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AEMS Senior Project Day 17: 5/21/19

Wow.  Can’t believe that this is the last day.  I’ve had so many good memories over the last few weeks with these kids and it stinks to have to leave.  This morning the kids and I worked on their set for the play they are performing soon (which I hope to attend).  I built a rocket ship out of cardboard and we painted it red. The kids also brought me some cards, which was so nice of them.  I will definitely hang on to them for a long time. In the afternoon when I went back I had my surprise of cupcakes up my sleeve (which they already had in the morning because it was one of the student’s birthday!).  First I worked with two students on some math corrections and practice (which they did great on) and then we ate cupcakes! The kids really loved them. Afterwards I gave every one there a big hug and promised the kids I would come to their play on June 10th.  It has been an amazing few weeks and I am sad to have to leave the kids behind. I really hope someone does something like this
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AEMS Senior Project Day 16: 5/20/19

I can’t believe that this is my last week at AEMS (and my last week every as a student at Proctor!).  Today Ms. Hildebrand’s assistant teacher Ms. H wasn’t at school, so I took over her duties in administering something called a “quick word test” to a bunch of students.  I quickly understood why Ms. Hildebrand doesn’t like these, and why independent reading and teaching interesting content is much cooler. During these tests, kids simply read a list of between 300-600 words, while a teacher (or me) follows along and marks what they got wrong.  It’s tedious for both us and them, and while it is important for teachers to know where their students are in terms of vocabulary, there are a lot of things that could be more fun than that. Regardless, the kids all did a great job for their various levels of reading. We had no phonics today but Lily showed some really cool shells to the class during snack which was cool.  After coming back to school and preparing for my final two math classes
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AEMS Senior Project Weekly Reflection #3

This week was another great week at AEMS.  I’m actually quite disappointed this has been my final complete week at the school because I have really enjoyed the work I have been doing, especially this week.  I started to bring a more silly attitude to the classroom, not one that hinders or distracts them from their learning, but one that tries to make the learning more fun (at the end of the day, the best way to retain information is to have fun doing it.  This actually worked much better than I expected, as the kids laughed a lot and we had a lot of fun together. Just a quick smile or silly face can get the kids to crack up, which instantly strengthened the bond between me and the students. I actually was asked by a few of them if I was having a good day because I seemed so happy (which I was really glad to hear from them!).  At the same time, there were also a couple of challenges this week that we had to deal with. A couple of kids didn’t feel good/got sick, which wasn’t fun. H
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AEMS Senior Project Day 15: 5/17/19

Another truly great day as this week (and senior project) come to a close.  I started off the day creating some short stories with several students in the class (which were all extremely funny and creative).  They all are such talented writers and it was fun to experience them work. Afterwards in phonics class we played a game called Sparkle, where we all stood in a circle and spelled different challenging words, letter by letter.  If you made a mistake or were the person standing in line after the word finished, you were out (I got out all three times). Afterwards during snack some of the students presented the stories that they had created earlier in the morning.  Afterwards Lauren and I worked with a couple of 4th graders in learning Chinese, which was a lot of fun. When I went back to AEMS for their math class the kids had a testing activity with double digit addition and subtraction--with 50 problems!  None of the kids finished it but it was really hard so I tried to keep my g
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AEMS Senior Project Day 14: 5/16/19

Another really fun day over at AEMS!  Still a lot of silly energy which was great but I felt that everyone was a tad more tired today.  In the morning we started with some independent reading as a few kids took some reading tests with Mrs. Hildebrand.  I read with three different students about earthquakes, a robot that saves the world, and the all time classic One Fish Two Fish.   Afterwards the kids had a phonics class, where I partnered with a couple of kids to spell and “mark” challenging words.  It was a lot of fun to see how well the kids were able to spell most of of the words (and mark them, which I have no idea how to do).  After doing some more research at school on Khan Academy and finding some fun things to do during math, I went back over to AEMS for the 2nd graders math class.  We didn’t have time to do computers after our worksheet due to the fact that we had to due a couple of “Mad Minutes” before heading down to the conference room. The kids did a great job (as alway
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AEMS Senior Project Day 13: 5/15/19

It was really good to get back over to AEMS today!  The kids were all excited to see me this morning but they weren’t as excited as I was to see them (finally done with my AP tests!).  I started off reading with Griff, who was reading the second book in a series we had started last week. Then I listened to a group of 3 girls who were practicing a book that they will be reading to a class of first graders next week!  It was about a elementary school girl and her quest to win class president (which she did). Afterwards I sorted out a bunch of worksheets that the kids needed to do over the next few days for math. They are moving on to analyzing and creating graphs which will be a lot of fun.  When I went back for the afternoon I was working with three boys as we did some word problems involving measurement and then moved on to exploring some basic bar and line graphs. After they finished their worksheet we went on the chromebooks and did some work with different kinds of graphs on Kh
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AEMS Senior Project Day 12: 5/14/19

Another unique day today, although basically the same thing as yesterday.  I took another AP Exam this morning (AP Calculus) that was much harder than the one I took yesterday.  I felt good on the sections with calculator but I felt really bad on the sections without a calculator.  Oh well. I was hoping to get some credit for college from these tests but we will see. In the afternoon I continued my research on Khan Academy, and also did some other research online about teach strategies for students that have a harder time paying attention.  There are some kids in the class who are really smart but just have a harder time staying focused. It’s been great teaching kids of all abilities these last few weeks. Can’t wait to get back over there tomorrow! Today’s Hours: 1 Total Hours:  36
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