This week was interesting and full of grading. The kids were so excited about spring break and many were leaving early for family vacations. It took a lot of work on my part to prepare for the week. On Monday I gave every one of my students a spring break survey, asking if they planned on being at school the entire week. If they did not, they had to write what days they would not be at school. Both the regular and honors finished the last section of their chapters on Monday. Tuesday was spent on review for both classes. Wednesday was a field trip. As a team we went to Governer's State University to see the Chicago Shakespearian actors perform Macbeth. Although many of the kids seemed to use it as a nap period, I thought the play was excellent! The actors used tons of expression so it was easy to understand what was going on. More importantly, going to a Shakesperian play isn't a common thing for these 8th graders. This was a unique experience for them and hopefully at least some of them enjoyed it and understood Macbeth better. They didn't read it in language arts, but they supposedly read it their freshman year for the majority that plan to go on to the local public high school. This exposure hopefully with help them. Thursday and Friday for the regular students were days of the chapter 4 assessment. They were working in groups of two or three and creating several of the graphs we learned in the chapter. For those students who couldn't be there both days, they took a written test for chapter 4. Thursday was a review game for honors dealing with chapter 10 on quadratics. On Friday, they took their quiz. Once agian, those spring break surveys came in handy. The students who left early took the quiz early before they left. It was a lot of organization, but in the end it worked out. I only had three people who need to take the test yet.
Last week I set two goals: one was to make sure I had myself organized for all the tests and quizzes happening this week. I ended up being very organized and it worked out for the benefit of the students. My second goal was to incorporate more critical thinking this week. I added a component of thinking into each of my lesson plans. The one example that really surprised me and I really enjoyed was on my scatter plot lesson. I had the students think about what two things (pieces of data) would form positive, negative, and no correlations between them. The students did an excellent job and were very creative with ideas. I had answers ranging from amount of gas put in a car and amount of money spent on gas for positive relationships all the way to the Chicago Bulls winning record and the Miami Heat winning record for a negative correlation. They were creative and could compare things that interested them. I also made them think and write down how line graphs and scatter plots were different. I had some very nice insightful responses as we shared in class.
This week I need to make two goals for the following week (spring break is in between). My first goal is to put emphasis on the students being well-rounded. I think that this is good for the student's well-being and they need to learn life is more than school, or friends, or sports. They need to understand what well-rounded is and how that benefits them. A second goal is to make sure I'm ready with lots of activities for chapter 8 on percents.
A competent teacher understands education as a profession, maintains standards of professional conduct, and provides leadership to improve students' learning and well-being. At my placement I have seen and heard so much more than I realized was going on in the minds and lives of 8th graders. I realize that my Christian family and private schooling has put me in a "bubble" in many ways. I didn't realize how many broken families these students have, how many cries for attention that these kids make, and the overwhelming amount of time students put into being "popular". These things were around to a small degree in my Christian schooling and life, but not the extent that I see in the public school setting. These "naughty" kids are usually from broken families and are screaming for attention, positive or negative. I have tried to connect with all my students in a professional way by talking before and inbetween classes about whatever interests each student, by going to their sporting events, and by listening to whatever they may be trying to tell me. This is the coolest and most rewarding part, for me, about becoming a teacher. It is saddening but rewarding all at the same time. I realized, yes, I need to teach, but more importantly I want to impact.
Impacting needs to be done at a professional level following all the state and school guidelines, which sometimes can seem to get in the way. I realize they are there for the safety not only of the students and their families, but also myself. I have had to avoid many words with parents and students to remain professional. It can be hard at times to not just speak my mind, but in the long run, I think that sugar-coating things will benefit more. ISAT week was huge on avoiding legal issues, but I got through it.
