More Good Stuff =)

Check out the posts that these awesome people have made over the semester! =)

http://busybeeblog-misshare.blogspot.com/

http://makesocialstudiesfun.blogspot.com/

http://miss-crone-block2-crone.blogspot.com/

http://miss-emenhiser.blogspot.com/

http://kimkoscher.blogspot.com/

Are You Listening?

On Tuesday Sydney's mother, who was a college professor for many years, came to our class as a guest speaker. The topic of our day was Listening. As a talker, I found many of the ideas within the class to be both surprising and helpful. Our discussion on listening applied to us as teachers listening to our students and to helping our students to become better listeners. It was also about helping us as students become better listeners. We began by defining communication, and talking about aspects of communication. Some of the ideas that stuck out to me were the reminder that communication is a two-way street, looking at communication as constantly depicting who we are as people, and the reminder that we are always communicating. We also talked about how, as teachers, we will always be teaching. Every moment that our students, whether at any time in school or when we encounter them outside of school, will be a moment that they are watching us and learning from what we do. When we went on to talk about some bad habits that people have when it comes to listening, I recognized several habits that I have. Two of my biggest bad habits are my emotional reactions to what people are saying, and thinking about what I'm going to say while they're speaking. These are two things that I really need to work on. One of the most interesting things that I learned was that most people remain at a 6th grade auditory vocabulary level, even while they improve their speaking, writing, and reading vocabulary.

After discussing the idea of communication and some of the worst habits of communication, we went on to talk about ways that we can prepare ourselves and ways that we can help our students prepare to listen in the classroom. We took time in small groups to think of ways that we can teach our students to become better listeners. During this time we discussed four aspects, preparing ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Many of us found that these are often intertwined. Some of the ideas that we came up with to use in our classrooms included minimizing distractions, holding students accountable for homework, making sure parents and students are aware of materials needed, doing brain "stretches" in the morning, using a daydream journal, setting clear procedures and following through with them, modeling appropriate emotional responses, having a "safe place" in the classroom, and modeling respect for others. On the whole, I felt that the class was very useful, and I got a lot out of it.

Field Trip =)

Last Tuesday our block had the opportunity to spend part of the day on a field trip. The main purpose of this field trip was for us to become aware of the resources that we have in the area, for when we are teachers. For our trip we went to the Center for History in South Bend. One section of the group decided to take a tour through the Studebaker Museum, another section toured the museum in the Center for History, and a third section went on a guided tour through Copsaholm, the mansion belonging to the Olivers, a very prominent, wealthy family in South Bend's history. J.D. Oliver, who built the mansion, was the president of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, a business begun by his father. Due to the fact that the Plow Works is no longer in operation, many people are unaware of who the Olivers were. However, the Olivers were one of the wealthiest families in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although I have toured Copsaholm several times previously, I never get tired of seeing the elegance, historicity, and lavishness of the beautiful mansion.

One of the things that I felt made the field trip most fun was the presence of two children belonging to members of the group. I felt that their presence gave us a better idea of the kinds of observations and comments that children would make during a field trip to a place such as this. Their comments also had us all giggling, sometimes covertly and sometimes out loud. I think that a field trip to a place like Copsaholm could really help children to start understanding the ways that people lived in earlier times.

Decades Project

At the end of last Thursday many of us had feelings both of relief and accomplishment, after having presented one of our big projects for the semester: our Decades Project. The group that I was part of presented the 1950's. I myself am particularly fascinated with the 50's, so this was an exciting project for me to do. My focuses during the project were on the fashion and the movies of the 50's. I very much enjoyed finding out how many Disney movies were produced in the 50's. One of the most fascinating things that I stumbled across in my research for the project was a blog where a woman from Toronto had recently put together a series of posts on what she called her "1950's Housewife Experiment", where she spent several weeks living the life of a 1950's housewife.

I really enjoyed working with the ladies in my group, and I think we ended up with a very well put together project. Looking at and reading about all the interesting facts they had researched about the 50's was really interesting. When we presented our project, we had several hula-hoops (invented in the 50's) for people to have hula-hoop contests with. I think I had the most fun with our presentation in dressing up, because I love 1950's style fashion.

All of the other groups in our class also did a really great job of presenting their projects, and I was really impressed. It was fascinating to find out all the little trivia that they presented, and being able to connect toys, movies, music, food, and other things to the time periods when they were invented or made popular. The 1960's group even brought Mouse Trap, which we set up together. I played Mouse Trap a lot as a child, so it was fun to find out when it had been invented!

Altogether I think everyone had a really wonderful time presenting, and learned a lot both from their own projects and everyone else's! :)

What Makes a Good Classroom?

Yesterday we discussed in class what makes a truly engaging and inviting classroom for children, and how rules can be a part of that. Each of us brought in the classroom rules from our field experience, and discussed whether those rules seemed appropriate and helpful in the classroom setting. Together we discussed what would make a classroom unhappy for children, and what things would create an inviting environment for them. Then, as groups, we created a set of five rules that would apply three important concepts: compassion, caring, and the common good. The five rules that my group came up with were:

• Be respectful
• Be reliable
• Follow directions
• Give your best effort
• Stop, think, react

Once all of our groups had shared our rules, we realized that one of the most common themes throughout them was respect. This led to a discussion about what respect really means, and how we can define it. We also discussed how, in the classroom, it's important to have students help define the meaning of respect. Some of the aspects of respect that we discussed were that respect is actions and behavior that you can be proud of, accepting responsibility and learning from your mistakes, letting people be people and allowing mistakes, and acknowledging and accepting differences among people.

For me, this time in class really clarified how to go about the process of including students in the making of classroom rules.

Trade Fair

Jess's adorable buckets

Last Thursday we had a trade fair in class. During the days leading up to the trade fair I was having a difficult time deciding what to take. I really wanted to take something that people would be interested in. At first I thought that I would find something at United Art and Education that I could get several of somewhat inexpensively. However, when I went I couldn't really find anything. Wednesday night I was really worrying about what to take when I realized that my parents had brought back quite a few small souveniers from Ecuador back in the fall. I ended up taking several handmade Christmas ornaments, as well as a small hand-painted scene and a mini tapestry. Most of my ornaments went fast, and the scene was coveted by several people.

Of the objects that other people brought, Elizabeth's hand-made teacher sign was definitely the most wanted. It was really beautiful. I knew that nothing that I brought was anywhere near worth what she made, so I didn't try for it. Jess's adorable Valentine's buckets were a well-wanted item for many people. Ashley's purses also caught the eye of many of the girls. I found one that I really liked, and I ended up trading one of Jess's buckets that I'd gotten for the purse. I guess for me it was trading up!

Many of us didn't think very well about the fact that we have Andrew in the class, so when we got there we realized that a lot of the things we brought weren't very guy-friendly. The girls who brought food were all glad. The things Andrew brought didn't really go, but we ended up having a lot of fun with the huge stuffed animals he brought, and they are now sitting in the ERC waiting for adventure!