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After coming back from Winter break was when I really had my ah-ha moment. Before leaving, reading with them wasn't a huge thing that we worked on often. After we came back, we were leading reading groups and word work every time we were in the classroom. I definitely saw how much this helped the students as they were reading much more often than they were before. One student who could not read at all, read a full sentence to me with no mistakes or repetitions and it was really amazing to see how far he had come.

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A big ahah moment for me happened with students working in a making words center with me. One student typically struggles to make their words. Once they were able to find the pattern occurring with their -air words, they were moving so quickly and the pride on their face was the part that made it all worth it. Sometimes doing making words can feel tedious with first grade, but this was one of the best days.

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A few weeks ago, I was reading with a student. He really struggles with reading and was sounding out words by using the letter names. Over the last couple weeks his reading has improved a great amount. Seeing him read recently really showed how his exposure to text has helped his reading ability. My host teacher does a lot with the literacy games and helping students improve their phonemic experience. This student's improved reading really gave me that "ah-ha moment" that proved the practices learned in class work.

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Last semester my host teacher did a great job modeling how to promote a growth mindset in her students and encourage good behavior without putting a positive or negative label on the behavior. For example, she would say things like "I noticed Joe, Brendan, and Cameron are paying attention since their hands are on their lap and they are looking at me". This would always get the rest of the class's attention and they would follow the lead of the students who were on task. Since I am in a new classroom this semester and the teacher does not use this practice, I decided to try it and see if it would help in this class since it tends to be a bit more chaotic. When I was working with a small group on phonics I would say "I notice that Brenner is done since he is looking at me quietly waiting for the next word" and the other students quickly caught on. I thought it was really cool how quickly they responded to this and think it could be a beneficial addition to this classroom since the host teacher tends to try and fix behavior issues by raising her voice at the students. Another time I used this was helping a lower performing student in math and instead of saying "good job" I said "I noticed how you really worked hard on that problem and didn't give up even when you were unsure". After saying this to him, I noticed him working so much harder for the rest of the class since he felt capable of completing the problems and had that high expectation that he could do it set for him.

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Last semester I co-taught a lesson on coding. In this lesson, the students were reading algorithms out loud to their partners who would then compute it into a 4X4 box. I had read aloud the directions, to which some of the students understood. I then followed up with demonstrating an example of what the finished product would look like and that was when the rest of the students fully understood the activity. Seeing all of their facial expressions gave me reassurance that there was no confusion. It was in this moment that I realized that i had accommodated for different types of learners.

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In my class a few weeks ago the students were doing a math lesson that involved addition up to 20. I was walking around the room watching the students do the worksheet that they were given and was looking for the strategies that they were using to solve the math problems. While I was walking around, I noticed that one student in the class was really struggling with the problems. I tried using some different strategies with him but the strategy that seemed to really resinate with this student was counting up on his fingers. I taught the student that when he was adding to start at the big number and then count up on his fingers the amount of the number that was being added. I helped him with a few of the problems and once it seemed like it started to understand what he was doing, I asked the student to do some of the problems on his own and then said I would check them once he finished. The student used the strategy that I had taught him and got correct answers for the rest of the problem. When it came time that the teacher called the students to the rug to talk about the worksheet, the teacher asked for the students to share what strategies they used to help them solve the problems. The student that I had helped shared the strategy that I taught to him. The next week we went into the classroom the students were doing another worksheet involving the same topic. I noticed that the student that I had worked with the week before was not struggling on the problems and was using the strategy that he had used with me the week before. This is the moment I knew that something that I taught to that student had worked.

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On Wednesday I came across a time where I was able to help a student with reading based on what I learned in lit. While I was helping this student I was reading him each question out loud, when I decided to ask him if he wanted to read one to me. He told me he was unable to read it to me, so I suggested we read it together. After doing this a few times he felt more comfortable with these sentences, and was excited to read them out loud to me. It made me feel good to know that I have the ability to influence a students reading abilities, and help them to feel more comfortable when reading out loud.

