Welcome to my Student Teaching Experience

Thank you for taking time to share my student teaching experience. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work at Lincoln Elementary School. The school building is modern, well equipped, well maintained, easily accessible and a well designed learning environment. The students at Lincoln have many opportunities: art, music, technology, physical education, and a large library. The building and activities would be nothing if not for the professionals housed there. They are intelligent, dedicated, creative, energetic, social and a great group of professionals to learn from. As my Uncle Marv would say, "they're a great group to go down the river with". I might add that "they're the team I'd go down the river in a dragon boat with ." I haven't shared the best part and that's Renae Donaghue my supporting teacher at Lincoln. Wow! What a Special Educator. Students love her, teachers respect and seek her out for advice and consultation about students, parents know she wants only the best for their child, and her creativity has no limits. She is extremely knowledgeable about special education legislation, child development, and effective strategies for teaching, She has taught me so much. Thanks to her and everyone that contributed to this valuable and memorable teaching experience.

IZZY

Our Class Pet is Izzy the rat!

What a friendly rat she is. "Yes, her is" (common pronoun issue).

Izzy is a wonderful reward for a hard days work, loves to be read to, rat is a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word, requires sanitizer after handling (good hygiene) and provides an excuse to stop by or bring a friend to show. What more can be expected from a classroom pet?

Team Teaching

THIS WAS OUR TEAM TEACHING KINDERGARTEN PUPPET SHOW

No, the puppets to the left are not the team teachers. I have had an opportunity to participate in team teaching while at Lincoln. Our team is teaching social skills to kindergarteners, first and second graders. Janet, our speech clinician, Renae and I have three social skills groups that meet weekly. We have been working on greeting, introducing yourself, and hygiene. We have individual sharing, a lesson, puppet show demonstrating our lesson, and an opportunity to practice our new skill. The students love the puppet show and always want to play with the puppets. This week we did a review of all the lessons and the students made sock puppets and put on a puppet show. The students were to teach what they had learned using their puppets. That became the "why I want to be a teacher" moment. Like sponges (despite the wiggles) they had absorbed the lessons and did a remarkable job reteaching their classmates.

What's in a Name

What's in one student's name is --Too many vowels! One of our kindergartners was having a difficult time with the letters in his name. He spelled it so many different ways that at first we would go and recheck his school records for the spelling. We worked with the occupational therapist to think of some strategy to help him. Repeated writing was unsuccessful because his writing was so laborious that remembering the spelling became multitasking to the extreme. I tried to use individual letters and that was unsuccessful. We wanted to help him visualize the shape of his name. We made this puzzle grid for him. To begin with there were only 4 pieces (K,ea,g,an), when he had practiced and been given the verbal reminder that "g" was the 4th , we separated first the "an" piece and finally the "ea" piece. It was about two weeks of daily practice for about 3 to 5 minutes before he was consistently successful. Now we can move our efforts to writing his name with correct letter formation.

Spalding Method

Short Vowel Sound Reminders
Digraphs

"What sound does this letter make?" is frequently heard from the classroom. Lincoln school has a Spalding history. My supporting teacher, Renae said when she was hired at Lincoln, there was a required 2 weeks of Spalding training in the summer. This has changed and it is no longer a requirement for staff members. In the second and third grade spelling lists about half of the 30 words are Spalding words and the remainder come from the students weekly reading. We have several second and third grade students that could be "Spalding Poster Kids." When these students do their spelling words and read they use their phonemic training to complete these tasks. I have purchased and studied the Spalding book The Writing Road to Reading. This has been a challenge for me to learn without specific training. I have used the Spalding book, observed Renae, imitated Renae, found several internet resources that read the phonemic letter sounds, and have allowed my students to help me learn the letter sounds.

Go to YouTube - WRR Phonograms Demonstrated by Rita YouTube - WRR Phonograms Demonstrated by Rita This was my homework and entertainment!

Bulletin Boards

My first bulletin board was about book worms. This was before I had met my students and before I was aware of my curriculum. I had a bookworm for each student and they used foam letters to spell their name and selected colored jewels for decorations. I do not have a picture of this bulletin board.

Our second bulletin board was based on the book The Classroom Pet from the Black Lagoon. We read this book to the students and right before the classroom pet was identified we had the students draw what they thought the pet was. These drawings were used to create a bulletin board. The students were creative and imaginative with their drawings. See the attached photos.