My EDGE Experience

My name is Hilary Beck and I am currently attending Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah.  I am majoring in Elementary Education with an emphasis on early childhood.  I have a strong desire to be an educator because I want to make a difference in our future, and I believe strongly that our future begins in the classroom. 

This last school year I spent 45 hours volunteering at Iron Springs Elementary for my EDGE Project.  My EDGE project has given me much opportunity to assist in the community as well as giving me experience in the classroom.  I am grateful for the time I have had to work in Mrs. Almond's and Mrs. Greenfield's classrooms because I know that many of the tools I have learned while working with these wonderful teachers I will be able to take with me and use in my own classroom one day.

I feel that teachers have a high demand placed on them with very little support and funding.  I also believe that if more parents and grandparents and volunteers from the community would give of their time and energy to assist in the classrooms that we could all help in the cause to better our education system and the ultimate future of our nation. 

Our future will only be as good as our classroom.

21st day in the classroom

Last Thursday April 11th was my last day in the classroom.  I got to Mrs. Almond's class at 1:30 and helped her get ready for all the 4th graders to come into her classroom for a big movie party. The party was only for students who either had 80% overall grade, or have turned in all of their assignments.  All the other students had to go to another 4th grade classroom and work on assignments.  It was really hard for Mrs. Almond to watch the students who didn't get to go.  She sent home a letter to the parents of the students who didn't qualify telling them basically what was happening and that this is how things are in life sometimes.  She said it was a good learning experience for the students, but that it broke her heart that they couldn't all come to the party.  It was really sad.

I went to the classroom with the students who didn't get to go to the movie and I walked around helping them with their assignments that they didn't understand.

I went to Mrs. Greenfield's class at 2:30 and their class was having a party also.  They were watching movies in the background while playing lots of fun games and puzzles around the room.  Apparently it was a student achievement recognition day for the whole school district.  In Mrs. G's class I sat with the students and played games with them until it was time to go at 3:30.

Christmas party 2012

On Friday Dec. 21, 2012 Mrs. Almond had her classroom Christmas party and I was in charge of it.  Before the party, Mrs. Almond gave me some phone numbers of parents in her classroom and I called them and asked them if they would help with the Christmas party.  Mrs. Almond wanted to have four centers that the students could rotate through.  She let me take charge of planning what would be in each center.  I asked the parent volunteers to take charge of different centers.

One group of volunteers made some cute Christmas trees with upside down ice cream cones.  They frosted the cones with green frosting so it looked like a Christmas tree and then added topping to look like ornaments.  The students loved it.

Another parent was in charge of reading the Polar Express for her group.  She brought some yummy snacks to share and gave each student a little bell on a string to put around their neck.

The third played a math game at her center with the students, which they loved.

And then I had some parents help me at my table where we made Christmas ornaments.  I cut strips of colorful papers before hand and taught the students how to make an origami ornament.  They turned out great.

The party went from 1:30-2:30 and there was festive music and lots of fun.

20th day in the classroom

As usual I went to Mrs. Almonds class from 1:30 to 2:30 yesterday, Thursday April 4th.  When I got there the students were finishing up their character connection and learning about being brave and standing up for what is right.  I took them out to recess at 2:00 to 2:15.  When we came in, it was time for science.  Professor Scatterbrain showed up as usual and the students picked the county they were going to research.

I headed to Mrs. Greenfields class at 2:30 and the second graders were finishing up their moon test.  After that, we passed out all the students parts for their class presentation that they will perform for their parents at the end of the school year.  They are on their bug unit right now, so their class performance will be based on a cute skit about bugs.  They will sing a song about being invited to a picnic and then each student will have parts where they are a bug.  All the boys will wear camouflage clothes and the girls will all wear black and red for ladybugs.  It will be a cute performance.

After they finished working on their skit, all the students cleaned up and got ready to go home.  Then they sat at the rug and Mrs. G read to them until it was time to go home at 3:30.

19th day in the classroom

On Thursday in Mrs. Almonds classroom, she had me take individual pictures of three of her students who were the students of the week.  Each student had filled out a piece of paper all about themselves, so she had me take that paper for each one of the students and then put the information in paragraph form and then post it on her blog for the class and their families to see.  After that I went outside with the students to recess.  When we came in, they had a science test, so I headed over to Mrs. Greenfields class.

When I got to Mrs. Greenfields class they were learning about the moon.  They each had their moon journal out, and They were discussing things that they know about the moon and then writing it down in their moon journal under "Things I already know".  She then showed them some moon books that she had in her library and told them that during centers the next day she wanted them to learn things about the moon and write under "Things I learned".

After that they had their "Mad Minute" which is where they try to answer 30 math problems in 1 minute.  It is very competitive.  If they do it, then they get to dance with the teacher on the rug to music while the rest of the students finish their problems.  She always does mad minute on Thursdays, but this time she challenged the advanced students by giving them a sheet with 40 problems instead of 30 to see if they could do it in 1 minute.  They were very excited.