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A few weeks ago, I was helping my teacher with a math lesson she was doing on adding 2 single digit numbers together. Most of the students understood it easily but there was one girl who was very confused and didn't understand that when you add two numbers together - you are putting them together. She thought that when you added, the answer was whatever the larger number was. I kept trying to explain the concept of adding to her but she wasn't understanding it so I found small blocks that my teacher had in her classroom and I asked her to count out 5 blocks and put them to the side, then 6 blocks and put them to the side. Once she did, I asked her to put the two groups of blocks together and count them all up. She did and found 11 blocks total. After doing this with her she had realized that adding is putting two numbers together to get one big number. Even though it is such a simple concept, I was so excited that she was finally understanding.

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I am placed in a very challenging second grade classroom. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to teach the higher leveled math students in the classroom to do subtraction on the number line. Lily and I split the high leveled students into 2 groups so we each got to take some students. With the 5 students, I did on on the white board as a model and they were very interested in subtracting, since it was something new and they were all done with doing addition everyday. Then I put another problem on the board and called on students and asked them what the steps would be, so we did it together (guided practice). Doing 3 subtraction problems on together and then giving the students 3 to do independently on the paper and clip boards they had gave them the opportunity to really understand how to do this type of problem on their own. When going over the problems together, there was one student in my group who has a hard time paying attention but loved this topic and was on task the entire workshop. Coming together and seeing the students understand this topic was so enlightening, considering the fact that they have never gone over this idea of subtraction on the number line.

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Being placed in a class labeled as "gifted and talented" I often find myself feeling unneeded, so when there are moments where the students ask for help I get so excited. The students excel in reading and writing so I very rarely assist them with that subject, but math on the other hand is a subject where extra help is more occurrent. About three weeks ago I met in a small group consisting of 3 students, who were struggling with fractions. They couldn't quite grasp the simplifying aspect of it. I took the information I had learned through Tsankova's class and demonstrated strategies to them through a problem. Immediately it clicked for them, and I could tell through their facial expressions. It was their own "Ah-ha moment." I wanted to confirm that they now could apply this strategy to other reducing problems, so I came up with a few fractions and had them show their work and how they came to the simplified fraction. Other than a few silly division mistakes, that had nothing to do with the strategy, they showed a deeper level of comprehension. I found that by having them talk through their processes of simplifying I was able to see where their progress was at, and they had the concept down. It made me extremely excited that something I did positively impacted their performance. Im excited for many more moments like that in the future.

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For the past few weeks I have been teaching the students the foundations lessons, which consists of them becoming more familiar with letter sounds as well as writing their letters. This past week I taught the students how to write the capital letters U, V, W, and X as well as go over how to form the same letters in lower case. While walking around after demonstrating, and modeling how to write the letters I noticed the students could write the letters U, V, W, and X fluently. I observed the students, when walking around checking their work, going over how to form the letters before asking for help. The student's notebooks for fundation's has sets of lines that are called the worm line, grass line, plane line, and sky line which are used to inform students where the letters should start, end, and in some cases cross over or dot over. The students were understanding what had to be done and if they still could not form the letter asked for help. I would also see students looking at the large white board at the front of the room in which I wrote both the upper and lower case letter, during the modeling section, the students were currently working on.

Another thing I taught in which I knew I taught something the students understood was during Guided Reading groups. For the past few weeks I have been observing my host teacher leading groups while reading aloud with the students who ask during independent reading time. While observing I have been helping students sound out words, helping them decode words. I saw these methods in my guided reading group I lead this past week. Some of the student would sound out the unfamiliar words and if they still could not get the word, for example Autumn, I would try to help them decode or sound out the word, or let them know what the word was. Each week I learn something or observe something new and can not wait to go back to the classroom to teach.

