I have learned many different things here that I can't wait to apply in my own classroom! These things include how to teach content, how to sympathize, classroom management, and how to create a family in my classroom.
Here at St. Paul's the classrooms do an activity called "Thank you for being you." This is a feel good activity for both the teacher and the students. I have seen it done two different ways which are both wonderful. One the first day of school a picture of each student is taken and put in a power point. Each week or when there is extra time, a student is picked from the powerpoint then is asked to leave the room. In one way I saw this done, the rest of the classmates are given a little piece of paper and they have to write a nice letter about the chosen student. After a given amount of time, the student comes back into the classroom and every student reads their letter out loud and thanks them for being them. All the letters are then turned into a book the student gets to take home. The second way I've seen it is that every student's picture is taped in the room. The classmates write the note on a little sticky note. After all the notes are read out loud, the chosen student gets to glue the sticky note to their picture. I absolutely love this idea!
Although everyone speaks english and the students are taught in English, I have been put into situations in which everyone around me is speaking another language that I do not understand. When this happens, I understand what it is like for an ELL student in America. During my student teaching I had a student in both fourth grade and kindergarten who spoke no english. I can now empathize with those students because I know how it feels to not have a clue what anyone around me is saying. I love that I have now been put in their shoes because I can reflect and find ways to make students like this feel more included in the classroom.
I have also gained different ideas of how to teach math content such as place value and division. For place value, I learned the grid method. With this, you make a grid with the places at the top then fill the numbers in the correct spot. Then the numbers are moved to the left or the right depending on what number you are trying to reach. This was a very easy way for students to identify place value that I had not seen. For division, I learned a method called chunking. With this, you take out the biggest chunk possible depending on the divisor. For example, if I was dividing a 4 digit number by 4, I would start by trying to take out a 4000, then a 400, then a 40, and a 4, dividing each of those by their place value then adding it all up at the end to find the quotient.