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

Book fair

Needless to say, this was a busy week. With lessons for media, IT, and the book fair, I kept very busy. I spent several hours working at our Scholastic book fair. I say working, but it isn't work when you love it like I did. I enjoyed helping children pick out books and seeing many of my students excited to choose books to read for pleasure.

Shiloh Point: 3 hours

Media time for 1st graders

This last week I spent time teaching the 1st grade media lessons. I taught the first lesson of my reading enrichment unit on bats. I read the book Stellaluna and then we talked about sequencing (a first grade standard). After our discussion, the students drew pictures of an event from the book and told me if it was from the beginning, middle, or end of the story. I will be turning the pictures into a photostory that the children can listen to on their teacher's webpage and library webpage. This will be a reference for research later in the unit plan.

Shiloh Point: 11 hours

Work in IT

This last week I spent several hours working with our IT teaching 1st graders how to logon and use the laptops. I found this time valuable. The children come from different levels of understanding and previous computer use. Each step of using the computer must be broken down into small steps and modeled for the students. I wanted to spend some time observing how to teach computer skills to students and found this time useful.

Shiloh Point: 5 hours

Grade Level meeting

This afternoon I attended a kindergarten grade level meeting. At first I was a little disappointed that we were just covering paperwork. But then we got to the substance of the meeting. The teachers were discussing the upcoming standards. The webinar that I attended last night became very useful. The discussion on preparing materials and resources to help teachers was immediately relevant. The teachers discussed what was upcoming and shared resources. I will be preparing resources for their next meeting that will focus on their standards they have selected. The webinar and grade level meeting helped cement into my mind the importance of being a team member and a teacher's resource.

Time spent: 1 hr

Webinar

Last night I participated in a webinar through the Teacher Librarian virtual cafe. I heard from three Media Specialists (Keisa Williams, Shannon Miller, and Gweneth Jones) on how they meet the needs of teachers and become indispensable in their schools. They had several good ideas that I would like to start immediately upon becoming a MS. Some of their ideas included preparing slides and information for open house, solving technology problems, and finding sources print and non-print for teachers. I have seen that the stakeholders of the Media Center must see the benefit for themselves. Media specialists need to look for opportunities to highlight their strengths and usefulness.

Time spent: 1 hr.

Yesterday I processed a book order that came from Mackin. It seemed almost too easy to input into the system so I tried it with a couple different scenarios. The first was inputting the information with the disk provided with the book order. Our school library uses Destiny, so the information was just imported from the disk to Destiny with a touch of a few buttons.

Then I tried to process the items if a disk was not provided. Destiny was a very useful tool. I just did a search for the book by title and the book was found with the MARC records included. Finally, I searched the Library of Congress and found the MARC information.

The books came with the barcode and spine tags already on them. However, I did practice printing a few.

Time spent: 1hr.

Some info

I have completed some of the requirements for my portfolio. I attended the GLMA summer institute on June 19th at Callaway Gardens. I have membership since December 2009 in both GLMA and AASL. Here is my professional learning link http://www.netvibes.com/privatepage/1#work_related

My first lesson

I taught my first Media lesson to a class of kindergartners yesterday. It went really well. I was not nervous, it seems that when I teach something that you know and love it is not nerve-wracking. The children learned about the meaning of words and we wrote a quick little story together that we will turn into a digital project. Loved it!

Time spent: 9 hours

Media Specialist Meeting

Today I attended my first Media Specialist meeting. We heard from our county library and the resources that they have to benefit students in the county and schools. This was informative, especially since some school may be paying for subscriptions to resources that are already offered through the county library. The rest of the meeting covered recipes4success.com. Recipes4success is a resource available for all teachers in the county that provides technology lessons and teaching resources. The programs that teachers use in the classroom are in tutorial form on recipes4success. They are quite detailed tutorials that can benefit myself and teachers in the school that I eventually work at.

Time spent: 2 hrs

Is it the ending or the beginning?

I am very excited this semester to begin my final assignment, my internship. However, I find myself wondering if this in fact the beginning as opposed to the end. I am excited to learn all that I can from my mentor Media Specialist and his parapro. I know I have much to learn and am ready to begin my new experience. I am very grateful to all the Media Specialist who have willingly agreed to my coming to shadow them (Piney Grove and South High School) and add more to their already full workload. Let the fun and work begin!