Middle School LTS

Heading into a New Field Area

            As an elementary certified teacher, it is hard to find a full time permanent position right out of college. I have been substituting for 3 1/2 years now and I have decided to make a shift in my teaching range. Currently, I am certified in grades kindergarten through fourth grade. I am working on getting my certification for fourth through eighth grade in English Language Arts and Social Studies. I am hoping that this expands my ability to get a full time permanent teaching position. 

            At the beginning of this school year, I was offered a reading teacher LTS position teaching sixth and eighth grade reading. It lasted from the end of August until the middle of October. I learned a lot about my interests in teaching and what I really wanted to do with my career. I have found a love for teaching at the middle school level. Now, I have been offered another LTS position in the middle school as an eighth grade reading support teacher. I am incredibly excited and nervous to take on this new challenge. I will be teaching eighth graders who are reading a little below grade level to help improve their reading skills (fluency, comprehension). 

Lesson Planning Redesigned

         Lesson planning used to be a major chore. Most teachers I know are not too happy when they have to sit and create their lesson plans for the week. It is also hard to do in advance, especially when you have a class where you may need to change your plans half way through the week, due to students not grasping a concept or students comprehending more than anticipated. In the world of teaching, teachers need to be flexible with their plans and be able to change/move things around if need be. I have chosen to adopt Planbook as my lesson planning design tool.
 
     

       Above, is an excerpt of a week out of my lesson plans on Planbook. This particular excerpt was from my long-term sub (LTS) position in second grade.

Features of Planbook:

Class Setup-

        In Planbook, you are able to add all the classes (or subjects) you teach during the day. You are able to create your schedule to match your school day routine. Teachers can also include cycle days. I used cycle days 1-6 because that is what my school used. They also accommodate different types of cycle days. This tool allows teachers to schedule an entire year, term or certain range of dates. 

Standards-

        Planbook makes lesson planning simple and easy when you have all of your standards right at your finger tips. All I have to do is go to the drop down menu and pick the standards that I want to apply to the lesson and I am done. It helps me in the fact that I do not have to go looking for the standards that I need to add to my lesson.

Sharing-

This program allows me to share my lesson plans with other teachers that use planbook as well. If a teacher is absent due to illness or other reasons, they can simple share the plans with another teacher for them to print out for the substitute. Also, if there is a long-term substitute, you can share your lesson plans with the sub so that everyone is on the same page. It makes lesson planning a breeze and puts everything right in front of you so that you don't need a whole bunch of different documents. 

     





     

Struggles of an Elementary Student: Multiplication/Division

After being a building substitute for a building of 4th and 5th grade students, I have realized one thing: hardly any of them know how to properly multiply and divide numbers. Most of their problems comes from carrying over or regrouping in errors of addition or subtraction. Some of the problem is because they simply just don't care. After assisting classroom teachers in the 4th and 5th grade teams, I had come to wonder what could be done in order to make their students more successful with multiplication and division.

Their biggest issue seems to be that they simply do not know their multiplication facts. As a student teacher, I witnessed my mentor teacher using her students love of competition in order to help them remember their facts. She would start by giving each student the 2's facts. The students would then look over them and study them. When they felt they were ready, the students could then go through the facts with the teacher. If the student got them all correct (without using a chart, fingers or tricks), the teacher would then give that student their 3's facts. Once the student had completed that set of facts, they would receive a sticker to put on the chart with all of their names and their facts listed up until 12. They would continue to complete each set of multiplication facts in the same manner until all the sets were complete. As students reached certain milestones (reaching the 5's facts, 10's, 12's), there would be rewards for the students who achieved those milestones.

The students that I witnessed going through these steps and learning their multiplication facts were more interested in learning them because there was a point/purpose to learning them other than just for the sake of knowing them. It's sad to say, but most students need some form of concrete motivation in order for them to feel like doing something to help them learn is necessary. Children nowadays are more worried about the apps on their phones and tablets, who is dating whom, and what current social event is going on at that particular moment.

Once students have that basic knowledge of their multiplication facts, it makes it much easier for them to complete division, as well as dealing with fractions (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing).