About Gregorio Elementary School (GTC)

Home of the Deer "Binadu"

"Making Leaps and Bounds In Education"

I had the privilege to do my student teaching at Gregorio T. Camacho Elementary School during the past couple of months. During my experience, I had the opportunity to have acquainted with all the wonderful teachers, administrators, staff and some parents of this school community. They are very friendly and welcoming, which I felt more comfortable working in this wonderful school environment. Parents and teachers are very supportive and committed school functions and activities. About two hundred and thirty eight students are enrolled, consisting between fourteen to twenty students per classroom which is an ideal number for every teacher to have in their classroom. Overall, it has been an excellent student teaching experience and I thank all of the teachers and staffs for making me feel like I was part of the team. Go Binadu!

Meet My Mentor Teacher!

About Ms. Tudela

It has been a great opportunity to work with Ms. Jaime Tudela in her 2nd grade class at Gregorio T. Camacho Elementary School (GTC). Ms. Tudela has been teaching for the past nine years. She began her teaching career as a Bilingual Instructor for five years, then moving on to teaching first grade for three years up at San Vicente Elementary School prior to moving to GTC. This will be her first year teaching a second level at GTC. She resides at As Matuis and has three beautiful children of her own. She is a very hard working woman, with so much enthusiasm for teaching. It has has been a great pleasure and a great opportunity to have worked with Ms. Tudela for my student teaching experience.

Meet My Second Grade Binadus!

Message of Appreciation

First of all I would like to extend my most deepest and heartfelt appreciation to my mentor teacher, Ms. Jaime Tudela for accepting me as a student teacher this semester and also for giving me the opportunity to experience what teaching is all about with her most energetic, intelligent and talented bright students. During my student teaching experience, I can honestly say that if it wasn’t for my mentor teacher’s help and encouragement I certainly would not have gone this far. She was not only a mentor teacher, but also a great friend. I have learned a vast amount of ways that I can improve myself to become a great and effective teacher as she is. Thank you for being there for me when I needed someone to turn to. I wouldn’t have asked for any other mentor teacher, you’re the GREATEST! I will remember you forever in my heart and cherish every stories that we shared and memories that we had with our students. Thank You!

To my amazing students of room D-2, thank you for your cooperation and understanding. I am really grateful that you all have accepted me to be a part of your education. I had so much fun and exciting memories that I will cherish forever in my heart. With the experience that I have had being with you guys, I have learned a lot of valuable lessons and ways I can improve myself to become a much more effective teacher. I will surely miss you all. Thank you.

To Mrs. Pam Buckingham, my student teaching supervisor, thank you for your patience, guidance and support throughout this whole learning experience. I can’t imagine you not being a part of my educational success. You were very supportive and encouraging, making sure that I was on the right track and pushing me to do my very best. Thank you for not giving up on me. I really appreciate everything that you have done for me. No words can describe how much I appreciate your generosity and kindness that you have given throughout my education experience. I am thankful to have known such an amazing person, Thank you and God Bless!

And finally to my family, thank you for all your support and encouragement that you have given throughout my educational endeavor. Without you all, I know that I wouldn’t have gone this far in achieving one of the lifetime goals that I have longed for. To my kiddos, Marco, Junel, Vanessa, and Mariano Jr. thank you for the patience and strength you have given me to pursue a dream that I know would be a great opportunity for our lives. To my long time boyfriend, Jun, thank you for being very supportive of my education. Although we have gone through so many obstacles in our life, struggling to make ends meet, we still held on to each other taking it one day at a time. Also, thanks for helping me color, cut, and create those wonderful arts and crafts that I had to prepared for my students to utilize during my activities. To my sisters and brother, especially Sharon, thank you also for being there for me when I needed help with my kids and other additional support, I really appreciate it so much. To my mom, Elizabeth, thank you mom for your support and patience during my education and always giving me advise to never give up and also strive for better things in life. I love you all, and no words can ever amount to what you have given me throughout my life.

