Week 2: September 12th-16th

 Monday, September 12th

➽Activity of the Day: Frank and Hank

    Today's activity was a book called Frank and Hank. In the book, Frank and Hank went on an adventure in a songfest. It was my job to pull four kids at a time and read them the story. After, I would give them a clipboard and paper, asking eight questions about the book. I learned to emphasize important parts of the story as I read, so the kids could remember. I also learned how kids learn information. They did best with repetition, or when we talked as a group about the chronological order of the story. Students learn by making connections. 

Tuesday, September 13th

➽ Activity of the Day: Phonics

    Today we worked on phonics. At this point in a child's development, they can read and write basic words and letters. Now they are working on recognizing and forming words with common phonics. The directions for today's activity were to write two words ending in the sounds "ang", "ing", "ong", and "ung". I pulled four children aside at a time and gave them a blank sheet of paper, like the one shown below. I then called on each child, and asked them to give me a word for each category. It was great to see their minds work! The kids were laughing, challenging each other to come up with the most creative real-word ending in "ong", or the silliest real-word ending in "ung".

Thursday, September 15th

➽Activity of the Day: Suffix Bingo

    Today's activity was a continuation of the work done on Tuesday. A 3 x 3 bingo sheet had eight words of 4-5 letter lengths, ending with the phonics "ang", "ing", "ong", or "ung", plus a free space in the middle. The teacher would call out a word, and students would put down a centimeter cube if the word was on their sheet. This was a fun way for the kids to recognize these common words, and build upon a base for language and comprehension.

Friday, September 16th

➽Activity of the Day: Checking computation papers

    While today's activity was not what I would describe as "glamorous", it gave me a sneak peak into the math computation system. With the time of day I am in this class, I typically help the children with language and comprehension. It was interesting to have a change of pace and learn about the students's math skills. I scored addition problems, which ranged from 1+1 to 9+9. Out of the 25 problems, most students answer between 10-15 correctly. While scoring, I took special care to write a correct number next to the ones students wrote backwards or inside out (many kids flipped their 2s, 5s, 6s and 9s).