Upper Elementary

Day in Fourth Reflection

Going into today, I was a little nervous. The highest grade level experience I had prior to today was third grade. I was anxious to see how the day is different for fourth graders as opposed to pre-school. I was excited to get to know the students, their interests & their feelings towards school!

·         The students come in and get to work on their morning work (unpack, pencils, planner, rainbow spelling)

o   While I agree that all are housekeeping items that need done, I’d like to look into a more meaningful morning routine, such as a time period for student driven inquiry or writer’s workshop

·         Students are sitting at tables instead of desks

o   As a supporter of collaborative environments, I love this: They had crates to store their items that were kept in the front of the room and then moved beside during the day

·         During math note taking, T was giving definitions and S asked if they could do it in their own words, T told them to write it in her words but then they could talk about it in their own

o   Maybe as an assessment piece, T could have S generate their own definition in their own words to post on way out the door and then if correct could be given back to them to use in notebook instead of T definition

·         Had a review on line, line segment, and ray by having students one a time come to board to draw

o   Could have done this in a gallery walk by groups and each group having a different color marker

o   Or, could have made a human ray/line by being given the card and finding their counterparts

·         Learned new division technique, by taking what you know, looks that the dividend as a whole number instead of the parts

·         Snack time

o   I wonder if this is school wide or county wide, have they seen a difference, what do you do for those students who do not have any – can you keep them from feeling left out

·         Science Lesson Reflection

o   I found the natural resource went very well, with some support through questioning and prompting the class was able to define natural resource, renewable, and non-renewable. We even engaged in an “spur of the moment” deep conversation on the difference between renewable and non-renewable. Groups were able to provide examples saying, if you kill an animal you cannot use it again, but another one will be born but if you mine coal, that coal will not be replaced.

o   The lesson in its entirety took the entire afternoon, I feel if time had not been an issue, it would have been beneficial to split the lesson up across two days at least. I feel groups could have used extra time to design their presentation and maybe with extra time they would have been more apt to be more creative – all groups chose posters

o   I do wonder what impact students using the text as only a reference and defining words as a class had on their understanding and retention; would have been interesting to compare the two strategies and/or stick with the class over the week to see understanding develop and unfold more

Strategies used:

1.       3, 2, 1 quiet strategies

2.       Movement during morning announcement – school wide

3.       “Read definition, tell me in your own words”

4.       Math notebooks – used to take notes & then as student reference book

Overall, I really enjoyed the day in fourth. While the students are much more independent than younger students, I find that they are still dependent on the teacher. They rely on our feedback, support, and direction. They responded so well to my role as the facilitator during their science lesson and I loved making it a student-centered learning environment. Today has changed my feelings of upper elementary, for the better.