Teaching Strategies

1. Mini-Lecture: the mini-lecture is a concise way to provide participants with background information, research findings, or motivational examples to spark interest and give them a frame work for discussion or activity to follow. Mini-lectures should be brief and targeted, setting up an activity or discussion.
• Mini-Lecture occurs every time we move into a new topic or activity, providing students with brief background information and tapping into prior knowledge. I usually use visuals, manipulative, demonstrations and other teaching strategies to have students grasp the whole concept of what is being taught. After the mini-lecture, questions are asked to assess their understanding of what is being discussed and further explain for students who are still not grasping the lesson or topic. From then, I provide them with hands-on activities or worksheets that they perform within their small groups.

2. Experiments and Demonstration: demonstrations and experiments can be used to show how something works or why something is important. These activities also provide a way to show the correct process for doing something, like a procedure. They should be carefully planned and conducted. They often involve the use of supporting materials.
• During Science Fair week, students were required to perform one individual science experiment within the classroom as a part of their third quarter science project grade. Prior to this project, we worked on one science experiment as a whole so that students can better understand the whole concept of what Science Fair Projects are all about. I focused on one science experiment title, and working from their by providing background information on all the fundamentals of a science project. Others include visuals, research, handouts, and so forth. The following week, we then moved into working on their individual science experiment. We focused on four different science experiment topic, which were given to each assigned group to work on. In the group, students had to work individually following all steps necessary to complete their experiment, while guiding them through the whole process.

3. Artistic Expression: participants may be offered a choice of expressing themselves in art, or through writing. Such a choice accommodates the different learning need and talents of students. Completed work should be displayed.
• We usually perform a lot of artistic expression, where students had to create arts and crafts for most of our activities, especially during our learning centers on Fridays. Students used a variety of art skills, which included water color paints, clays, drawings, etc. Students also created hands on crafts, especially during holiday celebrations and other special occasions. I can see that students really enjoy themselves when doing this type of skill, because they get to do a lot of hands on activities which also helps students tap into their artistic skills.

4. Creative Writing: this strategy can take many forms, from poems, stories, written role play (scripted) journal written reflective thoughts. They can be shared or not. This form gives participants a creative outlet to the subject taught or discussed. One can also see transfer learning happen in this form of expression.
• During Language Arts block, students are required to perform a writing activity of the focused topic of that week. For example, if we were learning about poems, students focus on that writing process throughout that week. On the first day, we do a discussion and examples are provided on a teaching transparency and other examples are given on the board. We do brainstorming, visuals and other examples to help students better grasp the concept of what is being taught. Then, students are given a graphic organizer to outline their ideas. After, students start working on their sloppy copy, where they roughly write out their story form, and then continuing the next day with their neat sheet. This is done as a daily routine during Language Art writing block.

5. Cooperative-Group Work: cooperative-group work is a special form of small-group work. All small-group activities are not necessarily cooperative groups. For a group to be cooperative, a “sink-or-swim together” mentality must be created. Students, participants work in small heterogeneous groups (2-6 members) where each member is accountable not only for his own learning (or task completion) but for helping other members of the group do the same thing. The success of each individual depends on the success of the entire group. For a group to be cooperative, a sense of positive interdependence among the group members must be established. The leader must help the group establish mutual goals, joint rewards, assign specific roles, and shares materials. Cooperative-learning situations promote the development and practice of higher-level reasoning, critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, communication, and interpersonal skills. The leader, teacher manages the activity by setting up the groups, and clearly explaining the tasks that must be accomplished. The teacher also serves as a consultant.
• Cooperative-Group work is done within their assigned group. Each group members are responsible for each others behavior, especially when given out group points for good behaviors and following directions. They work together as group and are responsible to help each other on necessary tasks that need to be completed as a whole.

6. Small Groups: participants working together can help stimulate each others creativity. Small group activities are cooperative but have less formal structure than cooperative learning. These activities encourage collective thinking and provide opportunities for participants to work together and increase social skills.
• Working with their assigned group members, students usually together as a whole when working on learning centers. Students are on task, working cooperatively in completing each center task cards.

