Parent-Teacher Conferences: Ideas that may help!

Parent-teacher conferences are here and I know for many teachers its very stressful. I know just by helping my teacher prepare, it was exhausting. I think that its're extremly important to be prepared and ready to present material to parents. From past experiences, I can see how quick parents are to judge a teacher. I went online and found a great website (www.ehow.com) that had some really helpful tips that will help us as future teachers prepare for conferences! Hope this help!

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:
conference notices
conference schedule
conference prep sheets
samples of student work
pre-conference notes about each student


Step 1:Send conference notices home with plenty of advance notice. Preferably, you should provide parents with a few options of dates and times so that they can choose a meeting time that's convenient for both their schedule and yours. Should you have a student who also spends a significant portion of the school day in another setting, coordinate with that teacher to make sure she, too, is available for a parent conference.

Step 2:Attach a proposed agenda or parent conference prep sheet to the notice. A conference prep sheet gives parents a chance to send back to you ahead of time any information or questions they'd like to have addressed at your meeting. Having that information will allow you to prepare for individual conferences.


Step 3:Let parents know how much time is allotted for their conference. With many conferences to run, you'll need to make sure to stick pretty closely to a schedule. It will also force both you and your students' parents to know exactly what you want to address and to get right to it. Consider setting a timer at the beginning of the conference to keep track of the time.

Step 4:Prepare your physical space for conferences. Set up a waiting area, if possible, for parents to sit comfortably until it's their turn. This would be a good place to put a small table with samples of classroom work and copies of the curriculum and class rules.


Step 5:Make notes about each student's progress and have samples of work to back up your statements. Under the best of circumstances it's difficult to remember all that you want to say, but when you have twenty or more meetings, it's nearly impossible to remember it all. Parents won't mind if you need to refer to pre-conference notes.

Step 6:Ask an administrator to sit in or be available for any conferences that you think might be confrontational. Though you'll probably have no difficulties defusing a tough situation, it's best to have back-up just in case. Along the same lines, if you will be referring a student for special services, ask the specialist or special education teacher to sit in to answer any questions a parent may have.

What do you think of these steps? Can they be helpful to you? Can you think of anymore tips that might help teachers in preparation for the conferences?

(www.ehow.com)

Math Lesson!?!

Hey Ladies!

I was wondering if anyone has done a math lesson in their Tuesday Experience or might have any ideas on what I would be able to do for mine. The students are working on the groupings of numbers like the 10 cubes etc. Any ideas??!?!?

Thank you!

West Hartford 1st Grade Writing Prompt

One thing that I have really grown to love about my Tuesday Experience teacher is her ability to teach and really get her students motivated to write in the classroom. Since I have been there, I have seen nothing but cooperation, determination and success from 95% of the classroom. She uses a variety of techniques and really prepares them well for a variety of things such as story writing, journal writing, and the mandatory writing prompt that is to be distributed to every first grade classroom in West Hartford. Mrs. DiPietro really engages the students attention by her teaching process. Her preparation with the students in doing the writing prompt was fun to watch and I learned SO much from it. Mrs. DiPietro gave a minilesson on writing stories and a practice prompt to prepare the students for the actual one.

When she first told me about the writing prompt I was thinking "hmmm....how will she really get the children involved and wanting to write for a whole 45 mins." Usually the most writing the children do at one time is between 15 and 30 minutes at a time. Even though to us an extra 15 minutes is nothing, to younger children.....o, its a lot!

Mrs. DiPietro first sat the children down on the rug and talked about previous things they have done with their writing development. They talked about how they wrote their "small moments" story, their "ending" story, and how they can start a story off to grab the readers attention. She went over: question lead, action lead, taking lead and snap shot lead. Mrs. DiPietro gave a quick run through of examples and wrote everything down for the students. She emphasized how important it is for the students to have a strong, beginning, middle and end. She also emphasized the importance of using description!

After the review, she gave the children what they were to write about in their story. They were to write: "It is your birthday! You woke up one morning and found a present next to your bed. What is inside the box?" She asked the children their ideas as to what they want to have inside the box. She and the children also talked about and came up with ideas on how they could start their story with a strong beginning. I could tell the children's minds were going because they all were smiling and raising their hands to share their ideas!

She wanted to let the children know just how their work was going to be graded. On a large sheet of paper she wrote out the writing rubric for the children.

Score 1: beginning sense of main point, attempt at narrative
Score 2: may or may not be focused on prompt but readable, shows the beginnings of story of organization.
Score 3: fairly focused, sense of narrative, may attempt to add details or descriptive words.
Score 4: focused on prompt, good sense of narrative, details included.
Score 5: focused, all story elements are included, detail's. descriptive language, and fluency.

