Kolb EDUC 461 Fall 2014

Journey Entry for August 14, 2014

The third day of in-service started off with a workshop for the Common Core standards
for Math at Westwood Elementary School. The workshop was only for the Abbeville schools
that taught kindergarten through second grade. The workshop was held by speaker Dale Smith of
Newberry School District. She worked with teachers that could implement the common core
standards for math in that particular school district. The Newberry School Districts are 21st
Century schools meaning that the teachers only use two colors that absorb light in the classroom
rather than reflect it. The first thing she clarified for us was the difference between a bar graph
and histogram. Apparently bar graphs should have a space in between the bars. She said the
problem is that most books that have bar graphs do not know that. The purpose was that the
teachers were going to make bar graph which included how many years experience we had
teaching in a school. I was in the first row with zero to five years experience. My cooperating
teacher has had thirty-one years experience which was surprising to me. It made me realize that
I was very lucky to have a mentor with thirty plus years. It was also great to see how many years
the other educators in the room had.
The first part of Mrs. Smiths PowerPoint talked about the difference between the content
standards and the practical standards. She said that content tells you what to do and the practical
tells you how to apply it in the classroom. She even had us in groups by grade level and we had
to find the four critical concepts of each grade level. In kindergarten, the four critical concepts
are knowing the numbers, spatial relations, shapes and orientations, and problem-solving. We
also found out that in kindergarten is that from zero to ten is family but zero to five is their best
buddy. I found this statement very true because they could do anything with the numbers zero to
five.
She then moved on to the subject of doing grade level planning meetings for math. In the
schools that she goes to, they do preplanning and then planning meetings. Preplanning is when
the teachers bring their ideas to the table and then during the planning, they actually do them to
see if they work for their students. I wish I had known about this because it would have been
helpful for my math lesson I did in my 329 clinical. I had to teach place value to the students and

the lesson did not go well because the students were not grasping the concept. I also then realized
during this workshop kindergarteners do not understand the concept of bundling yet but seeing
single units and doing it that way. If I get to teach that lesson again, I can take out the bundling
of straws and use their unifex cubes that they were used to use.
She then talked about the classroom environment and that the students should be the
focus of the classroom and not you. I can see where she could say that because I believe that
students should be the focus considering they are the ones that are learning the content and how
to apply it. She talked about how instruction begins at the door each day. I definitely believe that
because thats when you see the new haircut, new clothes, and also you can see if a child does
not feel well. She also mentioned the traveling clipboard that does everything from attendance to
assessment to lunch choices for the students. I like the traveling clipboard because I used one for
most of my lessons in my 329 clinical experience. I used it for my checklist and assessment data.
For most part the workshop was helpful with the schedule of what the teachers go through at
school because they spend an hour for math. In some cases, that is not always possible. I would
love to have an hour for every subject but that is not always possible. I wish during the workshop
I knew how to close a lesson. I seem to always have trouble closing a lesson so that is my big
question of what I want to learn to do well.
The last part of the day we had a faculty meeting at two. I was very excited because it
was my first faculty meeting that I was allowed to go to. The new principal did an All About Me
assignment for every faculty member which I liked because its good to establish relationships
with your co-workers and to let them know a little bit about you. She also wanted teachers to
have a webpage for each of their classes and she wanted them to established balanced literacy in
each of the grade level classrooms. The meeting was short and sweet so teachers could finish in
their classrooms. Ms. South and I were deciding where to put name plates on the tables. She told
me that you need to be careful how you group the students at tables. I learned that it is best to
group them according to ability and especially during times that the students are in pairs. It helps
to make sure that the higher student is not doing all the work for the lower student.
It was a great experience for the day to learn so much and I am really excited for the
students to come next Wednesday.