7. Class Discussion: a true discussion occurs when a GROUP of people including the leader, share expressions, debate ideas and theories, discuss experiences, and work together on common problems. It is not: a teacher asks questions and a participant answers. Class discussion can used to initiate, amplify, or summarize a session.
• Class discussion usually occurs every beginning of a new lecture of a topic or lesson. Students are given the chance to share ideas and experiences that is relevant to the discussion. An example of class discussion usually occurs when reinforcing different stories in our Trophies textbook. After reading each story, students are given a chance to express their ideas and experiences pertaining to each story in the book.

8. Dyad Discussion: working in pairs allows students to provide encouragement and support to each other. It means to Buddy Up and work in pairs to do the assignment. Often in a group of 2 sharing will happen than in a larger group. You can have the dyad report out their discussion.
• With this teaching strategy, students partnered up with a Reading Partner during Language Arts block. Students are assigned to their reading buddy, where they are given a task card with a list of different questions that they are to ask each other in regards to Trophies story that they have read in class. We match our students with their reading abilities, having the higher level reader help the lower level reader understand the story much better. This strategy is a win-win situation because both students are retaining a much higher level of learning while working together.

9. Brainstorming: is a technique for generating ideas quickly. When conducted properly, it enables participants to respond creatively, without fear of being judged. It stimulates fresh ideas and helps participants break loose from fixed ways of responding to problems. Brainstorming also helps to vary the pace of the class. It involves everyone and is an effective way of getting discussion started.
• Students do a lot of brainstorming, especially during morning message, which is usually done after Sharing Literature in the mornings. Students would read whatever message is on the board and they have to generate different word(s) that best fits into the blanks of each sentence. Another brainstorming activity we usually do is when we open up to a new lesson or topic. I would usually do webbing up in the board, where students generate different ideas that best describes the topic or lesson and to have an overview of what the topic is all about.

10. Celebrations: Activities that focus on the joy of completion and accomplishments. These activities serve as reminders and markers. It is appropriate to stop and acknowledge and appreciate their accomplishments.
• We usually have culminating activities towards each end of our themes. One of these themes includes Space Activities, where we had the whole day of activities that was based on Space. Students star gazed for constellation under the table, they ate astronaut ice cream, made Oreo Moon phases, Space story read aloud, and so forth. We also holiday celebrations, which included Martin Luther King Day, Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. Students enjoyed of the activities that they did during these holiday celebration activities.

11. Guest Speakers: guest speakers provide a link between the training, classroom and the real world. Be sure to screen before being invited to present. They need to have been given direction on type of information they are to address, and policies that pertain to their subject.
• While working on our theme on Space, we had the opportunity to invite the principal of our school, Mrs. Charlotte Camacho to come in and share a little of her experience while visiting the Space Mission Camp that she attended when she was the CNMI’s Teacher of the Year. She shared a power point presentation and also provided a lot of pictures for the students to enjoy. The students had so much fun, and also had tons of questions to ask her about space and also about her experience. Another guest speaker that we had the opportunity to have in our classroom was Mrs. Narvaez, which was one of our student’s parents. Throughout the week she did a read aloud to the students. The books where based on Georgia Perez’s books, which Georgia later came to visit all of the CNMI PSS campuses, which we happen to attend this exciting event. These books were a wonderful for students to read, because it promoted Healthy Eating Habits and Living. Students really enjoyed having these two wonderful guest speakers in our classroom, because it was relevant to our learning and also helping us learn how to live a better and healthier lifestyle.

Lessons & Activities That Demonstrate Value In Diversity

Demonstrating Diversity

All About Our Culture
In Social Studies we are focusing on learning about Cultures within our classroom for the whole fourth quarter. With this, we have decided that we would focus on learning the cultures that we have in our classroom. In our classroom, we have about eight different cultures: Chamorro, Carolinian, Chuukese, Pohnpeian, Palauan, Hawaiian, Russian, and Japanese.