The minilesson took know longer then 20 minutes. Mrs. DiPietro planned it out so the children would be able to have the full 45 minutes to practice with this writing prompt in preparation for the real deal. The rules during the prompt was that they were not to leave their desks, talk to their neighbor, and they could not ask me or Mrs. DiPietro any help on spelling words.

During lunch time, Mrs. DiPietro and I reviewed the stories. The stories came out terrific! Out of 23 children, about 17 or so scored a 3,4 or 5. It was really amazing to see that kind of work!

Over spring break I went to Bugbee and continued to help Mrs. DiPietro with the writing prompt and setting up for parent-teacher conferences. She hadn't yet given the actual town writing prompt to the students, instead, she selected 4 of the stories the students had worked on for the writing prompt, made transparency copies of their work, used the over head, and did a minilesson on revision and how they can make their stories better and what the good things that they did in their stories. This I found to be such a great idea! She was teaching revision with students' work and showing them positive sides and negative sides. When reviewing their work, Mrs. DiPietro and I found that they did a better job this time around. Everything seemed to really sink in!

I was really proud of the students and saw for myself such an improvement!

I found that Tompkins gives a TON of ideas on the different ways students can engage in when reading and writing stories. Some of those ideas include “sketch to sketch” found on page 286, “character traits chart” on page 282, a “setting map on page 283, “a plot profile” on page 280, and “a beginning, middle-end cluster” on page 278. Each of those ideas helps reinforce the students’ comprehension to the stories and also aid in bringing new ideas and creations within their minds and in the classroom.

Has anyone been apart of a writing prompt like that? Does anyone else have any ideas they have seen or may have used when conducting reading/writing minilessons?

Story Writing

Children love to hear stories told or read aloud to them. They also like to tell stories to friends and family. Tompkins builds on the natural and inherent interest children have for hearing and telling stories and focuses on reading and writing stories in schools.

Discuss how your field experience teachers are helping students understand the concept of story and learn about story structure, genres, and comprehension strategies. In addition, teachers support students as they write retellings, innovations, and sequels and as they explore writing in a variety of genres. How does this happen in your field experience classroom? What would you add to this classroom from Tompkins & from the Girl with the Brown Crayon?


I find my Tuesday Experience teacher to be so great in her reading and writing expertise. She always finds such fun new ways to get the children's minds thinking and building their familiarity in writing stories. During my Tuesday Experience my teacher, Mrs. DiPietro, did a minilesson on what makes a great beginning of a story.

Mrs. DiPietro had created a power point for the children about the four main ways a writer could start a story. Those four ways included: question lead, action lead, taking lead and snap shot lead. She created the power point to really catch the students’ attention and engage them in the minilessons. When observing her lesson, I realized that every single students attention was focused on Mrs. DiPietro and the Smart Board. I found the children to ask a ton of question and answer many questions that were asked to them.

To make it easier for the students to follow along with the smart board, Mrs. DiPietro went step by step with the presentation. First, she introduced what the four ways to start a story were. Then, she went over each one individually. As she was reviewing each one individually, she took examples of beginnings of stories and modeled what each one was. I found this to be very effective because not only were the children engaged, but the children would also be able to mirror off the examples and put that into their own writing.

In Tompkins, on page 293, “What Students Need to Learn About Writing Stories” is discussed. Tompkins states that while conducting a minilessons, the teacher is to: introduce the topic, share examples, provide information, supervise practice, and reflect on learning. On page 272, Tompkins also talks about what should be added to make a great story. In a story, there should always be a plot, characters, setting, point of view and also a theme. Going step by step, Mrs. DiPietro is starting from the beginning of the story and will continue to go over each part of a story until the children reach the end.

I find that my teacher is always doing some sort of writing lesson and really wants the children to focus on their ideas and how they can improve their writing. I find her ways fun and exciting and I can definitely say that I have even learned a lot from her lessons.

Has anyone else had experiences like mine? What kind of techniques will be used in your own classroom??

ELL Students and Writing Tips in the Classroom

In my Tuesday Experience classroom, there is a young girl who recently joined the Bugbee 1st grade community in late November from China with no background knowledge or understanding of any English. When I asked my Tuesday Experience teacher, Mrs. DiPietro, if having this student in the classroom was somewhat of a challenge she replied with a quick and simple “no, not at all!” Mrs. DiPietro has really integrated "T"'and her culture within the classroom so the other students are able to familiarize themselves with "T" and where she comes from. Mrs. DiPietro said, “by involving the other students in her culture, the other kids are able to learn to respect "T" more and really see where she came from and why she can only speak minimal English.” To help "T" more in class, Mrs. DiPietro designated one of the higher-level children in class to be a mentor to "T". This student helps "T" with instruction and the activities done in class. Mrs. DiPietro said this is really effective and can tell "T" is learning a lot more.

