Week 4

Week 4 January28-February 1

Monday I was not at the school because I was taking two of the Praxis tests that I am required to take, so my week started on Tuesday. Tuesday Mrs. Milner and I were required by the school to do Child Internet Protection Act (CIPA) presentations. The Principal of the school wanted them done quickly and simply this year so neither Mrs. Milner nor myself was able to make the presentation, but had to do a premade one. I observed Mrs. Milner through the morning presentations and then did the presentations for the afternoon. While I was giving the presentations Mrs. Milner sat and watched and she was able to give me feedback after each presentation. This allowed me to improve on her suggestions each time and by the end of the presentations I was giving them well and had developed a teacher voice. The presentation itself was a bit dry and out of touch so I had to make sure that I was able to keep the students focus on the video, if they talked to each other or used their cell phones, it meant they would have to rewatch the presentation on Friday. After getting suggestions from Mrs. Milner I eventually took to walking around the room more and standing next to those whose focus needed redirected. Also, when it was called for, I would call out to students I saw on their phones or talking. Mrs. Milner and Mrs. Powell (the early childhood education teacher I did the graphic organizer lesson for) commented on how much I had improved by the end of the day, and Mrs. Powell said I had gotten a good teacher voice. I had started projecting more through the room and commanded the students' attention. I also was speaking more confidently then when I had first started. This helped me to project an aura of authority in the presentation and the students were more apt to listen to the rules and what I had to say.

Wednesday I was in the library by myself as Mrs. Milner had to give the CIPA presentation to all the students at the Warren County Career Center satellite schools. Things went smoothly and I spent the day doing projects that I had been given. I wrote a proposal for the Landscaping teacher to use a multimedia creation site, like VoiceThread or Capzles, in his class. I also researched circulation policies different schools had on iPads as well as how iPads could be used with SMARTboards. I copied relevent links that could be helpful to Mrs. Milner into a Google doc. and shared it with her. The rest of the day I worked on helping students in the library and on planning a February storytime for the preschoolers. During 8th period Mrs. Cooper brought her English class down to look for books so I helped the students find the books and checked them out. The only even slight problem there was during the day is when a group of boys came in near the end of the day and asked if they could "dip". They seemed to think that I would let them get away with it, since I wasn't a regular teacher.

On Thursday, Mrs. Milner was back. In the morning I informed Mrs. Milner of a news item I thought she would be interested in. The news show that I work for had announced the previous night that at 2:00 on today there would be a presentation that Governor Kasich was giving to superintendents on school funding and that presentation would be streamed live. Mrs. Milner was interested in seeing it and sent an e-mail to the staff inviting them to the library at 2:00 to watch the presentation.  Several teachers and a few people in administration including the Principals RSVP'ed to come and see the Governor's presentation. So at 1:40 I signed into the SMARTboard and opened up two different sites that it was scheduled to live stream on. It went smoothly and approcimately 15 people came to watch in the library. Other highlights of the day include editing (adding Mrs. Milner's suggestions) a notice to place on the laptops with tips on how to easily troubleshoot the three most common problems students have when they come to the desk with a laptop problem. I then took the finished cards to the Graphics teacher for lamination. Once laminated they will be put on the laptops for student reference. I then worked on the Book Suggestion Prezi. Mrs. Milner informed me that next Wednesday Mrs. Cooper, an English teacher, would be bringing her students down to select books and she wanted a presentation done. The original presentation was a PowerPoint show so I uploaded that into Prezi and started updating it so that it would be more interesting to students.

On Friday I finished the Book Suggestion Prezi, incorporating the suggestions Mrs. Milner had to make it smoother for the viewers. I also added a few more book trailers to it, particularly ones for books that would appeal to boy readers. After finishing the Prezi I worked on planning the February storytime for the Preschoolers. I picked out a craft that I thought would be age-appropriate (a paper plate wreath with construction paper and a crazy heart guy on it) and found some books that I think the children would like at the Fairborn Community Library. I will make the craft this weekend and pick up the books and present them to the Preschool teacher next Monday.

Book Suggestion Prezi

A Prezi that I created from a PowerPoint show that suggests books by genres and topics to students. It is used as a presentation to students who come in as a class to search for books. The PowerPoint was uploaded to Prezi and from there I modified the content and rearranged it and added a few original frames and more book trailers. The book trailers I added focused on guy books.

 

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians

Standard 3.2 Access to information I informed the faculty and set up the resources so that those that wished in the school could watch the Governor's presentation to the Superintendent's on school funding; this was particularly important since the funding varies on those with disabilities and really effects the resources available to the students.

Standard 2.3 Respect for diversity
I worked to plan a storytime for Preschoolers in various stages of development; ages range from 3-6, finding themed reading materials and coming up with a craft that all are able to do.

Standard 5.3 Personnel, Funding, and Facilities
Helped to organize the library facilities so that book suggestions are always sitting out on the tables in a flippable display, Also designed and created a troubleshooting list for the laptops so that students using them would have the information available to solve simple problems themselves, and also begin to learn certain troubleshooting techniques so they can develop problem solving when it comes to computers.\

Standard 2.2 Reading promotion
Created a viewer-friendly, interesting to students, Prezi filled with book suggestions.