Locating Cultures on a Map:
In the beginning of our lesson, we focused on learning about the locations of these cultures on the map. Students had to locate and pin point the exact location on the map and further explain the entire coordinal and valuable information in regards to location.

Flags of our Culture
Students acquired a lot of valuable information when learning about the different flags of their culture. They learned a great deal of information about the flags and the symbols used to represent each culture. Students then created their very own flags, using construction papers and other art materials.

Cultural Paper Dolls
Students had to create a paper doll of representing their cultural attire. All materials were pre-cut a head of time for students to put them all together. After they have created their paper dolls, their pictures where taken and pasted unto their paper dolls. We placed those paper dolls at the back of our bulletin board for displays.

Cultural Arts and Crafts
Every day we focused on creating a cultural icon of their culture. An example, for Chamorro culture, we created the latte stone made out of flour play dough and painting it with gray tempera paint. For the Carolinian culture, students had to do a Carolinian necklace that as made out of beads. These are some of the examples that we have did in our classroom to emphasize icons that best represents each cultural background.

Cultural Games
Students had to asked parents of any cultural games that they can share with the class. Some of these games included “ba’tu” as they say in Chamorro, where it is similar to the horseshoe game. Another is game includes “Chonka”, were a handcraft board that is made out of wood.

Cultural Songs
Students brought some lyrics of popular children’s songs of their culture. Students had to learn each cultural song, which later sung in the classroom.

Cultural Food
Students were asked to provide at least one cultural recipe to the class. With these cultural recipes, we created a cultural recipe book that will be displayed in the book fair. For our culminating activity, we are asking parents to prepare some of these dishes for our students to eat.

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Students had the privilege to have learned a lot of accomplishments that this remarkable man has done that changed the lives of many people of all ethnic races. We did a lot of colorings, readings and others that had to deal with Martin Luther King. We emphasized the importance of his actions and how we are greatly affected because of our skin color and our cultural background. We taught our students to be mindful and respectful of each others ethnicity and differences, and eliminating any judgmental remarks or comments that might hurt each others feelings and wellbeing in the classroom.

Activities That Show Connection/Relevance To Student Learning

Field Day:

Every Wednesday the lower grade classes gather on the big field to do P.E., which is facilitated by our school Principal Mrs. Charlotte Camacho. We usually start off by doing a little stretching and warm ups before moving into designated activity stations. Every station has different activities, where students alternate on each station every 15 minutes. This is a type of activity is highly encouraged for students partake, because is promotes healthy lifestyles and physical wellness.

Beach Walk:

Every Friday we do a beach walk, which is done as a part of our P.E. activity. Students tend to go on a nature walk, which helps them appreciate the beautiful scenery that our beach has to offer. This activity reinforces their learning in terms of their communities and an awareness of their environment.

Science Fair:

Our students had the opportunity to conduct some Science Experiments in the classroom. They had a blast and some amazing results from their experiments conducted in the classroom. We had a so much fun from this learning experience.

Culture:

Learning about cultures within our classroom is an important aspect of a young child’s learning growth. It helps them connect or relate what they learn about themselves with the global society.

Book Fair:

During our Book Fair Week, students made a lot of wonderful and amazing books. They had created two types of books, which was based on a non-fiction story. One of the books that were created had illustrated it based on a specific author style (Eric Carle), while the other was a simple, ordinary book, which had a section about themselves being the author of the book. With this, students had to demonstrate their creativity with materials being provided by the teacher. With our guidance, our books turned out really great, and it as placed in the cafeteria for display during the week of book fair.

Spelling Bee:

Within our class, we have selected three of our students to participate in the Spelling Bee competition that was held at the school cafeteria. Our student went up against other students from the lower grade level, which turned out to be a great learning experience for these students. They did an excellent job during this competition, although we did not win first place, but second is not bad at all. Great Job Guys!