To my Seminar Instructor, the coolest thing about social justice is that it is teaching our students more than just knowledge from a textbook, but more importantly it is life skills that they will need. Sometimes it's holding students accountable, not accepting the late work, etc. that will teach them the most valuable lessons for life skills. I really enjoyed Schmidt's commentary on waking students up and explaining what students learn from social justice. Going back to what I wrote earlier, I want to impact kids. Things like personal convictions, their own abilities, belief in their own power to make differences are things that need to be taught to students, but in a way that teaches through social justice issues not from a textbook.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
My thoughts for the week of 3/8 - 3/11 (Week 10)
This past week was truly a week of positives for me. The past couple weeks I feel like my classroom management was slipping. I took it upon myself to try to be more stern, in fact I used the school's "step" system this week like I've never used it before. I handed out close to 15 steps to students this week for shouting out. I know I like a very interactive classroom, but I felt that the students were getting away from me. After talking with my cooperating teacher and other teachers on the team I found that I have not been slipping on my classroom management, but was reassured that it is just this years make-up of students. I plan to continue to hit the students hard with their "step" program. I feel like a handful of students just don't really care.
Another positive for me this week was getting deeply involved with one of the school's psychologists who has been working closely with one of the students I have everyday. He has made a plan that has been in place over the last few weeks to try to better this students behavior. This student is known for blatant shout-outs, rudeness with teachers, saying sexually harassing comments, saying racist comments, and overall just struggles with bad behavior. Over the past few weeks he has to come to every teacher at the end of the class and they fill out a four question survey about the student's behavior by answering yes or no (yes's being good). Although he is getting many yes's I still felt like his behavior in my class was not improving. Later to find out that other teachers agreed that he was not improving. For some reason he was still getting a majority of yes's on his sheet and his father was rewarding him for all his yes's. At one of the team meetings where the psychologist was at with our team, I brought up the very fact that this student's sheet needs to be changed. One question the sheet asked was if he used any racial/anti-semetical comments. Since this doesn't occur everyday or maybe he has improved in this category it was getting yes's. And since they pulled him from language and have him working like a study hall with the school psychologist for a period he was getting his homework done and coming to class, which gave him another yes. Since there were only four questions he was getting an astounding 50% of his points right off the bat every day. Getting 50% of his points and being rewarded still wasn't changing his shout-out problems or his problem of staying on-task in class. I fought hard with the psychologist to get his sheet changed so that he has to work harder to be rewarded. To my surprise, the other teachers all agreed. The psychologist, not so much, but since all of us teachers were pushing for it now, he had to change the sheet. Next week will start a new behavior sheet so we will see how it goes. This kid is very bright and finds ways to get around anything he can. For instance, if the sheet said, 'does not shout out in class', he may try not to, but instead would be using non-verbal motions and expressions to get the students to notice him and get them off-track. I know I get the raw end of the deal, because I have him 7th period, which is his last period of the day before he goes to his study hall with the psychologist. He is smart enough to know if he is good enough during the day that he can loose points with me and still have enough points to be rewarded by his father! Any way, I feel like I've been empowered through this situation and respected by the other teachers for standing up to the school psychologist and trying to get something done to benefit not only our classrooms, but more importantly this student. This student scares me a bit. He wrote an essay about what he wants to be in life and the paper was about wanting to be a terrorist. I don't know if the kid is just screaming for attention in any way possible or what?
Besides these issues I felt like the classroom was positively a week of growth for the students. With the regular classes we went over bar graphs, histograms, frequency tables, and line graphs on Tuesday and Wednesday. The students proved to be that although they are not artists they definitely understood the concepts of graphing. On Thursday we had fun as a group discussing how graphs and statistics can be misleading and talked about seeing misleading graphs and statistics through advertisement all around us. Then on Friday, I had them do a fun review activity with dice. They had to roll two dice to get the sum thirty times. Then find the mean, median, mode, and range. Then make a frequency table of their findings. Finally, they got to choose two graphs to make to display their data: stem-and-leaf plot, box-and-whisker plot, bar graph, or histogram. With honors we worked for a few days on how to solve for the x-value, vertex, points on the parabola, and reflection points with functions that are in the quadratic form. Finally they had to graph them and shade them if they were inequalities. The students really struggled with this concept so I had to extend an extra day of practice for them on the subject. I am confident that the majority really grasped this concept by the end, which was rewarding, because after Tuesday and Wednesday I was a bit nervous that they would never understand it. But they got it! On Friday we moved on to solving and estimating square roots so that on Monday I can move to solving quadratic functions by using square roots. Next week, will be interesting I know a lot of students are leaving early for spring break and we have tests for the regulars and honors next Thursday and Friday. Students will be taking them early if they are leaving early.
