200:128 Participation Information

Fifth Grade

Price Laboratory School, University of Northern Iowa

Amy Lockhart, MAE
Office 210
273-2209
amy.lockhart@uni.edu

Anne DuChene
Office 214
273-2066
anne.duchene@uni.edu

WELCOME TO OUR CLASSROOM

During the four weeks of your particiaption in fifth grade you will have many opportunities to observe classroom management, motivation, and the teaching/learning process.

Your first job is to observe and record observations in a weekly journal. Keep a recording of your daily thoughts and questions. These will assist you in writing your journal entries that are required at the end of each week.

Journals need to be turned in each Friday by 3:00 PM.

You will prepare and teach 2 lessons to the entire class. A lesson plan outine will be required to be handed in by the end of the third week. This will allow us time to discuss and make suggestions to help make this s successful experience for both you and the students. A teaching time slot for this lesson will be discussed at the time of our meeting. The lessons will be taught sometime during the fourth week of your experience in our classroom. Any changes or adaptations that were made to the lesson prior to your teaching will need to be made on a final copy of your lesson plan. This final copy will be due on the day that you teach.

I will be available to discuss any ideas that you may need assistance with throughout your time in my classroom. Please check the daily schedule to see when there is an appropriate time to see me or call when I am not teaching. During your participation, days missed will be made up at another time.

Let's work together to make this a great experience for all of us.

OBSERVATION JOURNALS

Your journal will be turned in or emailed to me each Friday by 3:00 PM. Each entry will inculde:
    1. The date
    2. The time period you were in the classroom
    3. A brief description of what the class did, and
    4. A description of how you were involved.

The bulk of your entries should be your reflective response to what you observed and/or your involvement. Your reflections on motivational and instructional strategies as well as classroom management techniques that you see in the classroom are a vital part of your entries. As your experience continues you will be able to reflect upon previous observations, make further connections, and indicate change and growth in individual students as well as yourself.

These journals may be either hand written in a notebook or emailed with your name and the week in the heading (eg. lockhartweek1.doc) It is important to note that your journal entries will be neat in appearance. Grammatical and spelling errors will not be acceptable. You may be asked to resubmit entries that do not meet the criteria.

If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me, or write about them in your journal.

Lesson Plan Format

Your lesson plan should be thought of as a recipe. If you were to give your lesson plan to someone else to teach, they should be able to know exactly what you want them to do. Questions that you want to ask the students will be written out and details of how you visualize the lesson should be integrated into your plan.

1.OBJECTIVE Before the lesson is prepared, the teacher should have a clear idea of what the teaching objectives are. What, specifically, should the student be able to do. “The what and the why”.

2.ANTICIPATORY SET The “HOOK” to grab the student’s attention: actions and statements by the teacher to relate the experience of the students to the objective of the lesson.

3.TEACHING-PRESENTATION
•Input- Teacher provides the information needed for students to gain the knowledge and skills through lecture, film, video, literature, etc.
•Modeling-Once the material has been presented, the teacher uses it to show students examples of what is expected as an end product of their work. Students are taken to the application level; problem solving, comparison, and summarization
•Check for Understanding-Determining whether students “got it” before proceeding. It is essential that students practice doing it right so the teacher must know that students understand before proceeding to practice. If there is doubt that the class has not understood the concept/skill should be retaught before practicing again.

4. GUIDED PRACTICE An opportunity for each student to demonstrate grasp of new learning by working through an activity or exercise under the teacher’s direct supervision. The teacher moves around the room to determine the level of mastery and to provide individual remediation as needed. (Fred Jones’ “Praise, Prompt and Leave” strategy is a suggested strategy during the guided practice)

5. CLOSURE Statements by a teacher that are designed to bring a lesson to an appropriate conclusion.
Closure is used:
•to cue students to the facts that are at an important point in the lesson
•help organize student learning
•reinforce the major points
Closure is the act of reviewing and clarifying the key parts of the lesson.

6.INDEPENDENT PRACTICE
Once pupils have mastered the content or skill, it is time to provide reinforcement practice. It is provided on a repeating schedule so that learning is not forgotten. It may be homework, group, or independent work in class.