Weekly Log #3 Student Teaching Weekly Log Libby Bouma Week 2 2/10-14

1. How did you spend your time this week? What responsibilities did you have? This week I continued to spend my time observing Mrs. Kluesner and paying extra attention to specific details on how instruction moves forward. By paying attention to key details, I can take what I have learned during my time at Drake and what I am observing and apply them to my own teaching. I continued to work with the 2nd grade reading students and the first grader with this writing while adding a couple of groups. This week I started teaching the 4th grade corrective reading group with three students. Each lesson spans over two days with the first day focusing on a word attack lesson and reading the story. The second day focuses on check-outs where students demonstrate fluent reading with little to no errors. They are also timed on how many words per minute they can read which is then recorded in their progress monitoring. I also started teaching the first ten minutes of the 2nd grade spelling instruction for two students. These students are working with the Spelling Mastery curriculum. This has been a great transition, as next week I will begin teaching the second half of their time in writing. This week I also began working with a 5th grade student in his classroom at the end of his social studies instruction to help him with his writing. We then move into his home classroom where we go over what he needs to have written down in his planner and what homework he needs to be working on for the week. He then comes into the special ed. room for support with his homework until the school day is over. I had opportunities throughout the week to help get groups started with their lessons and as an additional support to them during their work. I also continued to help grade assessments and administer progress-monitoring assessments such as DIBELs and math probes. As we are moving into the 4th week, I am feeling more comfortable with the routine and schedule. This allows me to pay special attention to specifics in instruction. Mrs. Kluesner has been a great mentor and has given me a lot of opportunities to help in her classroom. She is also wonderful with answering my questions. 2. What were your most satisfying and challenging experiences? My most satisfying experience this week was getting the routine down for the 2nd grade reading students during their Reading Mastery group. I watched Mrs. Kluesner at the beginning of the week and noted key pieces I felt I was missing. I also continued to work with the 4th grade corrective reading group. They really struggled during the first lesson I instructed with them, making a lot more errors than they had been making with Mrs. Kluesner. Both Mrs. Kluesner and I spoke with the students about their errors and how regardless of who is teaching them, the errors are not acceptable. The students did exceptionally better the second lesson I taught. My most challenging experience this week has been preparing myself to teach 6th grade algebra. I was a terrible algebra student in high school and it still seems crazy to me that they are teaching it in 6th grade. I observed Mrs. Kluesner begin the lesson and it has been helpful to see her again use concrete representations (balance pans) to teach the basics. Seeing Mrs. Kluesner helped ease my concerns and going over the problems ahead of time to practice has also helped prepare my lessons.

3. What are the plans for the upcoming week? This upcoming week I will be taking over two new groups. The first is a 6th grade math group is with two students. I have been working on the algebra and inequality lesson plans, which will begin Monday. I will then also support them with their unit assessment at the end of the week. The second group I will add is the second grade writing. I will begin instructing them on how to write stories that tell more. I have also started looking up icebreaker activities to do during a school-wide bullying prevention event. It is my understanding that students are taken from different classes and grouped together to help create relationships between students and activities that help them get to know one another.