Week Five at Cornerstone

Finally, a full week of field! On Monday we had the final competition for the kids flying and rolling devices. They had a lot of fun competing with one another.  After that, Ms. Dillion read to the class for about fifteen minutes from a chapter book. I like the idea of teachers reading a higher level book to the class. By reading to them, you set an example for how they should read and also write. I had to opportunity to observe the third reading group for the first time on Monday. This is the group who are still functioning below grade level.  The activities they did focused  mostly on the sounds letters and letter combinations make.

On Tuesday the class did Ohio standardized test preparation.  They have workbooks for both math and reading.  They filled out the questions in the books and then graded each others work.  Ms. Dillion talked the students through the logic of finding the “best answer.”  It was made obvious to the students that what they were doing was in preparation for a final test, not to benefit their education. Although I understand the reasoning behind this preparation, it seems absurd to devote so much time to teaching to the test.  It seems like a comprehensive education should be enough to prove what the students know.

On Wednesday I was able to spend more time with the third reading group.  There was little discipline within the group. In some cases, students blatantly disrespected the teacher and each other with on consequences.  Below are some conversations I wrote down, verbatim:

Student: “You have to wait until everyone’s ready!”

Teacher: “I don’t have to do anything.”

Student: “Then I don’t have to do it, I’ll take my time.”

The student then did proceed to move extremely slowly. When the rest of the group was on number three, she asked for the teacher to repeat number one, and she did, without hesitation. This only reinforced the disrespectful behavior of the student.

Teacher: “You guys fight like you’re sisters, are you sisters?”
Student 1: ” I don’t want her to be my sister!”
Student 2: “I don’t like her!”

I can’t understand why the teacher chooses to never reprimand her students.  In addition to being inappropriate for the classroom environment, it impedes the learning experience.

Thursday was writer’s notebook day again. They read a book called “Nicholas Bentley Stoningpot III” and wrote responses to it in their journals.  Again, I think this is a really great activity for creative writing.

Even though I won’t be in class for the next three weeks, I’m looking forward to my next time at Cornerstone.

Week Four at Conerstone

On Monday Cornerstone hosted a guest speaker. Her presentation was about women in history.  The woman, who happened to be an actress, dressed up as Annie Sullivan and did most of her presentation with an accent. She discussed many prominent women in history such as Florence Nightingale, Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Amelia Airhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Helen Keller. It was interesting to see the manner in which their life stories and contributions were presented to young children.  While the students seemed half interested in the presentation, she made great efforts to make them an active part of her talk.

On Wednesday, the students worked on a descriptive writing project.  Each student was to draw a creature and then write a detailed description of it. They were then to read their description to a partner, from which the partner was to draw his or her interpretation of the creature. The accuracy of the second partner determined how well the author described his or her creature using details.  I thought this was a fun and effective way of conveying to the students what exactly is meant by details and describing words.  One student even said after realizing his partner’s take on his creature looked nothing like his, “I guess I didn’t give good enough details!”

Thursday was a fun day!  We held preliminary testing of their secret projects they had been creating for science. Vicki and I took groups into the hall to see who could get their device to go the furthest.  They then had the opportunity to make changes to their device based on what they saw happen.  Some of their ideas are extremely creative. I love watching their minds turn as they try to figure out how to make their object go further than everyone else’s.
Overall, it was a great week, even though we didn’t have school on Tuesday due to the snow.  I got to see a lot of imagination at play in the creature project as well as in the secret science project.  It’s refreshing to see such creativity.  The reading groups finished with their work, so Miss Dillon and Mrs. McCoy’s group switched with one another.  It’s good to observe how teachers interact in such a situation.  It’s great to split students into smaller groups so that they get full attention from their teachers .