Tuesday, February 13th
Today the students worked on their app projects some more after morning work. Yesterday they made a brain map of their ideas for their apps and today they went around and looked at everyone in the class’ ideas. Each student was given five little sticky notes and had to make comments, suggestions or compliments on their classmates ideas. Mrs. Tapp and I went over my lesson plan for tomorrow and she gave me some pointers and ideas for my lesson plan and we printed off the worksheet that I had made.
Wednesday, February 14th
I taught my lesson today on guide words, and how to use them to find what you are looking for in the dictionary. To do this I made two different crossword puzzles. One was easier and had a Valentine’s Day theme, and the other one was harder and made the students think a little bit to figure out the word. To find the word the students had to use the guide words in the clue to find what part of the dictionary to look in, and then they had to use the definition that was given to find the answer.
To start off the lesson I had the students tell me what they already knew about guide words and then I filled in the blanks on what they did not already know. After that I handed out the first crossword puzzle and did two of the questions with the whole class so they would have a better understanding of what they needed to do. Then I had them finish it on their own and walked around the classroom to help anyone who got stuck. Most of the students were able to finish the first puzzle without a problem and I gave them another, slightly harder puzzle. The students who were able to finish both puzzles got to find their own words and make clues so that Mrs. Tapp or I could use guide words to find their words.
I think this lesson went very well and the students seemed to have a better understanding of what guide words are and how to use them, but they also had fun doing it.
Friday, February 16
Today the students took a spelling test and then had their morning meeting. In the morning meeting Mrs. Tapp talked about how the students should treat one another. She also talked to them about the importance of forgiving other and being kind while also standing up for themselves. Apparently there has been some trouble in second grade with students getting in arguments and not knowing how to deal with it properly. I think this meeting was very helpful for me, because it showed me how to approach a problem like this and encourage students to try and solve their own problems but also give them the tools for them to do it.