In my internship last semester there was the boy, we will call him John. John had a lot of issues in school. He would be great and participate in class one day and then the next he would be flipping tables, giving up on assignments, and disrupting the class every chance he got. John ended up getting put on medicine at home but not at school which the school was not aware of until John said something. The school ended up contacting his parents and got him at medication at school as well as home which helped him focus more in school and be more positive about things which worked for a while until his parents switched his medication. While switching medication John went back to his old ways of being disruptive, giving up and not listening. My collaborating teacher would try to get in contact with his parents and finally she did and it turned out that John was getting the wrong dosage of medication and/or his old medication and not the new one. There was miscommunication through home and school on which medication to give this child. But once everything was settled, parents were communicating and so were the doctors to the school and John was getting the correct medication. Before we knew that he needed medication, everyone just though he was a bad student who didn’t get any discipline at home because he wasn’t following the rules at school. But it turned out he wasn’t, and all he needed was his medication once a day at school along with a dose in the morning at home. It really simple to just judge and assume things about students home life when all you see is what is at school, which is why it is really important to have home visits or parent teacher conferences a lot throughout the school year. This video is about a foundation called the Flamboyan Foundation which is involved in The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. This video shows and talks about two different schools where the principle and teachers go house to house throughout the year and the stories that happen through them. One quote from this video that I absolutely love and hope to feel this satisfaction one day is “When going from home to home and meeting all the different families and students we build a certain relationship/bond and that is why we come to work every day”. I want to feel this and make this much impact on my students that I can create a bond with them so when I get asked why and I a teacher, I can answer it with a much meaningful answer then just, Because I love helping students learn and become our future leaders. I want to be able to tell a stories that the people in the video are doing and by integrating and participating in home visits could and will make this happen. |
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A song that is very inspiring to me is “I Hope Your Dance” by Lee Ann Womack. I love this song. Its about wanting the very best for the people that you love and it makes me so happy and thankful when I listen to it. This song inspires me because I want the best for not only the people that I love, but also for my students. I want them to go as far as they can, and then even farther.
What I learned from this chapter and what I could use in my internship classroom is the use of music and the way it inspires people and how it can make them feel. One thing I’ve seen in my internship class on how music can be used to enhance the learning is that I have already used and will continue to use is the use of music while my students are working because they tend to focus more on tier work. Playing Mozart or soft classical music in the background really helps my students focus and complete their tasks. Some says when I don’t play music they get upset and ask where the music is and are more disruptive. I would like to know what it is about music that helps the students focus more. I know certain music can make people feel a certain way but why focus as well? The Lil Buck Swan video was awesome! When i first heard the music start i though that it was going to be a women dancing ballet to the song but when i saw the gentle man dancing i was amazed. His dance moves were so powerful and expressive, i loved it. It opened up my eyes to a new world of ballet dancing that i find intriguing. Doing expressive dance in my classroom would be an amazing thing to do.
From the chapters i learned that incorporating dance into my classroom can enhance the curriculum by differentiating the lessons that i teach to accommodate all my students. Also instead of just teaching a regular lesson by incorporating dance into will make it fun for my students to learn which will in my opinion make it easier for them to remember the information rather then just learning it straight from the textbook. The chapters had a lot of great seed strategies in them that i would love to try out i my future classroom. Some things from the reading that I could really use in my summer field experience this semester are, but not limited to, the strategy called elements big bingo, use drama to teach rules and integrated drama into the classroom to enhance reading and writing curriculum. Elements big bingo is something that I could use this summer at MOSI. Element big bingo is having the students create a big bingo board and instead of numbers on the board it could be different elements of the classroom. Today for example the students had to create a recipe. I could have had them play bingo with the parts of a recipe. Also at MOSI the kids love to sing and dance which is why I can use drama to teach rules about the camp/classroom. The teachers there already have chants for rules but I’m sure we could come up with a really cool skit about the different rules. The book says that drama can help increase/enhance the students reading and writing levels and curriculum. And I totally agree with it! Having the students learn though songs, dance, drama and pretty much any other art format can help the students get out of their comfort zones and into their learning zones. Also by having them interact with each other and act out skits can help them learn more about reading and writing then just reading a book or writing a paper or two.
Chapter 4 and 5 taught my different ways that I can integrate arts into my literacy lessons. The chapter gave me great examples of different activities to choose from and learn from to use in my classroom. (To see examples of these refer to the resources tab of my blog) The chapters also taught me how to use everyday things like word walls and integrate art into them. For example instead of just listing the words on the word walls, have the students draw pictures of the words in the way they represent them from their own thoughts and post them on the wall. This will help the students understand the word in a more meaningful way then just seeing the words up on a wall. When the students refer to the word wall and can’t figure out the word itself, they can look at the pictures drawn by themselves and connect it to the word.