An effective teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional techniques that encourage students to develop critical thinking and problem solving. I am a teacher who often uses word problems, which both make the students use their critical thinking and problem solving skills. I try to throw a word problem in most of my lessons and in the students homework if at all possible. Life to me is about thinking critically and solving problems, so these students should be practicing and perfecting these skills. In this placement, it can be frustrating because to my knowledge the sixth grade math teachers do not require them to do word problems, they just tell them to try them. This is so sad in my opinion, the word problems are the most applicable to life. In real life someone is not going to ask what's 10 x 12. When your carpeting your floor and your room is ten feet by 12 feet you need to buy carpet that is 10 x 12 or 120 square feet. Just this week alone in my class with, I had the students reading word problem type information and they had to pick out the important information and graph what was necessary. This uses their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Then they needed to be able to read the graphs and decode what they meant. As I have said in the past, I am lucky to have a para-professional in my room with all my LD and BD students. There isn't that many, but she makes sure she is floating in the room to help them out. Many of them seem to pick up the concepts they just want reassurance as they start to work on their own. I try to do multiple examples to give them different situations. She also gets to have them for one period a day to re-hit anything they struggle with. Math is one they do often, since it is a testable subject and usually a problem area for LD and BD students.
I feared my Thursday lesson the most with my regular students, which was about misleading graphs and statistics. It ended up being one of my favorites. The students seemed to really respond and like it. What I did was just put up on the ELMO multiple examples of misleading graphs and statistics. As a class we would silently look at the graph or statistic then talk about how we thought they were misleading. I was pleasantly surprised by many of their answers. They thought of truthful things that I didn't even think about. As a class they were on their own to right some examples of what could be misleading about graphs in their notes. At the end they came up with on their own, that statistics need to be read word for word, considering each word to find where companies try to mislead the general public. I was very pleased, for the most part, how well they acted and more importantly how they responded. They loved to be "detectives" and find where we were being misled. This made them use critical thinking the entire lesson. Some finds were bigger and more important, while others were interesting and thought provoking. When someone commented on something unimportant I would guide the students back into their thoughts by saying something like, "hmmm...that's interesting I didn't think about that, very nice observation, but is there anything bigger in this graph (statement) that is trying to mislead us in some way?" This seemed to work well with the students.
With the honors students this week they struggled a lot with the concepts of pulling apart quadratic functions to find useful information to graph it. I thought this lesson would be a breeze for them, but it wasn't. It required a lot of patience not only from me to deal with their struggling, but patience from the students to stick with it until they understood it. I tried with all my might on Wednesday to go over multiple examples. I repeated myself over and over with both the same wording and different wording to get the students on board. By the end of Wednesday, I think 75% of the students got it, which was much better than Tuesday were I think 75% were confused. I wanted to give them all a chance to practice and to try to catch the other 25% so on Thursday instead of moving on, I spent the entire period going over the homework problems and then going over some more examples of the same types of problems. Then gave them another assignment doing the same type of problems that I wrote out by hand. On Friday, the students showed me that 98% of them totally understood this concept. I pulled one of the two students aside after class who didn't quite grab it yet and we worked for a few moment together to reinforce him. I hope it helped. Instead of using book examples, I went with their homework examples because it meant something to the students to really understand their homework and get it done. I also had to re-word and repeated often to make them understand. Then finally throw-out my schedule and use and extra day to go over it again. This seemed to work with them and I am now confident that they understand it.
My hook and hold methods are becoming repetitive. I've been looking online for some new ideas. I love stories, pictures, questioning the students as ways to hook and hold them. The anticipatory set is huge I'm always open to learning and using new methods. Looking online at lesson plans often gives some helpful insight for anticipatory sets.
One goal last week was to get ahead on some class stuff. I did finish a couple of things, but didn't get done as much as I wanted, so hopefully spring break will let me catch up on some things. My other goal was to work with the para-professional and start coming up with ideas for the chapter four group test for the regular students and to start grouping them together. We sat down a day this week and grouped the students in groups of threes. We will have to edit this week as we find out which students are leaving early for spring break. We also have edited an older version of the group test to better fit our needs and have added a component of rating their group members as well.
For this coming week I would like to set my first goal as getting things together nicely for those students leaving early and to prepare myself as multiple students will be testing multiple days this week in order to include this test in everyone's last grade for the quarter. My second goal is to make sure I include components of critical thinking and problem solving in every lesson I create for the week.
I look forward to the week ahead...
Another positive for me this week was getting deeply involved with one of the school's psychologists who has been working closely with one of the students I have everyday. He has made a plan that has been in place over the last few weeks to try to better this students behavior. This student is known for blatant shout-outs, rudeness with teachers, saying sexually harassing comments, saying racist comments, and overall just struggles with bad behavior. Over the past few weeks he has to come to every teacher at the end of the class and they fill out a four question survey about the student's behavior by answering yes or no (yes's being good). Although he is getting many yes's I still felt like his behavior in my class was not improving. Later to find out that other teachers agreed that he was not improving. For some reason he was still getting a majority of yes's on his sheet and his father was rewarding him for all his yes's. At one of the team meetings where the psychologist was at with our team, I brought up the very fact that this student's sheet needs to be changed. One question the sheet asked was if he used any racial/anti-semetical comments. Since this doesn't occur everyday or maybe he has improved in this category it was getting yes's. And since they pulled him from language and have him working like a study hall with the school psychologist for a period he was getting his homework done and coming to class, which gave him another yes. Since there were only four questions he was getting an astounding 50% of his points right off the bat every day. Getting 50% of his points and being rewarded still wasn't changing his shout-out problems or his problem of staying on-task in class. I fought hard with the psychologist to get his sheet changed so that he has to work harder to be rewarded. To my surprise, the other teachers all agreed. The psychologist, not so much, but since all of us teachers were pushing for it now, he had to change the sheet. Next week will start a new behavior sheet so we will see how it goes. This kid is very bright and finds ways to get around anything he can. For instance, if the sheet said, 'does not shout out in class', he may try not to, but instead would be using non-verbal motions and expressions to get the students to notice him and get them off-track. I know I get the raw end of the deal, because I have him 7th period, which is his last period of the day before he goes to his study hall with the psychologist. He is smart enough to know if he is good enough during the day that he can loose points with me and still have enough points to be rewarded by his father! Any way, I feel like I've been empowered through this situation and respected by the other teachers for standing up to the school psychologist and trying to get something done to benefit not only our classrooms, but more importantly this student. This student scares me a bit. He wrote an essay about what he wants to be in life and the paper was about wanting to be a terrorist. I don't know if the kid is just screaming for attention in any way possible or what?
