Mylan Park Elementary Blog 10.25-10.29.2010

This week was another wonderful week at Mylan Park Elementary School! Throughout the week I taught once again the majority of the day and enjoyed every moment. I was extremely proud of my math students in the morning group; they did very well on their unit test on time and money which the results averaged in the “A” range. Also, throughout the week I worked with students in the reading groups teaching each group what their word sound was for the week and enforcing those sounds and spelling patterns within their spelling words. Through all of the spelling activities that we did this week with the students, many of them did poorly on their spelling tests on Friday due to not studying them at home. My mentor teacher, Ms. Walker and I continuously reminded them every day to study; however, their parents did not reinforce it at home which is a shame for their child’s grade suffers. For the students that did extremely poorly, we will provide a retake next week providing them with one last chance to re-study the words.


For my Action Research this week we read “The Popcorn Shop”. Before we jumped into the story, I reminded my students’ that while we read, we create images in our minds of what is occurring throughout the story, we visualize while sequencing the scenes, and to keep in mind that we will shortly be bringing the story to life. Also, I had the students look at the cover of the book and flip through the pictures in the book and try to predict what they thought the story would be about. This week I popcorn read with the students. They absolutely loved this method and it began to ease them into them just conducting the reading next week in the group without me being involved and reading aloud too. Throughout the story I promoted a discussion period asking them questions according to the text, pictures, as well as asking self-to-text connections. Once we completed reading the story, I told the students to make their paper into a comic strip and illustrate the main scenes that could provide the beginning, middle, and the end of the story. When the students completed their illustrations, I then asked them to place popcorn on their pictures that showed the amount that would be appropriate for that particular scene. For example, a little bit of popcorn should have been in the beginning, a massive amount of popcorn should have been in the middle scene for all of the popcorn exploding throughout the town, and finally, maybe one or two pieces at the end to show that there was really none left in the town. When the students completed this activity, I then cleared the space so that we could implement movement into the classroom bringing the story to life. I reviewed with the students the low, medium, and high levels that we use in movement, as well as walking patterns that we use and space awareness. I had the students close their eyes and visualize in their minds the story that we read, the sequencing of the story, and to put themselves in the shoes of a piece of popcorn. I then asked the students to pop like the popcorn would in the beginning of the story, the middle of the story, and finally the end of the story. Once they were done moving through the space like the appropriate scene as the popcorn, we then discussed the levels and the emotions at those levels connecting their movement to the text. I feel that my action research was a great success this week and the assessments that I did were excellent for seeing what they comprehended from the story, and how expressing the story through artwork and movement allows them to gain a better perspective for visualizing the importance of sequencing and becoming active readers.


This week I also was able to attend a PLC meeting. This meeting was beneficial for me for it discussed different methods that the school uses to benchmark students as well as programs that the school uses and interventionists use in order to increase students reading and math scores on a whole across all grade levels. The one program that they strongly enforced for teachers to use that increases fluency and comprehension is the “Reads Naturally” program. My teacher and I have already begun using this program and feel that it is an excellent way to influence students reading abilities.


Also, this past Friday was all of the Halloween festivities and parade for the school. It was a wonderful experience to take part in. I took many pictures and was excited to see how creative so many of the costumes were. I also thought that it was nice that families came into the students’ classrooms and the teachers created a family activity before the parade. For families that could not come into the school, the teachers made sure to pay extra special attention to those children and make that day a wonderful one for them. All of the teachers had to dress as superheroes in the school that resembled the seven habits and or promoting respect, manners, etc. and I dressed as Captain Kindness.


This week was a wonderful week at Mylan Park Elementary School and I am really looking forward to the upcoming weeks ahead!