My First Montessori School Visit

On Wednesday April 8th 2009 I visited for the first time a Montessori School here in Corpus Christi and it changed my life. I have always been interested in Montessori and their way of teaching but I never knew what it was really like. Now I believe I have a new goal in life: being a Montessori teacher.

As I walked up to the Montessori School I did not know what to expect. I began to feel very excited about this experience when I saw the cute courtyard with tables, benches, and chairs. The door was locked and we had to ring the doorbell and wait for a nice lady to open the door. We walked in the office and there were interesting looking books everywhere. When 9 o clock came around the coo coo clock went off and we began our toor.

Fisrt we sat at a table with the director of the school, a very intelligent lady, who explained what Montessori is about and how the students work throughout the day. The students are seperated into two classrooms. One is 1st through 3rd grade which is called the lower level class and the second one is 4th through 6th which is called upper level. There are also special needs and advanced teachers. This school is a public charter school which only recieves state funds and they still follow the state guidelines. This is a hands on classroom environment with all the work neatly organized on the shelf. The students work in class at their own pace with a workplans that are assigned for them. All the students are working at different levels. The students know what they have to do to complete their work and they have the freedom to choose what they want to work on first. They can work on tables or on little mats on the floor. The first three hours of their school day is an uninterrupted work cycle where they comeplete their work. During this time the teacher may be giving small group lessons. There is no disturbing people while they are working during this time although they can talk quietly with eachother if they are working together. After this work cycle the students go to lunch, then P.E., then art, and lastly large group lessons.

The director explained to us that the school encourages independence by giving them choices. They do have three important rules that they would like everyone to follow:

1. Respect yourself- well groomed, excersie, well fed

2. Respect others- listen to teachers, work out problems at peace table,

3. Respect the environment- watering the garden

When it is time for the students to eat lunch they have the choice of eating in the courtyard or in class. They wait for everyone to have their lunch layed out before they begin eating, then they eat queitly while playing classical music.

There is a large (probably 50 or 75 gallon) saltwater fish tank right next to the front door. The students learn to check the water temperatures and levels of the fish tank and take turns doing so. Right next to the fish tank there is a cage with two doves in it. The doves are the schools mascot because they are a symbol for peace. The school has both a basketball and volleyball team and support their team by showing off the pictures and trophies from the students. After school they offer chess, violin, newspaper, and yearbook clubs.

After looking around in the hallways it was time for us to walk into the first classroom which was the 1st through 3rd classroom. The director showed us a sample of their work plan for the week where the teacher checks the work so the student can move on. As I walked in the first thing I noticed was that all the students were working on something different. the environment was queit and the teacher was sitting on the floor talking to a few students quietly. There were two students researching with another teacher. I also noticed all the different activities and the students knew excatly where to go when they were finished with one and ready for another. They were very well behaved and seemed to not notice me very much, which if this was a regular classroom the students probably would have been trying to talk to me and interupt the class.

This school really surprised me and opened my eyes. I am happy that I got to experience this and will never forget it. I hope that when I do graduate I can get the training to become a Montessori school teacher. 

The Meeting!

Our first meeting went very well. My assigned parent and student welcomed me into their beautiful home and also asked me to join them for dinner. They made homemade pizza with salad and it was so welcoming! After we ate they also made "Rice Krispies" treats which were delicous! Then it was time to get to work. We all made our way to the computer and I handed my parent and student each a few handouts. I gave them internet saftey guides, kid friendly search engines, and checklist to help them decide if their website is a good resource or not. My student's teacher did not give her specific directions on what to do with the topic of volcanoes so we just decided to go with it. We began looking at some of the kid friendly search engines and found some neat things. I showed both of them how googledocs works and we set up a KWL chart for volcanoes. We filled out what my student knows about volcanoes and a few things she would like to know. We put that away for later time when we could fill out what we have learned about volcanoes.

Then it was time to create the blog! which is the funnest part of course! My student had a good time creating her blog as we went through all the gadgets to choose from that you can add to your blogs. I showed her how to put a picture on her blog, how to link a video of an erupting volcano to her blog, and how to add polls to her blog. We went through a few other things on blogging and I told her that her blog is like her journal and does not have to be just for this research project. By this time I had been there for a good hour and a half and we were all getting sleepy. All in all it was a very good first meeting! They were a very nice family and I learned a lot from this experience!

Service Project

I am about to meet, for the first time, the student and parent I have been assigned to for this service project. I am both excited and nervous because this is something very new to me. I am looking forward to meeting my assigned student because the parents is making me feel very welcomed and open minded to this project. Some of the things I have prepared for this first meeting are some handouts to give both the parent and student. Hand outs on internet safety tips, kid friendly searches, how to evaluate websites, and how to help children excel in our technology world. Our topic is on volcanoes which should be fun because there is so much information out there on volcanoes. 