The video connects to the chapters because the video is about using the art of music to teach a lesson and the chapters were on integrating arts into literacy. The teacher in the video thought that it would be a great idea to use music in her classroom in order to teach her students about similes. But this teacher was different she wasn’t using music in her literacy lessons; she was a music teacher integrating literacy into her music classroom. I thought this was amazing. I never heard of a music teacher teaching their students language arts standards. The book she read was about music and black history month and how music helped the characters through the story. She used jazz chants, snaps, music in the background, and singing in order to teach the similes in the book. I believe that arts and literacy are only connected if you connect them. You can teach literacy lessons but just reading books and talking about the details, main ideas etc in the book, but will that really stick to your students brains? When you connect the arts to your literacy lessons you can accomplish so much more. For example: if you’re teaching a lesson on characters you could have your students use the art of drama and have your students act out the events of the story as if they were in the characters shoes. One big idea that really stood out to me from the textbook was the steps you can take in order to integrate the arts. I really liked this section because under each number in the text it gave an example of a teacher that did each and every one of these things.
1. Identify problems and needs of your students, coworkers, school campus. 2. Collect information on your schools connections of the arts and academics ( is there any programs that integrate the arts, state test scores, etc) 3. Connections and conclusions- after gathering all your connections and information draw conclusions from it. Are test score high or low because of the integration or lack of integration of the arts? Are the arts even being integrated? How can you help? 4. Mission statement- look at your schools mission statement. Are they living up to it? If not how can you help, or yes, what can you do to help them achieve it each year with integrating arts? 5. Vision and plan of action- get together with co workings and come up with a vision for the school that integrates the arts. This might take a while to achieve but it’s not hurting to try your best at it. 6. Professional Development- this goes back to number 5, it is going to take some changes, time and challenges for everyone when trying to change or integrate something, but its all worth it in the end. 7. Implementation- find a common planning time with your coworkers and art specialists at your school to collaboratively plan. 8. Critique and communication with everyone within the school is key. When I started reading the chapter my first initial thought was how can I integrate the different types of art into my future class room but after reading this section I now have a basic knowledge on how to start thinking about integrating the arts. It will take a good process and a lot of time and research to become fully integrated within my classroom and school but that will all depend on the school that I teach at and how much they already integrate arts. The video said that students who are involved in art score at least 100 points more on the SAT then those students who are not involve in arts during school. The questions this raises for me is, what about arts is making student state test scores go up? Unfortunately I do not have a picture of her, but I consider my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Tanner to be creative. This teacher was amazing and she integrated the arts very well. When we would have writing time in our class she wouldn't just make us write every day on some prompt. Some days she would brainstorm with the class on ideas to “write” about but we wouldn't just write. She would let us express our writing in multiple ways whether that be by drawing, poems, songs etc. I loved this because I don’t like writing but I loved to draw. We also sang a lot in her class which made the lessons more fun. One idea from the chapter that I could implement in my class would be the idea of Scampering. Scamper is a way to creatively do warm ups on “what if” thinking. The chapter gave an example of this- if your students are complaining about short recess times, reverse it and have them brainstorm and write about what if class time and recess time were switched, what would you do, what would happen? I think that this would be a great fun way to warm up your class for a morning activity. It would give the students leeway to be as creative as they want and to describe what the day would be like and what they would do if recess time and classroom time were switched. I would identify my social class as middle class.
For elementary, middle, and high school I would say that my social class did not influence my school experience. When I got into college however, it did impact it. The cost of college fees and books is outrageous! I had to apply for loans and grants to help me pay for college. Even with the money I got it was still hard to buy books. Since I needed to pay for my classes and fees first, all my money ended up going towards that and what suffered was my class books. Some semesters I didn’t have enough money to buy books so my school work suffered when I couldn’t borrow or find the book in the library. Last semester I interned in a school called Veterans Elementary. This school was mostly upper and middle class but did also have lower class. Within my class I could observe and figure out my students social classes. I asked for my classes demographics though my collaborating teach which showed which students were on free or reduced lunch. Also when my collaborating teacher sent home notes for students to bring in food or supplies for the class, most of those students who were on free or reduced lunch did not bring in food or supplies or they didn’t bring in name brand (which isn’t bad) and the students who were from the upper class would bring in an abundance of name brand food and supplies for the class. In my level 3 internship I will definitely try to use most if not all of the strategies that Gorksi talks about. All of the strategies that were talked about set a standard for all of the students whether they are from upper, middle, or lower social classes. Social class shouldn’t affect a student’s ability to learn and by implementing these strategies you can teach your students to the best or your ability and have them learn in more way then one. You want to first set the expectations of your class, preferably at the beginning of the school year so that all of you students know what is expected of them no matter where they come from. Teaching students and making them aware of poverty and bias could stop them from being bias and negative. One example to teach about would be Martin Luther King Jr. because he not only had a dream but he also talked about racial and economical inequality. This would be taught in upper level grades in elementary. Differentiating your lessons like adding music, arts, and theater into your class can help your students learn better than just from lectures and worksheets. I think that parent involvement and parent engagement play off of each other and involvement could potentially lead into engagement. Parent involvement is like where a parent donates money for Relay for Life and parent engagement would be donating money as well as walking in the relay. Parent engagement is important for students. When parents are engaged in a students’ school life, it lets the student know that education is important. If a parent is not engaged or involved within a student’s school life the student might not think that school is important because their parent isn’t engaged in their school life. But this also depends on the parent. If the parent works a lot and expresses the importance of school but is not engaged, that still would still be important to the student because they are hearing from their parents how important school is. |