Besides these issues I felt like the classroom was positively a week of growth for the students. With the regular classes we went over bar graphs, histograms, frequency tables, and line graphs on Tuesday and Wednesday. The students proved to be that although they are not artists they definitely understood the concepts of graphing. On Thursday we had fun as a group discussing how graphs and statistics can be misleading and talked about seeing misleading graphs and statistics through advertisement all around us. Then on Friday, I had them do a fun review activity with dice. They had to roll two dice to get the sum thirty times. Then find the mean, median, mode, and range. Then make a frequency table of their findings. Finally, they got to choose two graphs to make to display their data: stem-and-leaf plot, box-and-whisker plot, bar graph, or histogram. With honors we worked for a few days on how to solve for the x-value, vertex, points on the parabola, and reflection points with functions that are in the quadratic form. Finally they had to graph them and shade them if they were inequalities. The students really struggled with this concept so I had to extend an extra day of practice for them on the subject. I am confident that the majority really grasped this concept by the end, which was rewarding, because after Tuesday and Wednesday I was a bit nervous that they would never understand it. But they got it! On Friday we moved on to solving and estimating square roots so that on Monday I can move to solving quadratic functions by using square roots. Next week, will be interesting I know a lot of students are leaving early for spring break and we have tests for the regulars and honors next Thursday and Friday. Students will be taking them early if they are leaving early.
An effective teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional techniques that encourage students to develop critical thinking and problem solving. I am a teacher who often uses word problems, which both make the students use their critical thinking and problem solving skills. I try to throw a word problem in most of my lessons and in the students homework if at all possible. Life to me is about thinking critically and solving problems, so these students should be practicing and perfecting these skills. In this placement, it can be frustrating because to my knowledge the sixth grade math teachers do not require them to do word problems, they just tell them to try them. This is so sad in my opinion, the word problems are the most applicable to life. In real life someone is not going to ask what's 10 x 12. When your carpeting your floor and your room is ten feet by 12 feet you need to buy carpet that is 10 x 12 or 120 square feet. Just this week alone in my class with, I had the students reading word problem type information and they had to pick out the important information and graph what was necessary. This uses their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Then they needed to be able to read the graphs and decode what they meant. As I have said in the past, I am lucky to have a para-professional in my room with all my LD and BD students. There isn't that many, but she makes sure she is floating in the room to help them out. Many of them seem to pick up the concepts they just want reassurance as they start to work on their own. I try to do multiple examples to give them different situations. She also gets to have them for one period a day to re-hit anything they struggle with. Math is one they do often, since it is a testable subject and usually a problem area for LD and BD students.
I feared my Thursday lesson the most with my regular students, which was about misleading graphs and statistics. It ended up being one of my favorites. The students seemed to really respond and like it. What I did was just put up on the ELMO multiple examples of misleading graphs and statistics. As a class we would silently look at the graph or statistic then talk about how we thought they were misleading. I was pleasantly surprised by many of their answers. They thought of truthful things that I didn't even think about. As a class they were on their own to right some examples of what could be misleading about graphs in their notes. At the end they came up with on their own, that statistics need to be read word for word, considering each word to find where companies try to mislead the general public. I was very pleased, for the most part, how well they acted and more importantly how they responded. They loved to be "detectives" and find where we were being misled. This made them use critical thinking the entire lesson. Some finds were bigger and more important, while others were interesting and thought provoking. When someone commented on something unimportant I would guide the students back into their thoughts by saying something like, "hmmm...that's interesting I didn't think about that, very nice observation, but is there anything bigger in this graph (statement) that is trying to mislead us in some way?" This seemed to work well with the students.
With the honors students this week they struggled a lot with the concepts of pulling apart quadratic functions to find useful information to graph it. I thought this lesson would be a breeze for them, but it wasn't. It required a lot of patience not only from me to deal with their struggling, but patience from the students to stick with it until they understood it. I tried with all my might on Wednesday to go over multiple examples. I repeated myself over and over with both the same wording and different wording to get the students on board. By the end of Wednesday, I think 75% of the students got it, which was much better than Tuesday were I think 75% were confused. I wanted to give them all a chance to practice and to try to catch the other 25% so on Thursday instead of moving on, I spent the entire period going over the homework problems and then going over some more examples of the same types of problems. Then gave them another assignment doing the same type of problems that I wrote out by hand. On Friday, the students showed me that 98% of them totally understood this concept. I pulled one of the two students aside after class who didn't quite grab it yet and we worked for a few moment together to reinforce him. I hope it helped. Instead of using book examples, I went with their homework examples because it meant something to the students to really understand their homework and get it done. I also had to re-word and repeated often to make them understand. Then finally throw-out my schedule and use and extra day to go over it again. This seemed to work with them and I am now confident that they understand it.
