Mylan Park Elementary Nov 1 - Nov 5 2010

This week was another wonderful week at Mylan Park Elementary School! Throughout the week I have been teaching all of the students that come to our classroom throughout the day. I have learned that teaching students regrouping with addition is a very challenging area in the content area of mathematics. My students understand how to regroup; however, they tend to leave out the step of either carrying a number over to the tens place and or adding the carried number which results in their solution being wrong. I am hoping that by reviewing, re-teaching, practicing, and drilling this, they will begin to see where they are making their mistakes and how to correct what they are doing wrong. I am very proud of them how far they have come and will be exuberant when they come close to mastery when regrouping.


This week I have also been working with students on reinforcing their spelling words, teaching them vocabulary lessons, as well as working on their fluidity in reading through the Reads Naturally Program and Journey’s. I feel that by working consistently on spelling words, vocabulary, reading, and comprehension questions, the students are beginning to really build in the Reading and Language Arts area and all are collaborating on influencing their reading skills.


Two days this week I was also able to implement my Action Research within the classroom. This week we read “Tacky the Penguin”. First, we reviewed that while reading, we are to create visual images within our heads about what we are reading. Next, I allowed the students to popcorn read throughout the entire book. Throughout the book I promoted discussions about the illustrations, the texts, etc in order to keep the students engaged as well as make them think and make inferences beyond the text. Once the students completed reading, they then had to illustrate in three different penguins the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Once they completed their illustrations, they then answered comprehension questions, as well as had to choreograph and act out one scene from the story that the rest of the students had to guess what scene and who they were trying to be. I feel that the students really enjoyed the activities that we did, were engaged, and did a nice job answering the comprehension questions. I feel that this week’s implementation of Action Research was a success!


I will be looking forward to the upcoming weeks within the classroom. The students have already been making their own Turkey’s with Ms. Walker and decorating the classroom for Thanksgiving. Also, I feel that each and every day I learn a lot from Ms. Walker, her classroom management skills, as well as how she presents lessons to her students which always promotes a positive learning atmosphere. I really have enjoyed my students and working with Ms. Walker this semester!