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Recently I’ve been working with a few students in my third grade class on strengthening their writing skills. One of the students I have dedicated some extra time to has great ideas to write about, but often has a hard time converting them into a structured format on paper. We were working with a three paragraph structured format to compare and contrast two articles, and make note of the author’s opinions. When stating the findings in each article, this particular student had a hard time using transitioning language to show for the author’s POV. I assisted the student with the first piece of evidence, and asked them “what could you add to the beginning of this reason that helps the reader understand what you are trying to explain about the author?” Initially, they said they could write “I think that..” I ensured them that while this is a great transition for an opinion paper, we needed something a little different because we were talking about an author and not ourselves. They then came to the conclusion to change the first person language to “The author in the article thinks that..” I let them know that was great for the writing they were doing, and to keep that language up for the rest of their paper. When I went to read over what they had finished, I noticed that they continuously used this transition language in different forms, appropriately, for the rest of their essay. I was happy to think that this will continue for them, and help them with their writing struggles, even when I am not there to remind them.

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Last month, I did a math lesson with small groups of five kids. The class would rotate to different math centers. I created the lesson for my center. Instead of making a math worksheet for them to work on quietly, I tried a different method. I created a "game" for them that taught them the same things they would have learned from a worksheet, but in a much more interactive way. With student collaboration, the lesson ran smoothly and was enjoyable for all kids because they were learning while playing a game. For kindergarteners, educational games armor appealing to them and keep their attention much longer than a worksheet does. The lesson went very well, and worked for every student.

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During my visit to my host classroom Mr. Gallo had me work with some students in telling time and understanding time intervals. When I started conducting this activity my student's seemed to have trouble with time intervals. I decided to help them out by giving them tips. For instance, I would have them think about the setting and ask them questions like, "would that time make sense in this scenario?" I also had them practice showing me the time that I called out on their analog clocks. After some time had passed I noticed that they were starting to pick it up and they seemed to be setting their analog clocks a lot quicker. I could tell how excited they were and the competitive side of them came out. I was so pleased to see my students getting much better with telling time in such a short period of time.

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Today I conducted a running record with one of my students. I completed this assignment to assess accuracy. I provided my student with a poem and asked her to read it aloud to me. Through her reading she made a few notable errors and stumbled on several words. After the running record was completed, I went over the incorrect words with her. I also showed my student how to break apart a word for better understanding. I did this because I noticed when she would come to a word she didn't know she would make up a word to fill its place. To avoid this from happening in the future we worked on sounding out words while reading. In the afternoon, this same student called me over for extra help with a writing assignment. When she went to read me the question she came across an unfamiliar word. In this moment instead of asking me what it was, I was very proud to see that she took it upon herself to sound out the word. At this time she was able to identify the word all on her own and it was visible that she was happy with her progress. This experience may seem small, but it was very impactful for me.

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A couple months ago, I did a lesson on fractions and shading them in with my third graders. I gave them an object (such as a window, a tooth, a pie, etc) and they had to draw in the object and shade in the fraction (for example, 1/3 of a chocolate bar). They had alot of fun with this activity since they weren’t just drawing normal shapes and got to be creative with their drawings while still reviewing fractions. Almost all of the students were successful with the activity. Today, i pulled a student aside to do a math clinical interview with her and one of the questions required shading in fractions. Right away, she answered both problems correctly. She even said she remembered doing my activity a couple months ago and how this was similar. This was great to hear and watching her complete the problems with ease was so exciting to see.

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Last week in 5th grade, we were doing a math activity where the kids were separated randomly into groups. Because of this, some groups were struggling more than others. My teacher told Tess and I to walk around and help the groups. They type of math the kids were solving we learned about last semester. I was able to help the kids and show them different strategies to solve the problems. The kids were amazed that I knew these strategies to solve these type of problems. The students told me I was able to make math easier for them, which was an ah-ha moment to hear that I was able to make things easier for a student.

