1. Student Teacher Work Journal excerpts – Adapting Fourth Grade Map Lesson
Wednesday, Nov. 28 -- 7 hours (1 hour lesson prep)
Today was my first day taking over fourth grade, which is widely known as the roughest
group of kids in the school. So that it would go as smoothly as possible, I spent a good deal
of the morning finalizing the lesson, double-checking all the technology, planning which
students I would partner together, etc. I wanted to make sure all my ducks were in a row,
because, as Todd warned me, if I let myself get derailed by even the tiniest thing, the
students would be extremely difficult to corral again. The first class of the afternoon was
supposed to be my easiest, but as it turned out, it was definitely my worst.
Despite all my planning and preparation, the lesson really flopped with the first class when I
tried to move them to computers. Because we only have 10 computers in the library
(including two laptops I pulled out of the closet), the students all had to work in pairs for the
activity. The first difficulty was getting them moved to computers. Despite my instruction to
listen carefully and wait to move until I was finished, lots of students weren’t sure where to
go. Then almost everyone had questions once they started working. Simultaneously, I was
trying to get students several at a time to select books to check out. I was just pulled in way
too many directions at once and the room was utter chaos. Todd and I talked it through after
class and discussed how the students probably just were not ready to tackle the activity on
their own yet and I should have provided more modeling than I did and scaffold some more.
For the next two classes, I made the quick decision to forgo the computers for today and
instead spend the entire time of the lesson working as a full class on the SMART board.
Although we still didn’t get much farther than the first class on the worksheet, the students
seemed to be with me more than the first class, so I think the decision was definitely a good
one. I need to reevaluate my plan for next week to see if I think the partners at computers
will work or not. Because the first class of the afternoon is supposed to be the easiest group
and they had such a rough time, I worry that the other two classes won’t be able to handle it
at all. Todd suggested that maybe I take a closer look at the worksheet I created and see if I
can make it a little simpler, so students will be more successful working independently.
Overall, it was, as Todd said, a great learning day! I won’t become a better teacher librarian
if I don’t have rough days to learn from!
Wednesday, Dec. 5 -- 7 hours
Today was my final day of takeover for student teaching, and again it was a day of learning
and adaptation. Today was fourth grade again, and because of the chaos that erupted
during the first section of fourth grade last week, I was feeling really hesitant about going
through with the lesson as originally planned. I wanted to get students to computers to do
partner work, but after last week, it was clear that they needed more supported practice with
the coordinate system and modeling from me. After going back and forth in my head a lot, I

2. decided that I would play the afternoon by ear. If at ten minutes into the lesson, the students
seemed to be comfortable with plotting coordinates on the map, I would release them to
computers to finish the activity with a partner. Otherwise, I would keep them as a whole
group and work through the activity together. On the one hand, I worried that keeping them
as a group would be too much of one thing, leading to disinterest. But the idea of a repeat in
complete chaos didn’t seem like a fun idea either. Honestly, had I not spent so much time
developing this lesson, I may have scrapped it altogether and worked out a different way to
teach the concept. As it turned out, with two of the classes, I kept the students all together
and although attention waned a bit at the end, they seemed pretty engaged and pretty
comfortable with the activity by the end of the period. I believe Todd is going to continue the
map coordinate activity for one more week and attempt to move them to computers right
away next week.