is a very abstract concept. The best way to understand time is to break down the idea. They were working on the question, what is time? The students were looking at different forms of time: measured, your time, and earth time. They were asked to make posters for each type of time with associated vocabulary and pictures. For example measured time would be hours, minutes, seconds, watches, and clocks. An example of your time would be playtime, school time, nap time, football time, and earth time would be calendar type vocabulary such as days of the week and months of the year.

After this activity Ms. Clare explained that as a homework project the students will be creating timelines of their life. As a class the year 3 students would be creating a giant timeline of the earth. The students needed to think of times in history and then draw pictures of them. Ms. Clare and the students would document the points in history that the students identified and fill in the missing information throughout the inquiry unit. It was interesting to see what points in history the students could identify, some common answers were: dinosaurs, pirates, Egyptian pyramids, cavemen, WWII and the attack on the world trade center. I thought that it was very interesting that one of the most popular answers was pirates, don’t know where this came from. I also thought it was great that they knew a little about the attack on the world trade center. However, when I asked the student about it, he did not know where it happened.
I was most impressed this afternoon with the students’ handwriting. Almost all students were writing in very clear cursive. I was also impressed with their ability to work in small groups. They were very interested in the assignment and could easily work independently in small groups staying focused, for the most part.

I also thought that Ms. Clare did a great job of allowing the students to guide the lesson, it was very student centered and almost all of the ideas and information was generated by the students. They discussed with their peers about the different forms of time and they talked with them about events in earth’s history. If the students did not know an answer or how to spell a word they are working on looking it up in a children’s dictionary and even using thesauruses. One of the students wanted to know the year the automobile and planes were invented. Ms. Clare said, “Ah, would you like to go up to the library and ask for help to see if she can point you in the right direction to find this information?” Another students wanted to know about a volcano eruption and she let him use Google on the classroom computer to find the information he wanted.

After school we skype chatted with Dan and some El Ed students! Then made our way to Estapona with Mireille to stay there for a couple nights! Bye for now.

Journal Entry 6

This second week at school I will be teaching approximately one or possibly two lessons a day. I will mostly be teaching math. The year six students are working on division. This morning I did some practice problems on mini white board. We then moved on to solving some problems that that do not have a remainder. For example: 822/2 = 411, 448/7 = 64, 558/9 = 62. After these problems we solved a few that had remainders. Right now the students are just writing the answer and then r5 or r8. Tomorrow I will move on to some long division problems (824/20) and eventually turning the remainder into a decimal.

I had a difficult time planning this lesson, because I like to try and make them interesting, and the students just need to learn division and practice. Also, the IB does not have a math text book or curriculum to follow so I was not used to so much flexibility. Maybe one day this week we will work out some story problems using manipulatives to help the visual learners.

During language time, Ms. Lisa talked about different styles of poetry including free verses, haikus, acrostic, and limericks. The students created a rubric together for their poems they will be writing from photographs. The photographs are pictures of conflict or peace and connect with out POI unit on conflict. In the rubric the students were asked to write a piece of poetry using either free verse or a specific structure. They will get their best “marks” for using metaphors, personification, onomatopoeias, similes, or alliteration.

During the afternoon the students prepared for the play by going through the costumes. Josh and Andrew were hilarious trying on women’s Victorian hats….

Ms. Lisa will be gone part of Thursday and Friday and she is giving me a couple hours during the day to observe other teachers and possibly my roommates! Yes…