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Today in my 2nd grade class, I took a small group to work on subtraction on the open number line. We had previously been working on addition on the number line and these students had already become fairly proficient with addition. One student was struggling with it while the rest of the group was chugging along confidently. I had him try to explain to me what he was doing and he kept wanting to subtract the entire number instead of utilizing the number line and breaking the number up into more comfortable numbers such as tens and ones. I worked through another example problem with him and showed him how first subtracting the tens makes it less stressful and had him help me do the problem on the whiteboard. He then made an effort to do this in the problem he was working on and was proud when he finished it and got the correct answer. He said it was so much easier and he realized that doing that didn't mean that he wasn't capable of subtracting the larger number, but it just made it faster and easier.

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When the students were working on their multiplication tables, one of the hardest facts to learn for them was the 9s. They were really struggling with grasping how to multiply a number with 9 with the method their teacher gave them. The method their teacher gave them was to multiply the other number by 10 instead of 9 and then subtract by the other number from the total and they would get the answer for that number times 9. They sort of understood this, but they were having a hard time because it was bad enough they had to do multiplication that they didn't know and now their teacher was asking them to do subtraction with it too. So I thought that I would teach them another method that I remember learning when I learned my 9s facts. There is a method you can do where you count on your fingers. When I showed them this method, it all seemed to make sense to them. From then on, the majority of them chose to do the finger trick for their 9s tables because that is what they understood more. This example shows how important it is to make sure you are showing the students multiple methods to approach a concept because no single concept will work for every single student. I was very proud when I saw the students progress with this.

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I was working with students at the end of the day during intervention on multiplication facts.  I worked with two students, individually.  After going through some flash cards with the students, I realized that both of them were struggling with the nine times facts.  I explained to them how the two digits in the answer added to nine and the first number is always one less than the number being multiplied by nine.  They started to understand but still could not completely grasp the idea.  To help with this, I showed them the finger trick.  Following this I gave them some examples, then used guided practice to see if they understood, then gave them facts to solve on their own.  It wasn’t until I gave them facts to solve on their own that I was able to tell they had learned what I taught.  After going through a couple facts, one student went “ohhhhh” and the other student said, “I get it now!” which signaled to me that they had caught on and understood.

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Today I was working with one of the students on an estimation problem with 3 digit numbers. He wasn't fully understanding the problem. I had him read the problem aloud to me and asked him what he information he thought was important, and what he thought he should round the numbers too. We worked through the first problem together and there was another problem so I had him read the second problem aloud to me and had him work through it alone. I explained to him what he needed to do the second time and his face lit up. He said he felt very confident going forward to do more problems just like those.

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Today in class, Kayley and I got the opportunity to pick some of the kids to share their writing journals with the class. As we chose each student we asked them speak loud and proud of their piece. After each student we would ask them a question about their writing. For example, one of the students ate dinner with their family, we asked him what he ate. This way allowing him to look back and give more detail to his journal. While do this there was one child who was goofing around and talking while the students were sharing. To make sure he was listening I told him that he needed to be polite and listen to his friends share and after they share I will ask him to remember one thing that the person shared had said. It was a different technique, instead of having to tell him multiple times to stop and interrupt the rest of the class.

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A couple of weeks ago Grace and I did a science lesson on the moon phases. It was actually the exact activity we did in Dr.Yangs class. The next week, I noticed some students referencing back to the worksheet we completed during the lesson and remembering the hints we gave them to remember the difference between crescent and gibbous and waning and waxing. It felt really good that the students actually absorbed the information we taught them and had fun with the activity at the same time.

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Today in my first grade class I was working one on one with a student on a writing assignment. The students were writing reviews on the subject of their choice. This student was writing about a toy she has. She was having difficulty figuring out what to write and how to write things in a way that made sense on the paper in front of her. I decided that I would write my own paper with her to help her figure out her ideas. Off of my paper she was able to gather more ideas for her own paper. The student was then able to complete her paper before the class was over!