After mad minute, they worked on their scholastic readers and then she read to them on the rug until it was time to go.

18th day in the classroom

Thursday I went to Mrs. Almonds class and the students were working on their art project.  After art I took them out to recess.  During recess Mrs. Almond called her "math teacher" to ask her a question about why a fractions problem didn't work that one of her students tried.  It was interesting to see her use her resources to figure out how to help her students in math.  Then she discussed what she learned with the students.  It was a great teaching moment.  She called it her "favorite wrong answer of the day"  because the students learned so much from it.

In Mrs. Greenfields class the students were working on the smart board answering some questions and learning about plant life and writing up a scientific experiment.  For their science experiment in class they are going to discover if they can grow a plant without a seed.  They wrote their question, their hypothesis, and what they are going to do.  Then they all got to plant a plant from a leaf clipping of another plant.  They were very excited to grow their own plant.  After that they sat at the rug and Mrs. G. read to them until it was time to go hime.

17th day in the classroom

Yesterday in Mrs. Almond's classroom the students were learning about different kinds of rocks in science.  They made an "igneous rock" in the form of fudge.  All the different ingredients represented different minerals, and then when they boiled the "minerals" that represented the extreme heat it takes under the earth to form the rocks.  The kids loved it and then they got to eat their "igneous rocks".

In Mrs. Greenfield's class the students were having their weekly math competition with the other 2nd grade classes.  Mrs. Greenfield's class won the competition again.  They have never lost a competition this year.  Each class lines up and then one student from each class is given a math question.  The first student to answer it correctly gets back in line, the other student sits down.  The last class standing wins.  After that, the students went outside for recess.  When the students came back inside, they worked in their March riddle books, which have riddles that the students have try to figure out about spring and gardening.  Each student  took turns reading the different riddles and then answering them.  After working in their riddle book, the students went to the rug and Mrs. Greenfield read to them until it was time to go home.

16th day in the classroom

Today in Mrs. Almonds 4th grade class I took the students out to recess, it was the first beautiful day we have had in a really long time, so the students got to stay out a little longer than usual.  When we came back inside, Professor Scatterbrain was there to teach science.  The students are on their geology unit now, so they started science off by listing some properties of rocks on the chalkboard, and some things that geologists look at or do when they are studying rocks.  Professor Scatterbrain made some "mock rocks" for the students, and the students were able to use tools to measure the rocks circumference, diameter, depth, and weight.  They also drew pictures of their rocks and then finally they dissected their rocks and wrote the ingredients down.

In Mrs. Greenfield's 2nd grade class, the students were having a popcorn party that they won.  Mrs. Greenfield had the huge popcorn popper in their room and was working hard to pop the popcorn and then put it in bags while the students watched Dr. Seuss.  Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss day, so it was fun for the students to get to watch some Dr. Seuss movies that they have been reading.  I helped Mrs. G. pass out popcorn, then she cleaned up the machine and then went  and put it away while I stayed with the students.  The students enjoyed their movie and popcorn until it was time to go home.

15th day in the classroom

Yesterday in Mrs. Almond's class, she had me grade some math tests that the kids had taken, and then she had me take the students outside to recess.  When we came in it was time for science.  The students have worked on some science weather reports and were able to present the reports.

In Mrs. Greenfield's class the students took their timed math tests and the students who finished their sheet in 1 min. time got to get u and dance to music with Mrs. G. while the other students finished their sheets.  Then the students worked on their writing and then Mrs. G. started passing out take home papers and folders for the students to get ready to go home.  They sat on the rug and she read "Hatchet" to them until it was time to go.  

14th day in the Classroom

Today In Mrs. Almonds 4th grade classroom, the students were having their Valentine's party.  I sat at one of the center and helped the students make valentine cards to their parents.  First they outlined their hands and cut it out.  Then they folded down the middle finger and ring finger to say I love you in sign language.  Then they glued it to a big red hear that they cut out and then wrote the note.  The other 2 stations were cookie decorating of course, and then handing out their valentines for their classmates.

In Mrs. Greenfield's 2nd grade classroom- surprise, surprise, they were also having their Valentine's day party.  And of course they were also decorating big yummy heart cookies.  I sat at that table and helped them decorate cookies.  Boy do little kids ever love frosting and sprinkles, and what a mess.  There were three other centers.  In one center a parent was reading a book to the kids.  The third center was card decorating, and the last center was a word bingo game.  The students would cover up words that were called out with conversation hearts, and if they got bingo they would get a treat.

Mrs. Greenfield said something very interesting today, she told me that on day like today, holidays, she "unschools".   She said that the students are way to excited to learn new concepts so they just review all day.  She said that she does centers where every other center is fun and the other centers are review.