My hook and hold methods are becoming repetitive. I've been looking online for some new ideas. I love stories, pictures, questioning the students as ways to hook and hold them. The anticipatory set is huge I'm always open to learning and using new methods. Looking online at lesson plans often gives some helpful insight for anticipatory sets.
One goal last week was to get ahead on some class stuff. I did finish a couple of things, but didn't get done as much as I wanted, so hopefully spring break will let me catch up on some things. My other goal was to work with the para-professional and start coming up with ideas for the chapter four group test for the regular students and to start grouping them together. We sat down a day this week and grouped the students in groups of threes. We will have to edit this week as we find out which students are leaving early for spring break. We also have edited an older version of the group test to better fit our needs and have added a component of rating their group members as well.
For this coming week I would like to set my first goal as getting things together nicely for those students leaving early and to prepare myself as multiple students will be testing multiple days this week in order to include this test in everyone's last grade for the quarter. My second goal is to make sure I include components of critical thinking and problem solving in every lesson I create for the week.
I look forward to the week ahead...
Sunday, March 6, 2011
My thoughts for 2/28 - 3/4 (Week 9)
What a week of student teaching it has been this week! I feel like the week dragged on forever. The students were taking their ISAT's this week. The school has set it up so that the students were taking 1 test per day, rather than there normal two a day that they have done in the past. I'm not a big fan of the one test per day. I feel like the students are getting tired of testing quickly. They still have one more week of testing to go. If the students are sick of testing are they really going to perform their best? I have concerns...
As far as teaching, it makes it more difficult. Since they test in the morning all the classes have been cut from 49 minutes to just over 30 minutes per class. This week I have taught a lesson then used the next day as a review of that lesson. I plan to do the same for next week. This means that we are not getting through a lot of material. On Monday I got through 4.1, on Tuesday I did 4.2 and 4.3, on Wednesday we reviewed the three lessons, on Thursday we did 4.4, and then Friday we reviewed 4.4. Since we have off Monday I plan on doing 4.5 and 4.6 this week. For the Honors group of students we did a end of the geometry section project, where the students were making geometric flowers. On Thursday we moved on to 10.1, which was an introduction to quadratics. On Friday we reviewed 10.1. Next week, I hope to move onto 10.2 and 10.3. I feel like the days have gone on forever.
Last week, I made two goals for myself. One was to try to use reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills to try to connect with the students this week. I think I achieved some of these this week. First of all, the honors had a geometric flower project that they were working on this week for some of their class time. I gave them directions that were typed out, they had to use different geometric shapes to build a flower. They needed circumferences, areas, and perimeters of certain lengths. This really made the students use their reading skills to read over the directions and then figure out the math accordingly. I also started a quadratic section with the honors students this week. It was a test of my listening skills to see where they were having difficulties with understanding the beginnings of quadratics. There was a time when Mrs. Hardek stepped in for me to help explain one student's question. I was very grateful, because although I tried to use my listening skills and then my speaking skills to explain, I was not quite getting what the student was having a hard time with. She picked up on it and stepped in to clear it up. I am thankful for that, but wish I could have understood better what they were trying to ask. My regular students practiced their listening and speaking this skills by following instructions while making stem-and-leaf plots and box-and-whiskers plots. They had several assignments on each of these. I also had them take turns explaining what they did to their fellow students as we worked through the homework examples together. I hope to keep using more and more of these skills with the students. My second goal was to use my time wisely to plan while the students took their ISAT's. I did just that. I re-edited lesson plans for last week and came up with a few graphs to add to each lesson. I also got the chance to catch up on grading some homework.