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Today in my fourth grade class, I taught a lesson about lines, rays, and angles as an introduction to their geometry unit. Within the first few minutes, I could tell that some students had prior knowledge on the topic but others were a little more confused. For part of the lesson, the students worked in their teams of four to determine which geometric figure I was describing when I read its definition. In one of the scenarios, three out of the six teams answered the question incorrectly. I knew I needed to intervene and improvise a new way to explain the reasoning behind the answer. I drew the example of the angle on the board and then drew the two rays it was composed of separately so that they could see that the correct answer was that the angle was composed of two rays. Once I did that, I heard a few students say "ohhhh" or "okay that makes sense." In that moment, I knew that my instruction was effective. That was also verified when I read through their exit tickets because they comprehended all of the key components and answered my questions well.

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Students were working on a math activity involving fractions one day and I was walking around. I noticed one group in particular that was struggling trying to figure out where to place each fraction on the number line. With so many other fractions already on the number line of different denominators it was hard for the students to figure out where to put them. I went over and helped them by telling them that each time they put a new fraction on the number line, pretend as if the number line is empty so that they don't get mixed up with the other fractions. This made it easier for those students to understand because they only focused on one fraction at a time now rather than seeing so many different fractions on the number line.

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When walking around my fifth grade classroom, I noticed that a group of students were struggling with understanding the meaning of 0 when doing the standard algorithm of multi-digit multiplication. They are going to do a presentation to the class on this topic so I wanted to make sure they understood what they would be discussing. I approached the group and listened to them debate their ideas with each other. I intervened when a student in the group said that the 0 has no meaning and it is just a place holder. I wanted the students to understand that 0 means they are multiplying by 10 of that particular number when it is in the tens place. After I explained this to them they were able to inform their peers of how to correctly label the 0 in multi-digit multiplication. I noticed that they were able to use examples to demonstrate what I had just taught them.

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Today in my second grade classroom I got the opportunity to take two students aside and work on their "How To Stories". For this writing students got the opportunity to pick one thing they wanted to tell their reader how to do. One of the students told a story about how to make a bow and arrow. The second student wanted to teach how to make a volcano. I worked more with student two in this situation. This student was having trouble putting his thoughts and steps into words and being descriptive. By asking him and having a conversation it became easier for him to write his steps. He began to write and enjoy the assignment. In addition, by using probing questions to ask about certain aspects he explored more about his steps to make the volcano. I feel I taught him how to take a step back and showed him he is capable of writing a clear story, something he was rather stressed and worked up about before. It was nice to see him write and enjoy to write. In addition, it was rewarding to see as his writing went on using descriptive words became almost second nature. I think this just proved to me that sometimes students need the extra time, or a different way to do their best work.

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Today in my 3rd grade classroom, I taught a lesson in reading on character traits and development throughout a short story. I prepared a anchor chart for character traits and had the students discuss the difference between emotions and traits before starting the activity. I related this back to a story they previously read and had them discuss how the character changed at the end of the story. Then, I had the students do a Venn Diagram to discuss how the character change din the new story that I gave them. I had them do this in groups. As they were in groups, I noticed that the students were really getting the concept of the way characters change throughout the story and were able to relate it to other stories they have read as well.

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I was working individually with a student on a math problem. This student was struggling with the concept, and although they were doing computations correctly, they were not answering the correct question. I tried explaining this a few different ways with no success. Eventually, I scrapped the problem and used a picture and a simplified example to illustrate the concept, rather than working with the actual numbers, and the student could see the purpose behind the problem and correct their mistake.

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I co-taught a lesson on multiplying and dividing fractions last year using partitioning of rectangular block models. A few students were struggling with the word problems they were working on, so I worked individually with them and told them to underline the important information in the word problem and tried to make a relationship between the model they were drawing and what was actually happening in the word problem. After I assisted these struggling students, I noticed they went on to use the same strategy of closely reading and underlining the important information and making notes about the connection between the model and the numbers in the problem, and they were able to find the correct answer.

