This week in my 5th grade class, there has been a lot of tension between the kids. We have had an extreme issue of bullying, which has pulled all the kids apart. Our teacher is having trouble handling the students and it has really effected the dynamics of the class. Megan and I are trying to find ways for the students to get along and work as a team. It has been extremely diffcult. Most of the boys involved in the bullying issue, have failed a couple times and should be in middle school. So, their personalities clash with the innocent girls and boys in our class.  I feel as though I do not have the knowledge or experience of dealing with these type of confrontational situations, so I am struggling to figure out how I can play an important role in the matter. Is it my responsibility to intervene? Because, we had to. We had to tell our teacher all of the kids that were involved and what they said during our lunch. Should we be getting in the middle of it? Now, that we are transitioning into respectful teachers, I feel like it is our duty to keep our classroom safe. I'm just wondering how much we will have to get involved and how it will affect our relationship with our kids. As far as the academic setting in our classroom, my teacher does use a form of an "I Do, We Do, You Do" model. But, it is very different than the gradual release of responsibility model discussed in our book. Our classroom style is very traditional, like I have stated last week. So,  our teacher uses her smartboard to project a worksheet page on the board and shows the students how to do it. Then, she has them work on the individual pages on their own. Afterwards, they go over it as a class. So she kind of misses the "we" part of the model I am familiar with. The GRR model has four stages: focus lesson, guided instruction, collaborative learning, and independent learning tasks. For the focus lesson, the teacher should be demonstrating, modeling and sharing her thinking with students. This is sort of the way we are seeing our mentor teacher present a lesson, but it is not as thorough. I feel as though our teacher does not know how to shift the responsibility from her to the students. Instead, she seems to just feed their learning. Unfortunately, our students have no opportunities for collaborative learning. This is frustrating for us because we are learning in our classes how to be collaborative and incorporate hands-on learning. Our students have plenty of time to work independently, but it seems to be the model of what "independentt learning tasks are not." It states in our text, "independent learning tasks are not just a pile of worksheets handed to students to complete." Unfortunately, this is the only way we have seen our students to do independent work. So, I have a continuous wondering of how we can implement a gradual release of responsibility model in a classroom that is so structured and traditional?

After being in a 5th grade class for the last two weeks, I have noticed a huge change in the style of teaching and the classroom environment compared to my previous practicum experiences in younger grades. My overall goal for this practicum is to find ways to get the students more engaged in learning. Everything seems to be black and white, clean cut, and "stick to the books" style. This sort of clashes with what I believe in as a teacher because I want my kids to have a chance to have fun and collaborate.  In chapter 3 of the Dana book, it discusses all the reasons of why collaboration is so important. The three reasons that struck home for me, were "teacher talk is important", "there's safety in numbers" and "there's strength in numbers." I love this idea. These reasons are targeted more for teachers that are doing inquiries. But, I decided that they also apply to a classroom setting. As of right now, I do not think the teacher has enough meaningful discussions with the students. This age group needs some kind of guidance and structure, but they are getting to the point where they need to voice their opinions and interact with their peers and teachers in a beneficial way. Students also like to collaborate because it makes them feel "safe." They feel more comfortable speaking up and bouncing their ideas off of others, rather than doing individual work and stressing out that they are not doing it in the right way. Also,  I have always loved the idea of collaboration because I believe strongly that knowledge is power. So, more brains at work produce a greater generation of knowledge (strength in numbers.) Now, I know that some students rather work individually than in a big group. Of course, that is fine too. But, as of right now, I feel like my fifth graders are not given the chance to experience collaboration enough to find out whether or not they like it.  So, what are some ways that my partner and I can experiment and find ways to introduce collaboration to our students without us feeling like we are stepping on our teachers toes?