Out of my three practicum experiences before student teaching, they definitely saved the best for last! For my third semester I was at a great school, with an even greater mentor teacher. This placement was at Northside Primary School in Tifton, GA. I was placed with a special education teacher, serving kindergarten and first grade. I learned so much this semester, not only from my mentor teacher, but also from the teachers she co-taught with.
I spent a lot of time in kindergarten and first grade classrooms, but there was also a small group of kindergarteners that we pulled out at the end of the day. This is the group that I did most of my lessons with.
We spent a lot of time working on numbers with this group - lots and lots of numbers! We worked on recognizing numbers, writing numbers, and different ways to represent numbers (tens frames, number lines, and pictures). When first beginning with this group, they were introduced to TouchMath. During one lesson, the students were able to make their own TouchMath number lines. They glued pom-poms on the dots of each number, then glued the numbers on construction paper. This was a great way for the students to review numbers and one-to-one correspondence.
Since Halloween was right around the corner, I decided to incorporate some holiday activities. During one of the lessons, we were focusing on the number nine. The students made a piece of candy corn with different representations of the number. They represented nine with its numeral, a picture, and on the number line.
While we didn't have a specific time set aside to pull-out our first graders, we did do guided reading with them throughout the week. The special education teachers at this school used a scripted program, Leveled Literacy Intervention, designed by Fountas & Pinnell. This was such a great program. It incorporated word work, teaching points, discussion questions before and after the reading, plus so much more. It was so amazing to be able to see how much the students progressed in just the short time that I was there.
