J.J.’s Study Abroad adventures

Subbing All Week

Mini residency

Today was our first day of our mini-residency. Alexis and I decided to co-teach the entire week and plan a mini-unit on mapping. Today was Halloween and the first day of snow so naturally the children were wound up. However, overall the day went very smoothly and was really fun. We started off with choice time, where the children all had the chance to talk to one another and play. I took a large group of ten students down to the lunchroom to fly their paper airplanes. After choice time we went through our morning meeting complete with reading the new poem for the week:
Way up high
In the winter sky
Two little snowflakes
Caught my eye.
Down to the ground
They fell without a sound.
And before very long
It was snowing all around.

After reading the poem as a group, going through out daily count, and going over the calendar, we sang happy birthday to Joey. Then we spun around and looked at our poem from last week to do our sing read. We reviewed the poem as shown below and then we filled out our sing-read worksheet for the week. The children are to circle the site words in the poem and then create an illustration to go along with it. Some examples are below.
Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate
The first one said, “My it’s getting late.”
The second one said, “There are witches in the air.”
The third one said, “But we don’t care.”
The fourth one said, “We’ll have some fun.”
The fifth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”
Then “Woooooo” went the wind
And out went the light.
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

After our sing read we enjoyed a nice snack and split into our reading groups. Alexis worked with Avalon and Kanoe, giving them a new book to read called, New Baby Calf. While I worked with Deme, Gus, and Joey on a new book called Let’s Play Soccer. Both of the groups went really well and all the children were so excited to have a new challenging book to read from their red folders. Another classroom teacher Jane, worked with five of the kindergarten students on a game in order to practice letter sounds. We placed five students in the listening center and I went over a new Henry and Mudge book with my advanced reader. He read the entire book (48 pages) in the class period so I had a discussion with him about it afterward to make sure he comprehended what he was able to read so quickly. The rest of the students read their just-right books from their red folders and copied down some site words. All the children will have a chance to work in a guided reading group, participate in the listening center, and read books on their own throughout the week. After reading workshop it was time for library so Alexis and I had some time to reflect on our reading groups and general experiences throughout the morning so far.
When the children returned we were going to have them do quiet reading but decided with the fresh snow that we would need to talk about appropriate dress for recess as well as give them plenty of time to get dressed for recess. We had a nice discussion about cleaning up our gear, handing up our coats, and putting our boots away. Then, we walked them down to lunch and we went to the teacher’s lounge to eat ours.
After lunch we told the children to get their snow gear off and read, write, or draw for ten minutes. Joe’s eighth-grade English class came to our room from 12:30-1:15 to read to our students. They will meet with our students again on Wednesday to ask some questions about our student’s literacy history. Today, they just met, talked, and read to one another. Then Alexis came up with the wonderful idea of doing a reader’s theater of a Halloween book that they had already read with Mike. We wanted to use a book the children already knew, so that they could participate in the reader’s theater better. The reader’s theater book that was used is called, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. At any rate the children did a fabulous job and really liked using the props that Alexis brought in (a shaker, large mittens for clapping, and a knocker). After the reader’s theater we had the children write about something in the Halloween theme. For instance they could make Halloween creatures, tell about what they planned on doing for Halloween, what they were going to dress up as, or how much candy they hoped for. This was a very successful writing workshop because the children not only drew detailed pictures, but they also put more words on their papers than I have seen in a while. I am thinking that having them draw or write about something they are truly interested and excited in was a great idea. They were so excited to talk about Halloween. By this time it was already time for our regular weekly reading buddies from Jamie’s 4/5 classroom to come read with us. Before they came we recited the five little pumpkin poem again as a class from memory because Joey said it was his favorite and it was his birthday and Halloween so I found it to be a very appropriate transition activity. After reading buddies, Alexis lead a game of hangman with the children while I helped other children get ready to go home.
We had such a great first day and we are really excited about the rest of the week!

Day 2: First Inservice

My day started with an inservice at West High School with all the other elementary school teachers in the Anchorage School District. As you can imagine, there are a ton of teachers that were invited to attend so parking and traffic turned into a bit of a disaster but the inservice was great. It felt so nice to enter an auditorium filled with people that have a passion for education. The speaker was very good and informed us of the importance in the knew assessment program. I found the talk very informative and interesting but I had little knowledge about how exactly to give the assessment or how to keep track of each student’s scores. After the inservice I went back to Polaris for a much smaller meeting with just the elementary teachers at Polaris. We met in Mike’s room and we learned exactly how, when, where, and why to give the assessments to the students. The program is called Response To Instruction but is referred to as RTI. The idea is that the teachers will different test three times a year that will reflect how a child’s reading is progressing. The assessment is designed to work as a screening tool in order to find out which students need more help with oral reading or phonemics. The idea is that if a student scores high at the beginning of the year than that child should still be challenged and educated so that when they take the second and third test they continue to excel. In addition the screening tool is beneficial because it brings awareness to students that need a little extra help in one area or another. Today Alexis and I wrote our letters that we will give to the parents to introduce ourselves and I for the first time I feel like a real teacher. I was reflecting back on all my hours of observation and although they taught me a lot and I had a good experience, I never got a feel for how my own classroom might feel. Mike (my host teacher) is so welcoming that the classroom really feels like my own. He left for his brother’s wedding tonight in Connecticut and will not be at the school tomorrow. However, he told Alexis and I some things that still need to be done and encouraged us to put our names on the outside of the door and to prepare the classroom in whatever way we feel fit. I am so excited to meet our class that I can hardly stand it. I almost wish there was not late start for the k/1.

Hello followers

Well as most of you know from reading my mom’s blog I am back in Haines, America for the summer. Although I surprised my mom for Mother’s Day that was not the original plan. Because of the Icelantic volcano, I encountered some delays and cancellations, making my trip home nearly 5 days long. I left Cork on Thursday evening to go to the Shannon airport hotel and fly out on Friday morning. After arriving in Shannon and sleeping in the hotel I found out my flight was cancelled from Shannon and that I could not get rebooked until Sunday. I did not like the idea of staying in a hotel by the airport for three days so I took two buses and a train across the country to Dublin. In the morning I managed to get on a flight that was two hours delayed. When we finally got in the air for what was scheduled to be a 7 hour flight we were put on hold because the volcano erupted again. The flight people in charge re-directed us to fly up and over the volcano, over Canada, and down to Newark instead of cutting directly across the ocean. So as we passed the volcano and everyone on the plane stood up to take pictures and I must admit I thought it was pretty cool. However the excitement wore off quickly as I started thinking about the fact that the flight still had another 10 hours and in that ten hours all that volcanic ash could get into the engine, the plane could crash, and we could all die. I started to read the emergency card in the seat back in front of me. But all of that travel was well worth it because right now I am sitting at my sister Sarah’s house playing with my niece (the cutest baby in the whole world!). I have seen my niece every day that I have been home and I absolutely love little Caroline Cooper! Anyway, mom left this morning for the epic book tour so I will try to hold the fort down while she is away.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers, grand mothers, great grandmothers, and great great grandmothers out there. In Ireland Mother’s Day is celebrated in March. It seems strange that the special day is not universal. Anyway, I hope my mom, sister, grandma, and god mother have a great mother’s day. I love you and thank you!

beautiful day here!

Another sunny and beautiful day in Cork. My archeology final is over and done with and now I just get to relax. I think it went over pretty well and after all I kissed the Blarney stone three times so I should have had luck on my side. Anyway I am going to go out in the sun I hope your day is lovely!

Test

Well my archeology final is OVER! Yay! I tell you what though they are really serious about testing here. They have people patrol the room with neon vests on to make sure you aren’t cheating. And they have huge rooms of like 300 students all taking different test. So I walked in with a seat assignment to take my archeology test and there were people around me with calculators! Anyway I am glad to be done because it was a three hour long essay test about really really old people and buildings.

carrot nose

Last night I went out to dinner with my family friends from Juneau: Riley, her dad John, and his sister, brother in-law, and niece from Atlanta. I had a great time, but this morning I woke up early because I really have to get some studying done. It is raining today so I am much more motivated than yesterday to stay by my computer and review powerpoint presentations on really old castles and churches. But, this is kind of funny:
Two snowmen are standing in a field. One says to the other : “Funny, I smell carrots too”.

A perfect day to do anything but study

The sun was shinning hot and bright, so although I brought my study material with me to the park, my friend and I just talked about how we should be studying. I did not get much studying done but I had a great day of walking in the park, basking in the sun, running errands, and oh ya….buying ANOTHER pair or shoes! EEEK! I don’t know how I am going to fit all my unnecessary purchases in my bag when I have to pack! They are bright purple and very darling if I do say so my self. Anyway this evening I am going out to dinner with some good friends from Juneau. I hope it is sunny in Haines!

known facts

After the fire alarm experience my day was fantastic! So I figured because it was May first and all and I had given my leg a long 5+-month recovery period that I would go for a run. I was running up the hill feeling totally out of shape, tired, and frankly like I was going to die when I hear foot steps behind me. As you know I am a Lende and Lendes are very competitive so what do I do? I speed up because there is no way I was going to get passed, especially on a hill! So I start running fast up and over the hill when finally the footsteps catch up to me. Turns out it was my friend Meredith! So after giggling inside about how ridiculous I am we ran together and it was so much fun! We talked all about our travel adventures and what we plan on doing for our last month abroad. Then she asked me, “What do you want to do with your life? Because I feel like you will do something really cool and I want to do that too.” I was flattered that she admired me and we had a great conversation about life plans. I told her how I want and need to finish college but I really like learning and being a student so although I want to get my bachelors degree done in a timely fashion but, I plan on continuing on after that. I am really interested in being an Au Par in a foreign country while working on my masters on line. I also told her that I would like to teach abroad for a little while even just for a short program and I would like to live in an eco village. I have been looking at this website called livingroutes.org where they offer classes from UMass Amherst and you live in a little community where you wake up each day and do yoga, go farming, take courses on the environment, meditate, make all vegetarian cuisine, help out with community service projects, and learn about holistic living. It sounds very hippy and natural but I have to admit it also sounds like a lot of fun! She was telling me how she has been stressed out because she doesn’t know what to do with her life (you know the typical college student drama) and I explained that figuring out my life doesn’t stress me out because I feel so lucky! The fact that I have so many opportunities and options to do what ever I want is such a blessing. Thinking about all the possibilities gets me excited! At the end of it all she asked where I want to end up and the answer was so easy, “Haines.” No matter where I go or what I do Haines is always home and when I am forty there is no doubt in my mind that I will be living in my favorite place in the entire world. Haines, America.