These are some questions I have prepared for this meeting: 

What makes volcanoes erupt?

Why are you interested in volcanoes?

What volcano have you heard most about?

Where are some active volcanoes located?

I will write about our first meeting after we have it!

Learning With Spreadsheets

I did not know much about spreadsheets until now and I believe it is because of two reasons: I have not really played with them much and no one has actually taught me how to use it. I recently had an assignment in class that had to do with using spreadsheets and it taught me a lot that I did not know. Spreadsheets are a great way to organize information and once you get the hang of how to use them, it becomes much easier then it looks.

Now that I have had better practice with spreadsheets I feel confident in knowing I can use them in the classroom for many different reasons. First of all it is a great way to keep up with your students grades. The students can also use them to organize data and graphs. Spreadsheets can be incorporated into any subject, unit, or project. I think it is important to know how much spreadsheets can help teachers and students in the classroom. This is an example of a spreadsheet and graph assignment that I recently completed for class.

In the classroom it is important to teach students method of organizing and bringing data together. To keep students interested we should use the inquiry based method as much as possible. Inquiry-based learning is based on student’s involvement with the teacher and other students in the classroom. This involvement leads to understanding of the content and builds the skills of students. These are three guiding questions for students when asking them to create a spreadsheet like this one:

1. Is your data organized in the least about of groups possible?

2. Do you know how to put an equation into the spreadsheet so that it can calculate for you?

3. Can you see the result of your spreadsheet?

Learning with Movies

I have recently discovered some amazing tools to help me teach and organize my unit plan. One of the tools I have discovered to help in the classroom is how to make a movie. I have never actually made a movie before this time in my life. It was a very interesting process and I learned a lot about technology. I am very happy that I have experienced how to make a movie because next time I will know what to expect and what to look for. I never knew how easy it actually is to edit your videos and put them together as you need. Once I finally got my movie made I uploaded it to teacher tube so I could share it with the world.
There were of course some problems that I encountered when trying to upload my video to teacher tube. I have a Mac so I found that it is important to make sure your file matches one of the files that teacher tube accepts. You will know if your file is appropriate when you browse for your file and see if any of them match the valid teacher tube files. But, all in all my experience with making a movie and uploading it into teacher tube taught me a lot about technology and how I can do this much more in the future.
My video is about a elementary science experiment on volcanic eruption. I believe this experiment appropriate for third graders. My science teacher in college taught me this experiment and how to teach it to the students in my classroom. After students learn why we have volcanoes and how they erupt they can do this experiment and have a little fun with it. Then when they have completed the experiment the students can write in their science journal what they have done and what they have learned.

My Teacher Tube Video:

Digging Deeper into Digital Storytelling

My unit plan for this project is about volcanos. My unit question is "How do Volcanoes change and affect our Earth?" In my plan for this digital storytelling project I have integrated the 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling. If you have these elements in your digital story then it will help you organize your thoughts and help you find a direct path for your story to follow. This is how my UNIT PLAN and STORYBOARD address the 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling:

1. POINT OF VIEW- volcanoes are amazing phenomenons that help to change our Earths landforms.
2. A DRAMATIC QUESTION- What are volcanoes capable of?
3. EMOTIONAL CONTENT- many have lost their lives, homes, and families due to the destruction of volcanoes
4. YOUR VOICE- I will be using my voice to tell this story
5. SOUNDTRACK- I will be playing suspensful music in the background
6. ECONOMY- there are many more things to learn about volcanoes this is just the beginning
7. PACING- 2 minutes 2 clips

Digital Storytelling

Digital storying telling is an amazing tool to use in the classroom. I have just discovered this tool and know that it will benefit me in my future teaching career. Both children and adults can create their own art of digital storytelling. With the use of media, pictures, voice, and words it is a new way to share creative art. 

Voice Threads are an online media albums that can hold any type of media (images, documents, and videos) and allows people to make comments in five different ways: using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) and share them with anyone they wish. Not only are they using images and sound to teach and present, they are now able to upload documents, presentations, videos, and images for the purpose of collaboration. 

Voice Threads are a perfect tool to use in the elementary classroom. This website gives a few examples of elementary voice threads: elementary voice threads . 

I have created my own voice thread to use in the elementary classroom that follows my unit plan 

This is my guideline that I will follow when teaching this specific unit on glaciers.

This is my Voice Thread for glaciers: