Student Teaching Week 6 - Valley Elementary School

This week, I returned to my regular PDS at Valley Elementary in Preston County, and it honestly feels like I have returned home. I didn't realize how much I've missed the school, my coordinator, the staff, and all of my past students until that first day. The school has a wonderful way of working together, and it is evident in the attitudes of everyone present. My mentor teacher, Mrs. Sausen, is wonderful and possesses all of the qualities a kindergarten teacher should. It is so evident that her students love her. As I watched her on these first few days, I am amazed at how many learning opportunities she provides her students on a daily basis, without them even realizing they are working. I only went three days this week, because they had Thursday and Friday off for the Buckwheat Festival. Since the students have already dealt with a lot of big changes recently, I didn't want to totally impose on their set routine. For these first three days, I decided to just follow Mrs. Sausen's lead, and help out as much as I could. I also want the students to get used to my face, learn my name, and start to feel comfortable around me. Mostly, I love just watching the students work/play/socialize; they are so interesting to me!

On day one, my main focus was learning all of their names. I got that accomplished, and attempted to place their learning styles and abilities. The students had just taken their September assessments a week before I arrived, so I had a chance to look those over and gain some background knowledge on my students levels. I also discussed the students with my mentor teacher. These types of things helped me with figuring out some ideas for action research, which is a big relief. I noticed from their assessments that a lot of the students do not know their letters, both capital and lowercase. Although I original planned on doing my action research with writing, I have decided to downgrade a little and go for letter recognition. Simply because, if the students do not know their letters, how can I expect them to write? I still plan to tie in writing in some of my lesson plans later in the eleven weeks I am there. For now, I want to be sure they have their basic skills down.

Luckily for me, my liason, Sharon, was at the school on Wednesday. It was a special day for kindergarten because their whole morning was dedicated to Buckwheat festivities. It was also a good day for me, because I had time to sit and discuss some ideas and questions with Sharon. I showed her the students assessments, and she helped me pick apart the data they showed. We also discussed what I could make a my main focus be for letter recognition, and I decided on studying how kinesthetic activities affect the students ability to recognize their letters. She gave me a ton of ideas to start out with, and since then I have been researching online, through books, and simply discussing things with my mentor teacher. I plan to do activities where the students can be actively engaged in learning their letters. I am already so excited to get started! Next week, I plan to collect even more baseline data and try to fill in and hopefully finish my research brief. I want to begin implementing my study as soon as possible, since I know only have nine weeks to get all of this done (counting the entire week Preston has off for Thanksgiving break). Back into the grind I go!