On page 16 in Tompkins, the importance of meeting needs of English Learners is talked about in great depth. Tompkins gives ideas to teachers on how they can support English Learners’ Language Development. Many of those ideas Mrs. DiPietro displays in her classroom and it’s really interesting to see the connection with what Mrs. DiPietro does along with what Tompkins says to do. Tompkins says for teachers to:

• create a stress-free environment
• show genuine interest in children
• their language and their culture
• build students’ background knowledge using artifacts, videos, photos, maps and picture books
• read aloud to students everyday
• avoid forcing students to speak
• don’t lower your expectations for any group of students
• have students work together with partners and in cooperative groups
• expand the two- and three- word sentences that students produce.

During class time, the children often do a ton of writing to strengthen their vocabulary and sentence structure among many other things. One great thing I observed within the classroom is how Mrs. DiPietro really encourages "T" and her writing.

On page 251, Tompkins has an entire section on how teachers can meet the needs of English Learners in the writing area. Again, I saw and made connections to what Mrs. DiPietro does and what Tompkins says to do. Tompkins states “English learners use talk as a learning took in all four patterns of practice.” Tompkins says to:

• involve students in hands-on, active learning opportunities
• have students work with classmates in small groups
• clarify meaning with objects, photos, and demonstrations
• demonstrate how to ask and answer higher-level questions
• involve students in making small-group projects to demonstrate their learning.

I focused this post around "T" and what Tompkins had to say because sometimes teachers are unaware and nervous as to how to handle ELL students. I hope these tips help! If anybody as anymore comments or ideas, please let me no! It'll be interesting to see everyone's views. What do you feel about ELL students? Some schools do not have an ESL program, do you think that is a good thing?

Assesments of Student Writing: What's Important?

Before our discussion on writing characteristics, I always thought that a good writer would have neat handwriting and NO mis-spelled words. From our last two classes on assesments of student writing, I found out that I was in fact very very wrong. I feel that my bias' lead me to think what I did because of what I was taught throughout my school career. I can clearly remember my teachers' main focuses being neat handwriting and correctly spelled words. Sadly, that bias followed me until now.

When assesing student writing, I have learned that you can not judge writing only on neatness but to look at the bigger picture.

• When going through a students writing, it is important to note whether or not the story has a focus and is organized.


• Does the story have a beginning, middle and an end?


• Is there a squence of ideas?


• Does the writer elaborate and support those ideas?


• Do the words vary throughout the writing?


• Does the story have sentence variety? (Example: compound, complex, and/or simple sentences)


• Does the writer use appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and spelling?


• How is the writers word usage?


• Does the writer space their words?

In class, we did just focus on writing characteristics, but we also looked at how to asses a students spelling to tell which stage they are in as a writer. Those stages included:

• Precommunicative


• Semiphonestic or prephonetic


• Phonestic


• Transitional Stage


• Conventional or Correct Spelling

From our class, my entire view on what to look for in a good writer has changed drasticlly. When our class first began the lesson on student assesment in writing, Regina had passed out 3 smaples of student writing. Quickly going through them, I spotted Chelsea's work and assumed hers was the best because it was the neatest and had very few mis-spelled words. I looked at Scott's next and again assumed his wasn't the best because of his neatness and mis-spelled words. After assesing the three writing samples, I found that Scott was actually a stronger writer then Chelsea when it came to many different categories.

I learned that it is extremly important for students to vary their writing styles. For example; A student shouldn't just have simple, declarative writing. We, as future teachers, can help students gain knowledge in writing by looking at the weaknesses of the child(ren) and doing certain activities/lessons to help them better understand writing style. In class we talked about different ways to help the children understand. Some of those ideas were: going over different types of sentences, go over what a beginning, middle, and end of a story consists of, and how to make a writing read friendly.

All of these ways helped me so very much and from this lesson, I will be able to now look for what really makes a good writer.

Technology in the Classroom

Unfortunatly, the classroom I am in at Bugbee does not offer much use in the technology area. Luckily my classroom teacher, Mrs. DiPietro, is supposed to be getting a smart board very soon! I am hoping that I will be there when the smart board arrives to get a better understanding and gain knowledge of the technology. Besides a smart board, the children are able to use other types of technology throughout the day. During their free time, the children are able to use the computer (their favorite being Microsoft Paint), use the CD player and are sometimes shown videos based on their unit of study. Once a week, the students go to Library for an hour where they spend half of the time on the computer searching through and for various things and the other half of the time they are able to read books and follow instructions from the librarian.

