Expo Elementary- Day 4

Today was a lot different than yesterday. Today was President Lincoln's birthday. Most of the day was spent around that. I did enjoy this because all of the subjects were incorporated into this one major theme. I realized today that how much you get accomplished within the day depends on the students. The children listened a lot more than yesterday, much like my first day at Expo.

I had the opportunity to go and listen to a responsive teaching method session in one of the 1st grade classrooms. I was not exactly sure at first what was going on but I got the hang of it very quickly. The woman Lisa who led the lesson on practicing spelling words did an awesome job with the children. She started off by giving them very clear directions and plenty of options. They could either write their words on a dry erase board, write them with magnetic letters on magnetic boards, write the words on paper three times or rainbow writing. My favorite method was rainbow writing because I feel as though they get the most out of it. Students chose three crayons and traced over the word with each crayon. I really enjoyed the way this session was handled. I think that sitting and observing this method was an extremely helpful part of my week! It helped me fulling understand the methods and reasons for what was happening in my 2nd grade class. Lisa stressed the importance of giving students options and letting them chose what they want to do. With that she also mentioned how important it is to follow up with the students after they have finished. One of her ideas was to lay out their work and walk around in a "gallery" to look at other ones that they liked. She also said to ask them if they would have picked a different method to practice their spelling words. Asking them what word they learned the best is a way to recap and summarize what they learned.

At lunch my kids and Drew's kids thought it would be completely necessary to tell everyone we were boyfriend and girlfriend. This was an ongoing joke throughout the day and for awhile they thought Laura was his girlfriend and then I convinced them it was Leah and Andrea. It was quite entertaining. The part that made me sad was when this boy named Adam said, "Miss Allison how old are you?" I responded, "20, why." Adam then said, "Your supposed to get married when you are 20...that means your married (laughing and running away)." I was a bit depressed because I am nowhere near marriage!

Tomorrow is my last day at Expo and I am pretty excited for it. The kids are super sad which makes me feel good (if thats not super selfish). They all talk about how I am getting valentines early because I won't be there on Thursday! Well here's to a good final day at Expo elementary!