Standard 1.4 Integration of twenty-first centruy skills and learning standards
Gave the Child Internet Protection Act presentation to students.

Standard 1.3 Instructional partner
Created a proposal to teach multimedia presentation technology to the landscaping classes, that would benefit the students and the teacher

Standard 3.3 Information technology
Used the SMARTboard to present the Governor's presentation to the faculty who wished to view it; also created a Book Suggestion Prezi that would be more engaging to students.

Week 3

Week 3 January 22-25

This week was spent working on developing lesson plans and actually presenting a few lessons. I completed creating the lesson plan for the digital storytelling lesson on Tuesday and submitted it to the teacher. I then created a form for the students to follow along with and fill out as I conducted the lesson. Both forms are below.

I gave the lesson on Wednesday and Thursday to two different classes for one teacher. The first class went relatively well. The students were well-behaved and followed along, answered questions, and contributed answers when I asked for anything. The second class was still pretty well behaved but I had a few students who weren't paying attention and I was unsure of how to re-engage them without losing the students who wanted to hear the lesson. After finishing the lessons, Mrs. Wilner gave me a few suggestions to improve my teaching, including making the lessons a bit more engaging for the students and allowing them actually manipulate parts of the lesson since it revolved around creating digital stories. She also suggested that I use the Smart Board as more than a projector so that I would be able to move around a little bit more, and when losing specific students to walk around the room and to go up to them or specifically ask them questions.

On Thursday I tried to incorporate Mrs. Milner's suggestions into the same lesson. I worked with the same two groups of students, but this time I went to the teacher's classroom. I took her suggestion and stood in front of the Smart Board as I went over anything that was missed in the classes the previous day, and used the Smart Board to manipulate the Storytelling devices. I do need some practice at this as I wasn't total adept at using the Smart Board. After that we called students up three at a time for them to actually create their own story pages and practice getting to use the sites. This was extremely effective. The students had a good time creating the content as a group and those that weren't up were laughing and paying attention to what their classmates at the Smart Board were doing. So listening to the feedback and adapting it into the lesson turned out to be very rewarding and helpful to me and that in turn proved helpful to the students.

I also prepared another lesson plan which was given on Friday. This lesson taught the Early Childhood Education group how to use an online graphic organizer at www.bubblr.us and why it can be really helpful to do so when planning a lesson. On top of that I went over how to search for good, reliable information sources as well as how to search for activities. These lesson experiences have been really great and really helpful to me. It helps me see where I need improvement and where I'm doing alright. After giving a lesson to a group of students I get feedback from Mrs. Milner, from the teacher, and from the students. What I'm hearing most prominently at the moment is that I need to find my 'teacher voice'.

Google docs is a really great site and Mrs. Milner gave a workshop on using it to a group of junior Early Childhood Education students on the later half of the day on Friday. There are so many great feautres in Google docs. Mrs. Milner showed the students how to create original documents using Google docs and she also went over how to import a Microsoft word document into Google docs and vice versa. She also showed how easy it is to collaborate using Google docs. By sharing documents with each other (which can be done if you know the name or email address of the person you would like to share with) the students can edit and contribute to the same document at the same time. On top of that when it is shared with the teacher, the teacher can go in and see who contributed what to the project and seeing who typed what. Using these techniques I shared this Google doc with the teacher of the class I gave the graphic organizer lesson to. This is a quick and easy way to share material. It could save a lot of money on paper throughout the school and on top of that students can be given papers with live links instead of just a url to look at for reference. Mrs. Milner also went over a few other other features of Google docs, including how to make a form which was a very cool feature that allows online quizzes and surveys. I practiced using the Google forms and made one to go along with the Sherlock Holmes lesson.

Observing how Mrs. Milner taught the workshop to the juniors in the Early Childhood Education was very helpful. Watching to see how she worked to keep the students attention and keep them on track helped to give me ideas on the different ways that I could do it myself. For example, she moved around the classroom as she talked and she has a 'teacher voice' that helps to focus attention. Every once in awhile if students are being talkative and not focusing she will call out for attention but she does so in a way that's light hearted and non-challenging to the students. Mrs. Milner also employs a lot of humor in her teaching which seems to help her connect and be more interesting to the students. She also uses pauses if students get chatty as a signal for them to quiet down.

The below is a copy of the Graphic Organizer lesson plan as well as a copy of the helpful tip sheet I shared with the students on Google docs. Also this is a link to the Sherlock Holmes form that I made using Google.

ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians Met:

Standard 3.3 Information Technology

Use of the SmartBoard during the lesson, use of online, digital graphic organizer tools.

Standard 1.2 Effective and knowledgeable teacher
Collaborated with teachers and introduced and reinforced information relevant to the class using digital media technology.

Standard 1.4 Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards
Promoted Information Literacy in students of the Early Childhood Education program by going over proper and efficient search techniques.

Standard 3.1 Efficient and ethical information-seeking behavior
Teaching the students how to efficiently search for relevant and accurate information.

Standard 5.2 Professional Ethics
Worked with the students to educate them on the use of information that was searched and it’s use.

Standard 4.2 Professional Development
Explored different internet resources (i.e. digital storytelling options, Google docs.) and practiced them and explored their options to see how they could be applied to the education field