13th day in the classroom

Yesterday, Feb. 7th I went to Mrs. Almond's classroom at 1:30.  When I got there the Character Connection lady talking with the students.  She comes and talks to the students once a month about different topics like how to be a friend and anti bullying.
Mrs. Almond asked me to hang up some art in the hall that the students had painted.  Mrs. Almond has little clips that are stuck to the wall with velcro.  She uses those clips to hang the students artwork.  After I hung the artwork, Mrs. Almond asked me to help disinfect some pvc pipe telephone toys that the students use to talk through when they read.  When they talk through the toy, their voice travels straight to their ear which helps them hear how they pronounce their words.  After disinfecting toys, I took the students out to recess.  When we came in from recess, the students worked for a little while on their Valentine bags and then I headed over to Mrs. Greenfield's class.  In Mrs. Greenfield's, the students were working on their phonics while using their little whiteboards.  After that Mrs. G. shared some Flat Stanley's that the students had mailed out to different states and countries.  The students got a kick out of looking at pictures and hearing about the different places Flat Stanley had visited.  The students started cleaning up and handing out folders and then sat on the rug to read before it was time to go home.   

12th day in the classroom

Yesterday was a great day in Mrs. Almond's and Mrs. Greenfield's classrooms.  I arrived at Mrs. Almond's class at 1:30, like always, and Mrs. Almond had me take the students out to recess while she set up her science experiments.  During recess I discovered that children gravitate toward slippery ice, especially if you tell them to stay away from it.  After I saw two students run across the ice and biff it, I stood right by the ice and told the students to stay away.  I think they needed some salt to melt the ice.

When the students went in, Mrs. Almond had transformed into Professor Scatterbrain.  She had on a whit lab coat and protection goggles.  The students always love it when Pro. Scatterbrain comes to visit the classroom, she does a lot of fun experiments.  The class has been learning about air pressure, so Mrs. Almond did a couple of great experiments to help them understand air pressure better.  She talked about how the air is pressing down on us all the time, but we can't feel it because we are accustomed to it.  Then she pointed out that the higher up you go in elevation, the less the air pressure is.  She had 5 boy volunteers come up to the front of the class.  Next she had the first volunteer lay down on the floor and the second volunteer doggy pile on top of the first .  She said, "How are you feeling number 1?"  He said he was feeling a little squished, but that he was ok.  Then she had volunteer number 3 doggy pile next.  Number one was then feeling a little more squished, number 2 was feeling a little squished, number 3 felt just fine.  Number 4 was the next volunteer to pile on.  By this point number 1 could only grunt because he was so squished, number 2 wasn't feeling too great either, number 4 was a little squished, and number 4 felt great.  Number 5 was the last one to doggy pile on top.  Number 1 couldn't make it much longer because he was being so squished.  Number 2 was feeling pretty squished too, number 3 wasn't feeling great.  Number 4 wasn't too bad.  And like always, number 5 felt great because he was on top.  The classroom was having a blast, they were laughing so hard at poor number 1 and 2.  Mrs. Almond talked more about pressure at different altitudes.

Next Mrs. Almond did some more great experiments with a 2 liter coke bottle.  She punched 4 holes down the front of the bottle and then taped them up.  Then she filled the bottle with water and put the lid on.  She had the students predict what would happen if she took the tape off of the top hole.  Most of the class thought that water would come out of the hole, but they were wrong.  When she removed the tape, nothing happened.  Next, she had them predict what would happen if she took off the tape over the second hole.  A lot of the class thought nothing would happen this time since nothing happened the last time.  Of course this time water did come out.  She then took off the rest of the pieces of tape and the lower the hole was, the farther the stream would shoot because of the air pressure.  The students were so excited about this experiment.

Her next experiment was with a can of water.  She had a hole on the bottom with tape over it.  She put a balloon at the top of the can and then took the tape off the bottom of the can.  All the students got to watch as the balloon was being sucked into the can as the water poured out the bottom of the can.  She told them that they were seeing air pressure in action.  It was a pretty great science class and all the students loved it.

In Mrs. Greenfield's class the students were working on writing a sequel to a story.  They had to use their dictionaries to look up how to spell words that they did not know.  I walked around answering questions and helping them find words in their dictionary.  After writing, they worked on phonics.  I love the way that Mrs. Greenfield does phonics.  Each student has a white erase board and a white erase board marker and an eraser.  She gives them a few minutes to draw and play with their boards, after that they are expected to practice writing their phonics words.  They write the word and then mark all the rules that they have learned.  They always seem to love phonics.

During phonics they had a fire drill.  It was obvious that they have practiced a lot because they got right up and out the door so quickly.  When they came back in they didn't have time to finish their phonics lesson so they started getting ready to go.

