Week 8: Seventh Day in the Classroom

Week 8: Seventh Day in the Classroom

Date: Thursday, October 21^st, 2021

By: Monica Schrank  

For the Daily 5 for this week, the students were practicing their recognition of text features such as table of contents, subheading, bold text, photograph, caption, diagram, index, glossary, and nonfiction. A few weeks ago, the students practiced their recognition of text features by working on a Seasaw activity by looking through a nonfiction book and take pictures of the different text features. So today, the students were reviewing recognizing the different text features by find them in a nonfiction book and working on a quiz by filling in the text feature word with its correct definition. As mentioned last week, the three groups of students that I worked with have different academic levels, so, for the second and third group, I had to explain more for those students what the different text features were. The nonfiction books were used if the students needed help and by looking in the book, they could visually see what the specific text feature was. Some of the students needed help, but for the most part the students were able to finish the quiz with little to no help. This showed me that students knew what the different text features were and what they mean while also using the nonfiction book to help them find real/visual examples of the different text feature.

            Today was my first day of teaching my lesson to the students. The students were learning about fact and opinion from the story that they read called Jellies: The Life of a Jellyfish. The students were very engaged and focused during the lesson which helped me to know that they were paying attention. The students really enjoyed my part of the lesson where they found as many facts and opinions that they could in the text and put them on the board in the T-chart labeled Fact and Opinion. With this being my first lesson to teach in person, I was pleased with how the lesson went. During my lesson, I was walking around and one of the students said that this lesson was fun (which made me feel really good) because that showed me that I was keeping their attention and teaching in a way that was fun and engaging for the students. A few of the students needed help during their independent practice, so I was able to help those students one-on-one by focusing on facts and opinions and how to know if a statement is a fact or opinion. Overall, it was an eventful day observing and being in the classroom again with the students. I am really glad my first lesson is done because I feel more comfortable (not so nervous) and cannot wait to teach the students next!