Blog Post 2

As I reflect upon last week’s goals of improving my classroom management style and beginning to teach writing, I believe both were progressively successful in different ways. Managing the classroom is definitely not something you can master overnight. I learned it is an ongoing process where you need to decide what works best for you and the organization of your classroom. My cooperating teacher is very strict with her students, which I respect. My personal style may be a little different than that. I suppose that I still need to figure out what works best for me, but I do appreciate the experience I am having. As for starting to teach writing, this goal was met as well, but also is something I will continue to work on.  I am currently teaching the students about persuasive writing. They are working on writing their own persuasive essays. From what I’ve seen of their work so far, I must be doing something right because they are doing some great writing. 

My goals for the next two weeks, along with continuing to work on my classroom management skills, are improving my instruction by slowing down my pace and and being more descriptive, and to write and teach my edTPA lessons. Since my comfort level with the class has greatly improved over the past two weeks, I can now work on making my teaching more effective. Despite our short time frame we have to work with in our student teaching experience, I would like to hopefully feel a bit more confident that I am teaching a lesson in a way that is best for my students understanding of the material. As for the edTPA, I intend to spend a lot of my planning time on it during the next two weeks. I’m hoping by the time I write my next blog post, that will I feel less anxious about it.

One word to describe my feelings this week about my experience would be lucky.  Many of my classmates are having some difficult experiences with their placements for various reasons. Although I am having challenges too, I feel grateful that I like my placement and cooperating teacher and that I am learning the things I want to learn without the drama of extraneous problems.

These past two weeks, I’ve learned a lot about creating a learning environment that encourages social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.  My cooperating teacher has set a great example in her classroom where the students are often instructed to work with a partner or group and discuss their thoughts about what they are learning, as well as teach each other.  I try to model this in all the lessons I write. I also noticed how they are always held accountable for what they are expected to complete and that if they choose not to use their time wisely that they know they will have to complete it for homework. This in itself is very motivating for the students. In fact, an example of this occurred today, after we completed a social studies lesson as a class. The students had about 10 minutes to complete a question sheet independently, which many did quickly since they did not want it as homework over the weekend. I look forward to continuing to discover ways to actively and socially engage students, while motivating them to be accountable for their own results.

My cooperating teacher has many great positive expectations for her students. The students in her classroom are responsible for everything, including checking themselves in in the morning, choosing their lunch, turning homework in, and starting their morning work. They are also responsible for all of the chores in the classroom, as well as their class work. Most importantly, they are responsible for themselves. One thing I like that she doesn’t do, that the other teachers on her 4^th grade team do, is “detention”. I’ve noticed that she manages her class so that she doesn’t have to punish them. By having high behavior expectations, they do not need to be disciplined or humiliated in front of their classmates. I like this style of classroom management. Holding our students accountable to this high expectation is a great lesson to teach them, especially when they may not have this expectation at home. I will definitely continue this practice with my students.

This week the reading focused on the importance of classroom management and how it determines how well your students will learn. I like the idea of having clear, predictable, and consistent expectations for our students. This reading really resonated with my student teaching experience in that my cooperating teacher is an effective teacher. Our classroom does not have many behavior problems because the students are clear on what is expected of them. I also liked how the book stressed that the key to this success is preparation. Not only preparation of the lessons, but preparation of the classroom organization, desks, books, and materials, and even your own positive attitude. These are all things that we can have control over.

I appreciated Prof. Royster’s first visit last week and have worked on a few of the things she suggested when we spoke after her visit. I think she will find me much more comfortable next time she visits and I look forward to having her give me more feedback. I think she will be surprised that I smiled and gave a lot more positive feedback this week while teaching. J

Blog Post 1

These first two weeks of student teaching started off very overwhelming and ended very satisfying. I feel like I’ve learned a ton in such a short time about the inner workings of an elementary school and the relationships amongst fellow co-workers and team members. Joining the classroom in the middle of the year meant there was a lot of catching up to do. My goals for the upcoming two weeks are to work on my classroom management by keeping the students focused on what they are doing during pairs or group work and to start teaching a second subject, writing.  Besides starting off overwhelmed, if I had to use one word to descibe this past week, I would say excited. I taught my first Math lesson on Tuesday. I was very nervous and felt like it didn’t go well, but after talking to my cooperating teacher, she said that everyone feels nervous on the first day too and that it was okay. The rest of the week continued to get better as I became more comfortable. By Friday, things went a bit more smoothly and I’m excited for more practice next week. 

As I begin the learning and teaching process with actual students, the first thing I learned is to slow down and keep it simple. Trying to pack a ton of information  into a lesson can be too much for 4^th graders. Slowing down and explaining things in different ways helped the students to retain more and gave them time to actually think about the material. Another thing I learned is that teachers always need to be thinking ahead and that its okay to change course once in awhile and take a break. On Thursday, my cooperating teacher decided that since the students had filled their jar of marbles (met their classrrom behavior goal) that they would have a vote and decide on a reward. For Friday, they chose a “floor day” and pushed all the desks aside, wore their PJ’s, brought blankets and stuffed animals, and spent the school day on the floor. During guided reading time, we watched an educational movie that had a great message about Martin Luther King, Jr, which they all seemed to enjoy. It made the first long week back after break a bit more fun. 

My cooperating teacher and I established planning times during the hour before school starts and the 40 minutes while the students are at Specials. Sometimes she has other meetings going on at these times so I attend those along with her. I try to plan at lease one specific topic I would like to talk with her about for each day. For example, on Fridays we plan my teaching schedule for the next week. I learned that often things get pushed forward to the next day due to uncontrollable things like severe weather days or due to the way things are going in the classroom. For my cooperating teacher, it seems best to plan a week in advance for specifics, while also keeping your general long term plan in mind.

Reading the first two sections of The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong has been very inspiring. The most important things I have retained from the reading so far is to start the school year prepared by having a definite plan for your classroom expectations and finding a mentor to learn from. I also liked the concept of inviting students students to learn in you classroom and making sure everyone knows that they can be successful in your class. Another important idea to me was showing courtesy and respect for your students. I am a strong believer in teaching children manners and modeling this behavior for our students is a valuable skill to instill in them.

I have thought a lot about the edTPA these past two weeks and believe my coordinating teacher and I have decided on the Math unit and schedule in which I will be teaching it in weeks 4 and 5. Due to their district requirements, addition and subtraction of fractions seems to be a good unit to teach. I, along with the help of my coordinationg teacher, am currently working on figuring out the cultural and community commonalities that unify the classroom to work into my lessons and am struggling a bit due to the wide diversity of students. I will probably start working on my lessons this week.

Prof. Royster is scheduled to visit sometime this week and I’m excited to hear what she has to say. I’m really not sure what to expect. I really feel I am aware of what I need to work on, but am very interested in receiving her input. I hope that this week, as I get more comfortable in front of the students, I will be able to start being more creative with my lessons and more natural with my teaching, which will hopefully be more engaging for the students as we begin learning about fractions and decimals. I think she will be surprised at how well the students work together with partners and in groups.