I helped hand out papers and folders and then the students were ready to go home.

11th day in the classroom

On Thursday January 24th I had my 11th day in the classroom.  When I showed up at 1:30 in Mrs. Almond's class, she had a substitute teacher.  The substitute teacher said that she didn't have anything for me to do, so I headed on down to Mrs. Greenfield's classroom.  They were not there, so I looked around and found them in the library.  They got to pick out books for silent reading and then they got to take them home.  Back in the classroom, Mrs. Greenfield had the students get out their squiggle word journals.  They turned to a page and found a squiggly line.  They had to make the line into a picture and color it.  After they finished their picture, they had to write two complete sentences.  Then the best part was that she had each student come to the front of the class and show their picture and then read their sentence to the class.  It was fun seeing how creative the students were.  They all had such different ideas about what they could make out of the same squiggle.  Mrs. Greenfield looked at all of their sentences and had them fix different mistakes like capitalizations, spelling, and punctuation marks.  This assignment took a good amount of time, so when they were all finally done sharing it was time to start getting ready to go.  Mrs. Greenfield is such a fun teacher, I love watching how she interacts and plays with her students.  One of the kids favorite things that she does is when she passes out their take home folders she stands in one spot and yells out a kids name and then tosses his folder to him or her and they try to catch it.  She constantly yells, "heads up".  While she is handing out folders, she always has the student of the day pick some helpers and they pass out all the students work to put in their take home folders.  It is a really fun time of day for the kids.
After all the craziness, all the students sit at the rug and she reads to them until its time to go.  During reading time at the end of the day the student of the day gets to pick some friends to help clean up the floor.  They crawl under the desks and pick up little pieces of trash.  Something about this makes it really special so they love cleaning.  When they are done, the student of the day always gets to sit by Mrs. Greenfield in a special chair.  

Tenth day in the classroom

On Thursday, Jan 17th I went to Mrs. Almonds classroom at 1:30, they were working on an art project when I got there.  Mrs. Almond had one more student to test so she asked me to stay with the kids during their indoor recess and then to get them started in science.  Indoor recess was the same as always.  The kids play games and goof off, sometimes they get a little too active for indoor recess and I have to help them find something to do.  Some of them like to play with Bubber which is like play dough that never dries out.  It is really fun, I need to remember about Bubber for my classroom someday.

At 2:00 I had the students clean up and then log the weather in their weather journals.  I have decided that I like smart boards, but they are a little unpredictable.  It seems like so many of the teachers have issues with them?

For science Mrs. Almond put a movie in and all I had to do was push play.  We had some technical difficulties with the smart board of course.  But eventually I got it started  and the kids took notes.  Mrs. Almond came in right before it was over and I headed to Mrs. Greenfields at 2:30.

In Mrs. Greenfield's class the students were working on phonics when I came in and then they did their scholastic books reading.  They have a great program online that Mrs. Greenfield pays for.  Each student gets a little scholastic pamphlet each week and it has some online games and reading.  The whole class reads them together and the students get so excited every time she pulls it out.  Another thing I need to remember for some day down the road.

To end the day Mrs. Greenfield passed out folders and take home work.  Then the students sat on the rug and she read to them until 3:30.

Teachers deserve so much more praise than they get.  They put in so much time and energy to be amazing!

Nineth Day in the Classroom

Today was a fun day in Mrs. Almond's class.  I got there at 1:30 and Mrs. Almond told me that she was going to teach me how to test the students reading levels and then I would teach science class for her while she finished testing students reading levels, i was really nervous, but excited.  It was interesting to see how reading level testing is done.  After that I stayed with the students while they had an indoor recess because it is very windy and cold weather outside today.  At 2:15 I had the students clean up and then I taught the students about weather.  We had a group reading paper about weather that we all read together.  We read and talked about meteorologists and how they study the weather.  We learned about the different types of clouds and we discussed how tornadoes are formed.  The students had fun talking about the tornado that Salt Lake had in August 1999.  Mrs. Almond came back into the classroom at 2:30 and I headed over to Mrs. Greenfield's class.

When I got to Mrs. Greenfield's class, they were learning about maps and compasses.  Mrs. G. put a compass on each students desk so they could see that the arrow always points north.  She put an N on the North wall and then an S on the south wall.  An E on the east wall, and a W on the west wall.  The students were able to understand which direction north, south, east, and west were in the classroom.  They located the compass rose on the maps and learned that north is always pointing up on a map.  After learning about compasses and maps, Mrs. G. had me pass out the scholastic readers and the students read about ice caves and snow leopards.  After scholastic reading, they sat on the rug and Mrs. G. read The Magic Finger by Ronald Dahl.  At 3:30, the students were excused to go home.

I love helping in the classrooms and learning different skills and tools that will help me as a teacher someday.