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Last semester I co-taught a Plate Tectonics science lesson. A common misconception with this topic is that plates and continents are the same thing. When planning this lesson I wanted to be sure my students understood the differences between the two. The students completed an activity where they peeled an orange, put the peels back on with toothpicks, and then covered the peels with play doh. While doing so, I explained that the peels represented plates, and the play doh represented continents. At the end of the lesson the students completed an "Exit Ticket." One question on the ticket was, "Name something you learned about plates and continents." When the exit tickets were collected and read, I was relieved when the responses read, "Continents are on top of plates." I knew my lesson was a success.

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This wasn't a moment where I was directly teaching, but rather walking around and listening to student discussions and helping them out when they got stuck. The students had broken up into their small groups for reading that are based on skill level. Each group was working on some comprehension questions and some vocab questions. I overheard a group discussing their book "I Am Malala" and the meaning of the word "blasphemy" in a specific passage. The students were struggling to figure it out, so I suggested they read the text around that specific sentence to try and get some context clues. They began to reread the whole paragraph and began making deductions based on the surrounding context. This was a good Ah-ha moment because I gave them a strategy that they can use in the future and watched them successfully use it for this situation.

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I utilized the phrase " I notice ..." to redirect students, for instance:
" I notice/noticed that _____ is sitting quietly in their seat". This instructional technique is a management skill that redirects the group of 'unproductive' students. Since students' strive for teacher acknowledgement, "I notice that" is perfect for classroom management. It has worked really well with students when facilitated, I highly recommended using it as an instructional tool.

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This isn't more of what I am teaching, but I wanted to share this with everyone.I work in the COZ program and yesterday I was at Rockwell working with a kindergarten student who was struggling with sounding out words when reading a short story or homework. I thought this was the perfect situation to help the student and see how their fluency and accuracy is. The student went into the story already feeling unmotivated to read so this did not help his situation. I took a running record of this as he tried to sound out and work out words. As he read the story, he remembered words from the page before and then would say it correctly so I saw improvement as he got through the story

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When I was conferencing with one of my 5th grade students about their writing piece, they told me they were struggling with adding detail to their body paragraphs. I went through one of his paragraphs with him and I told him that when he's reading over his work to read it as if he knew nothing about the subject and that would tell him when key pieces of information are missing in order for his essay to make sense. After I spoke with him about that he started to look at his other paragraphs and would point at a sentence and say things such as, "I need to explain what this is because the reader might not know what it means." He then found it much easier to make his paragraphs longer and provide details that supported his case.

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when reading with one of my kindergarten students we stretched out words and put them together. When we got to certain words I could tell she was struggling, but when she figured out the word she was extremely happy. This was my aha moment because I knew she understood the concept.

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I did a running record with a student and was able to assess their accuracy. I used what I had learned in literacy in order to assess the student's accuracy rate for this type of text. I feel that the student I chose to do this running record was a great example for my first time because he made some mistakes that reflected on patterns that we had went over in class about when it comes to errors. I also learned that it can be difficult to take a running record in person because the student was reading fast and it was hard for me to keep up. I had to ask him to slow down at times. I will definitely continue to practice running records with my students.

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In class today during word work station I helped a student with rhyming words. When he struggled I would give him an example and had him then come up with his own. I knew he understood because after I gave him an example he immediately knew what one was.

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Although I haven’t explicitly taught reading, this moment today stood out. During free reading in a kindergarten class, a student was reading to me. This was a very high level book. While he was reading, he would incorrectly read words (i.e. “the” instead of “they”). But, when he would read the remainder of the sentence and realize “the” did not make sense and would re-read the sentence with “they” read correctly. In class this week, we talked about running records and how children may self correct after they finish a sentence and realize the word they originally read does not make sense/sound right. It was interesting to see a concept that we recently discussed in class, happen in the classroom.