Reflection #27

My second to last week at SLE. This week was bitter sweet. I enjoy the time that I have with the students however each day I realize it is slowly coming to a close. As of now I just have to think of the times I have left with the students and enjoy it.

Credit to @Roselyn Vazquez

As I walk in on the first day the students all tell me that I only have SIX day left with them!! They are counting my days too! Ms. C told me that they counted yesterday and everyone was very upset that I would be leaving. Other then that little incident the morning went as normal. After the students put their backpacks away and get a chair they begin on the morning warm up. The warm ups are still engaging the students imagination. I have noticed that the students who struggled with this previously are now getting the hang of it and can use their imagination to come up with stories. The students have also really improved with adding details to their stories. They used to only write about 1-2 sentences and now they are writing 4 or more. Another thing they have improved greatly at is spelling. I am impressed at all the improvements that I see all around the classroom in each individual student. After morning warm up is done and checked they moved on to reading their chapter book, "The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary" The fable of the day was "Mercury and the Woodsman" the moral was "honesty is the best policy". After reading both the fable and a chapter from the book Ms. C transitioned to working on poems. She passed out their poem books and began telling the class what poem they would be working on. Diamante. Some kids knew what it was others didn't. She wrote down the rules and examples of a diamante poem. Next the students would try it on their own.

The next day was similar to the first. The only difference was that we worked on our poems first then we read about the fable. After the morning work was finished and checked Ms. C explained what we would be doing today. The class was still sitting on the carpet so that made it a little easier to talk to them and pas things out. Ms. C told the class that everyone would be getting ONE piece of paper. On that paper they would be writing their diamante poem that they wrote yesterday. After they copied it down 2 classmates had to check it for spelling, after 2 classmates checked it Ms. C or myself had to check it one more time for spelling. Once it was 100% perfect they could draw on it and color it how ever they wanted. The students had freedom to do what ever they wanted to do with this paper. Everyone was working so hard on their poems I was very proud! We worked on the poems for about an hour then we had to move on. Next the class read the fable and a chapter from the chapter book.

On the last day I was in the class the students were working on an essay. I had never seen them work on something like this before so this was new to me. The class had began this yesterday and continued it today. The essay was about why it is important to learn about culture. Ms. C choose three stories that they had read before, next they had to decide on a topic for each of the stories. For example. The story Jalapeno Bagels, the topic would be food. The had to pick a topic for all three stories. The great thing that I saw was that all the students made a graphic organizer. The had the three stories at the top, and underneath they had their topic, and four bullet points with evidence from the stories. The class worked on their essays for about an hour an a half. Ms. C called everyone to the carpet and called a few names for people to share their essays. Some people were just starting others were almost ready for a final copy. I was proud of all the work and effort they had put into their essays.