Practicum Hours log

Practicum Hours
Shiloh Point Elementary	85 hours
South Forsyth High School	8 hours
Piney Grove Middle School	8 hours
Coursework	50 hours

1st grade reference lesson and collaboration

I just completed my reference lesson for the first grade. We covered reference books, but spent more time on the resources on the internet. When the kids get to do their research, of course they want to use the computers. We worked with several sites specifically for young kids. I also helped the kids develop questions on a topic that could we will use for research next time we meet. We talked about how important good questioning is.

Another project I have been working on is my collaboration lesson with the first grade. I planned an animal research project in conjunction with the first grade. In previous years, they have done an animal research project and so we planned for that. However, it is usually in the spring. We are just a little ahead of the game.

Collaboration 10 hours

First grade lessons

Shiloh Point 11 hours

5 Little pumpkins again

I redid the 5 Little Pumpkins lesson to make it more enjoyable for everyone involved. The revamp did wonders and the kids enjoyed learning about rhyming. They worked on meeting a standard of memorizing a nursery rhyme. I love that I teach the same lesson multiple times. Although the first class can be a little rough, it gives me feedback and suggestions for the other 9 classes.

Shiloh Point

7 hours

5 little pumpkins rethink

This week I started teaching the kindergartners again in the MC. I planned this wonderful lesson (I thought) on the 5 Little Pumpkins. One of their standards in the classroom is to memorize nursery rhymes. It also fits into the AASL standards. I incorporated ordinal numbers and rhyming. We made our own little book to help them remember their rhyme. It was a mess! I bit off more than I could chew. So now I need to rethink the book activity. I still think the lesson was good but the activity has to go! Time to put on my thinking cap.

I have gained valuable information and experience doing this internship. One thing I have learned with this lesson, is to be flexible and to fix what isn't working. Don't force it.

Shiloh Point

3 hrs

Media Center visits

This week I have been busy visiting other Media Centers. My first visit was to a High School. I spent my day weeding her collection. I did a lot of weeding and the books needed it. I would estimate I weeded nearly 200 books from the collection. I weeded on the basis of age. If the books were older than 15 years or in some cases older than 5 years old. I also did a display for Red Ribbon Week that was approaching. I also created a wiki that the staff could use to find information and PSAs on Red Ribbon Week.

This Media Center was very traditional in its administration. The Media Specialist was getting ready to retire. There was not a lot of traffic in the Media Center, I do understand that pleasure reading for high school students is probably not a priority. However, it was very sad to see that students did not find their way into the Media Center. I have to believe it is because of the traditional views of the Media Specialist.

South High School: 8 hours

My second visit this week was to a Middle School Media Center. The Media Specialist and administration make it a priority to have students read for pleasure. The students spend 20 minutes a day reading and compete in homeroom contests to win a lunch at Chick-fil-a. The Media Specialist was also very in touch with what the students were reading and what they wanted to have in the Media Center available to them. She kept a list that the children would add books to of what they wanted to have available. She also knew her collection really well. She had read many of the books and knew what she was putting in her collection.

Her busy day included teaching 2 computer literacy classes. She is the catch all for various tasks. It was good to see the good and the bad of the Media Specialists day. I found this activity very insightful and learned from my two mentors for the day.

Piney Grove M.S.

8 hours

Going batty

This week I taught the 1st graders. They watched their photostory of Stellaluna with the pictures that they had drawn of beginning, middle, and end. We talked about why Stellaluna was a fiction book and used an interactive Venn Diagram from www.readwritethink.org. Then we discussed non fiction books and the elements of non fiction. Finally, we practiced identifying non fiction and fiction as we listened to short stories at http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/ela4/i/fictionnonp1st.cfm.

I loved using the interactive Venn Diagram and the kids were engaged since it was a new approach. May had not used a Venn Diagram before and it gave me an opportunity to discuss what it was and how to use it to organize our thoughts.

Shiloh Point Elementary

11 hours

Busy October

This week I have been teaching kindergarten students in the MC. Last time I taught them about words having meaning. This week we learned that pictures can have meaning also. We talked about how to improve our own illustrations and that pictures can tell a story. They illustrated a picture and told me the story that their pictures told. I will be turning their illustrations and stories into a photostory to share with the classes. They really enjoyed being able to illustrate a picture of their choosing. I noticed that because they knew their pictures would be published, they focused on the quality of work.

Shiloh Point: 10 hours

Today I completed the inventory of the biography section of the library. It was a simple process and actually was pretty quick to complete. When I was finished scanning in all the books, a final report was prepared by the program (Destiny). I found that there were several books unaccounted for. The program listed the books that were missing and I later found several that for some reason or another had not scanned into the program and were in fact on the shelves. I loved that Destiny listed the books that were missing so that they could be located. I love computers!

Shiloh Point: 1 hour