Blog Post 4

For the past two weeks, my goals were to take over every classroom subject and to continue working on classroom management by keeping the easily distracted students on task. I did officially begin teaching every subject over two weeks ago. Since it was approaching the end of third quarter for the students, my cooperating teacher helped me outline the standards we needed to cover before the end of the quarter and also other things we should review before assessments. Taking over went pretty smoothly since I gradually eased into it over my student teaching experience. I was able to come up with, what I felt were a great variety of learning activities that were fun to teach and kept students engaged. One of their favorites was Generalization Jeopardy. They keep on asking if we can play it again. This leads into my second goal last week, which was to continue classroom management by keeping students engaged and on task. We have a handful of students who have trouble staying on task and like to socialize with their neighbors. This week I paid special attention to make sure they were either engaged in the lesson while I was teaching or on task with what they should be doing. I also am getting better at walking around the room to ensure students are taking good notes or working well with their partners.  Every week it seems a little more easy and natural, which feels good. 

I would say the word to describe last week was perseverance. I came down with a cold last week and partially lost my voice. I was able to carry on despite my not feeling well. I was glad I had most of my lessons planned out and was prepared. It made not feeling well a lot easier. I know weeks like this will always come up when I begin teaching. It just proved how important being prepared is, that and drinking a lot of hot tea! 

A lesson I taught last week that went really well was a review lesson in math.  Normally for review, I’ve been pulling a small group of students aside for some extra help, while giving the others an enrichment sheet to work on with a partner. This usually works out fine except I don’t always feel like I can circulate enough to help the others while working with the small group. This week I decide to mix it up and pull out the whiteboards and do a whole class review together. Since this fraction unit has been challenging for everyone, we did some review problems as a class, on the white boards. I felt it was great for the higher-level students to review the content as a whole, while the lower-level learners were able to receive the extra help they needed from their peers and myself. We were able to go back over all the steps for each type of problem and discuss common mistakes. I enjoyed it because it was a different approach than we had done before, I could easily see their work on their whiteboards, and the best part, everyone was engaged!  From this experience, I learned to try different things. My last review session was too chaotic for me to handle with me not feeling well. Using this method for review, I was able to pay attention to everyone and see their work. I think changing plans up was good for the students too. I am sure as I become more experienced, I will be able to handle small groups within the whole class more efficiently, but for this day and lesson, the change seemed to work out better for everyone.

While reading the “First Days of School” this week, I liked learning about the importance of creating effective assignments that focus on what the students need to accomplish in a lesson vs. what needs to be “covered”. This includes having specific objectives to share with the students and creating assignments based on these standards that are evidence of these objectives. I feel like students are more invested in their learning when they know exactly what they need to do to be successful. I also liked revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy and considering how this reflects in my teaching. Now that I have some real teaching experience, I’d like to start considering ways to elevate my lessons to higher level thinking and give my students more enriching experiences.  I will definitely start considering this more as I move forward with my student teaching.

Academic language is important because it promotes academic success.  It provides a clear structure for learning and a guideline for achieving learning targets.  By modeling academic language for our students and scaffolding this support for learners, we give our students more responsibility for their own achievement and teach them to build their own independence. The vocabulary of academic language, along with the discourse in which we use to connect it, provides students a meaningful framework to build understanding and learn within. 

In one of my recent math lessons, I not only had students solve math problems, I also had some of them come up front to the whiteboard and describe how they solved it to the class. Describing their process not only helped them, but it helped their classmates see a their peer’s process for problem solving and provided them a different perspective on the practice. One of my favorite activities for students is having them work with assigned peer partners. When we can place a higher-level student with a lower level student, this places both students in a situation that benefits and enriches both learners. Lower-level students are provided a different perspective on learning the content, and by using their academic language to describe their thought process; higher-level students are reinforcing and deepening their understanding.

Professor Royster is scheduled for a visit sometime this coming week. Since it is the end of the quarter, my students have a few assessments coming at the end of this week before starting their first PARCC testing the following week, so I will be doing a lot of reviewing and other preparations for their tests before I move on to my next placement. I am excited that I am feeling a bit more comfortable with classroom management and am also eager to start my next placement, though I can’t help but feel a bit sad to leave this classroom. I have learned SO much from my cooperating teacher and these students. It will be hard to say goodbye.