Parkway E.S. Practicum Hours: Sept. 25-29

IST 972 Journal:  Parkway Elementary

September 26, 2017 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (3.5)

September 28, 2017 7:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (4.15)

Total hours to date: 36.15

Summary of Daily Activities/Experiences:
-Helped Mrs. Travis make and distribute ID badges for students to their appropriate classes.

-Ran library classes while Mrs. Travis was helping students in the computer lab.

-Continued to catalog and process new books.  Cataloged over 60 books this past week.

-Looked up books for Accelerated Reader in Renaissance.

-Continued collaboration with Mrs. Friedrich on her country project.  I created and finished all four lessons and ran over them with Mrs. Friedrich. 

-Helped Mrs. Travis to coordinate volunteers and work.

Personal Reflections:

            This week was another busy week for Mrs. Travis and me.  Parkway has begun a volunteer campaign to encourage parents to come in a volunteer their time at the school.  We had several volunteers come in for the first time today and Mrs. Travis was trying to find jobs for all of them to do.  I told her that I could help her with this aspect of her job because it was one of my responsibilities while working as a library assistant in Hawaii.  Often training and coordinating volunteers takes more time away from the librarian than helping them.  It is vital that they thoroughly learn the responsibilities of their duties.  If they do not, it can create more work for the librarian because they will then have to go behind the volunteers and fix mistakes.  

            In addition to helping to run classes while we finished up taking pictures for students’ I.D. badges, I really began diving into cataloging books that needed to put out on the shelf.  Mrs. Travis has some time to do this, but not enough.  This is a problem that I encountered while working under my boss in Hawaii.  Most of the time cataloging the books would have to wait until summer because there were just not enough hours in the day to complete the process.  I cataloged over 60 books and processed them to get them out on the shelves for the students.  We’re in desperate need of more lower level AR books and many of the books that needed to be cataloged were at this level.  It felt great to get them done and out on the shelves for the students!

            This week was also a bit stressful because the library schedule was changed around due to an awards assembly on Friday.  Typically, Friday is reserved for PLC grade level meetings.  The librarian ends up taking classes during this time to give the teachers the opportunity to meet.  However, since the assembly is on Friday we had to readjust.  This required that we had two classes at the same time instead of one.  We decided this would be a great opportunity to teach students about collaboration.  We set-up an activity for the fourth graders using six pieces of construction paper, four paper clips, and two rubber bands.  They were put in groups of 5 and had six minutes to construct the highest free-standing tower.  The activity was a total success and it was great to see all of them talking and working on their towers.  There were two potential winners, but at the last minute one of the tower’s fell.  We took this opportunity to teach them about congratulating others and going over what they could have done differently.

            I also had another collaborative meeting with Mrs. Friedrich.  We set a date for the unit lessons.  They will begin on October 16^th and run for 5 sessions.  We went over each lesson in detail and who would do what and what each of us needed to address before the students came into the library.  For example, she needs to be sure to introduce the project prior to student coming in the library.  I will reinforce the directions and objectives of the project when they come in.  She will introduce the concept of note-taking and I will reinforce this skill through their research.  We will both introduce and reinforce vocabulary words.  I also gave her an edTPA permission form and letter to distribute to parents and guardians, so we could start figuring out who would like their child to participate.  We’re both very excited and we can’t wait to get the unit started.  I’m looking forward to working closely with the students and just being able to show off some of my teaching abilities with a classroom teacher.  It’s been a great experience so far, and I know these are rare and may not always happen this way, but I’ve loved the process so far!