My Learning Goals and Practicum Plan

- One of my learning goals is to do a tutor activity dealing with reading and letters. I am specializing in English so I really wanted to see how students react to reading and letters. Pre-k kids aren't exactly open to the idea of sitting down and writing their letters out. I knew since I am with a pre-k class this semester that doing an activity with reading would be hard, but actually just today I got to do an activity with letters. In this activity I worked with 3 students who are struggling with letter recognition. I found it interesting that these students could spell and write their name correctly in order. However, when I asked them to name the same letters in their name just in a different order, it was an impossible task for them. I also got to see how pre-k students handle not wanting to do something you ask them to. They just sit and stair at you.
- I haven't made a lot of changes to my plan so far, just changing some dates around. I am at my PDS school on a Monday and so far there have been two days where I wasn't able to go for a holiday and an ISE day. I have made pretty good progress on my plan and only have a few activities that I need to complete before the semester ends. In all honesty, I haven't looked at my plan once, this is mainly because I write everything down in my planner, when it's due and when I plan on doing it. So making my plan was really just me taking my planner and putting it in a different format that doesn't really work for me. It was a good idea in the sense that it really made me think about the whole semester and when I needed to have things done by. My progress with my plan overall has been good, I just don't look at it very often since I already have stuff written down in my planner.

Digital Storytelling

Some experiences from my PDS that I may consider using in my digital story would be the experiences I have had with the students and reading. I think reading is one of, if not the most important subjects in school. I worked with the students at my PDS a lot with reading and it was interesting seeing all the different levels of reading. Some ideas from my PDS experiences that I can consider including in my digital story would be how every few weeks in my PDS classroom, my mentor teacher picks a different subject. For example, for the next few weeks my PDS class is working on fairy tales. There are castles set up all around the room, the students have made crowns to wear, and during circle time, the teacher reads a different fairy tale. I could incorporate the weekly/ monthly lessons with the read aloud time and make a digital story about the students' lessons on fairy tales. 

Some stories from my PDS that would be interesting to listen to would be how the students react to their reading levels. I worked with a lower elementary grade last semester where the students were just beginning to read full books on their own. Some students were so far ahead of other students it was amazing to me. Some students could read full beginning chapter books, and others were struggling so much with the books that had three words on a page. I found it frustrating when I was working with these students that one student would take 2 minutes to read a book, and others I would sit there and help them sound out every word until they got it. Interesting events and details make a good story. 

Using different multimedia to enhance telling a story to a listener is a great idea because the listener can actually see what is going on. They can picture it for themselves, and it also may have more on an impact on the listener if they can see what you see.