Tompkins talks a lot about incorporating technology into daily lessons, not only with computers but with the use of video tapes, CD-ROMS, DVD's etc. I agree with Tompkins and am really for the different uses of technology within the classroom. I feel like since the world is surrounded by the use of computers and different types of technology, its important to be up to date on everything and broaden our knowledge of the world around us.

The Go! Chart

Bugbee Elementary
It was the second day of Tuesday Experience at Bugbee Elementary. This week I was involved with conducting one of the reading groups in the first grade classroom. Mrs. DiPietro, the teacher, had me take a much lower reading group and told me to "take control of the group" and "use 'my' knowledge from school" to work with the students. A few nerves ran through me, but I seemed pretty confident that I could handle this. Mrs. DiPietro gave me a few great ideas on what to do before I started. She said to have the students look at the cover of the book to make "predictions." Then she said for me to go over "chucking" of the words. As she was telling me this, I had remembered an activity we had done in Regina's Developmental Reading Class that would go great with this group and what Mrs. DiPietro wanted me to do. It was....THE GO CHART. I couldn't remember exactly what to do with the Go Chart but had some idea. The group did great with the book and we ended up writing a poem based on one of the animals in the story.
I had seen Regina the next day (yesterday) and she directed me as to where I can get the information on the "Go Chart." I went into blackboard and found it! To make it easier for you ladies, I posted on my blog. This is something you should definitely think about doing if anyone is conducting a reading group or a read aloud!

What is a Go! Chart?

The GO! Chart is the graphic organizer that helps teachers to bridge the concrete, contextualized understanding and retelling of story to a more decontextualized, analytical understanding. It is a springboard for helping children to think conceptually and has proved to be a powerful comprehension tool. Teachers have found that the GO! Chart can be adapted across the curriculum to fit many purposes and student needs, (p.95).

Sequence of Instruction

Analyzing the story

1. Introduce the title of the story. Ask students for predictions of what they think the story might be about. Record responses on GO! Chart and write students’ initials next to their responses (do this for all responses in the lesson).

2. Show the cover of the book and ask students to revise their predictions.

3. Ask what words they think might be in the story.

4. Present 4 to 5 words from the story that students might be unfamiliar with.

5. Read the story

6. Confirm or disconfirm predictions. Put check marks next to predictions that are confirmed.

7. Understandings: Ask the students what they noticed as they listened to or read the story. Record responses.

8. Interpretations: Ask the students what they wondered as they listened to or read the story. Record responses.

9. Connections: Ask the students if the story reminded them of anything. Why? Record responses.

Organizing the story

10. Complete the Shape GO! Map

* Reread the story and review the GO! Chart at the beginning of each session if it is being completed over a few days.

Possible Reponses to the Story

· oral retelling with or without props

· whip around retelling

· written retelling

o first, next, and last

o flipbook writing about the beginning, middle, and end

o using the Shape GO! Map

(All the information came from Blackboard and was written by Susan C. Guernsey)

Reading and Writing Workshop

A Reading and Writing Workshop is another great way to get children involved with reading and writing. In the workshop, the students are able to choose books, read and respond to them independently. The students will also be able to write books on "self-selected" topics during winter workshop. This is a great way for teachers to monitor the students through conferences and also a great way for students to open up and share the books they have read along with their own created books they made with their classmates.
There are many strengths to this workshop. The students read books appropriate for their reading levels, the teachers teach mini lessons on reading strategies and skills, the activities are student directed and they are able to work at their own pace. There are also limitations to this workshop. During the workshop, the teachers often may feel a loss of control, because just like Literature Circles, the students are reading different books and working at different stages.

Literature Circles

As we as future teachers know, reading and writing is so very important in the classroom. Engaging students in reading and writing can be somewhat of a challenge but it can also work extremely well.
In Chapter 2, Tompkins talks about the Four Patterns of Practice. One of the Patterns of Practice include Literature Circles. The way Literature circles work is very simple yet exciting. Teachers chose about 5 or 6 books and get multiple copies of each one. From here, students are able to choose the books and perform groups or "book clubs". The students then will be able to read and respond to the book. They are able to develop reading and discussion schedules. The teachers are also able to participate in the groups and get active in the discussions.
There are many strengths in Literature Circles. The books are available at a varitey of reading levels, students are strongly motivated because they are able to choose the books they want to read versus what the have to read and the activities are student directed.
Along with stregnths there are limitations. The teachers may feel at a loss of control and the students may choose books that are to difficult or to easy.