My goals for the upcoming week would be to work with my para to come up with ideas for the students chapter four test and start grouping the kids together with her. She has a real gift with knowing which students work best with each other. I also want to use her as a resource as I plan a project for a test grade. I want the students to work together in groups for their test creating the graphs we are going over: stem-and-leaf, back-to-back stem-and-leaf, box-and-whisker, bar graph, histograms, and line graphs. A second goal for myself is to try to get caught up on some things for my student teaching class. I still need more video and to continue editing it, I need to fix my resume, and do some work on my action-research project yet.
This week we were supposed to focus on collaboration. A good teacher should be able to collaborate with colleagues, students, parents, and the community. I took it upon myself this week to start dealing with a parent who seems to e-mail every week multiple times. I have kept up communication with this parent all week and have responded in a timely manner to all his/her questions. It is interesting how well parents respond to even a student-teacher. I am interested in how relationships with students parents will continue to grow as I become a teacher in my own classroom. I have seen already in this placement the parents that don't care and the over-concerned parent. I have also worked on forming some good relationships with some of the other teachers in the building. It is an interesting dynamic that compose the types of teachers in this school. All of them seem so willing to work with me and give me advice and help. I hope my first job is in a place as welcoming and warm as my student-teaching placement. I have been able to really work closely with some of the teachers on the team. I have been able to work especially close with the para in the room. We go over information together every day. She is willing to back me up when I need it, give me advice about what I'm going to teach, and encourage me to try new things. I am so thankful that she is in two of the three of my regular education classes.
As the weeks continue I hope that I can set up another co-teaching lesson. Every day the para works with the LD students to enforce what we do in the classroom. She is also in the classroom to answer their questions when they have time to get started at the end of most lessons. I would love to set up another lesson where my cooperating teacher, the para, and myself each take a group. Working with a smaller group could really have its benefits with these students. I also love that co-planning time is built in every other week with the other team's math teacher. We get to talk about where we each are. We have even exchanged some lesson plans with each other. It will be interesting to see what she has after spring break. She currently has a SmartBoard. My cooperating teacher, is getting one during spring break. I would love to share some of her lessons for the SmartBoard.
I look forward to the coming week as I continue to grow...
As far as teaching, it makes it more difficult. Since they test in the morning all the classes have been cut from 49 minutes to just over 30 minutes per class. This week I have taught a lesson then used the next day as a review of that lesson. I plan to do the same for next week. This means that we are not getting through a lot of material. On Monday I got through 4.1, on Tuesday I did 4.2 and 4.3, on Wednesday we reviewed the three lessons, on Thursday we did 4.4, and then Friday we reviewed 4.4. Since we have off Monday I plan on doing 4.5 and 4.6 this week. For the Honors group of students we did a end of the geometry section project, where the students were making geometric flowers. On Thursday we moved on to 10.1, which was an introduction to quadratics. On Friday we reviewed 10.1. Next week, I hope to move onto 10.2 and 10.3. I feel like the days have gone on forever.
Last week, I made two goals for myself. One was to try to use reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills to try to connect with the students this week. I think I achieved some of these this week. First of all, the honors had a geometric flower project that they were working on this week for some of their class time. I gave them directions that were typed out, they had to use different geometric shapes to build a flower. They needed circumferences, areas, and perimeters of certain lengths. This really made the students use their reading skills to read over the directions and then figure out the math accordingly. I also started a quadratic section with the honors students this week. It was a test of my listening skills to see where they were having difficulties with understanding the beginnings of quadratics. There was a time when Mrs. Hardek stepped in for me to help explain one student's question. I was very grateful, because although I tried to use my listening skills and then my speaking skills to explain, I was not quite getting what the student was having a hard time with. She picked up on it and stepped in to clear it up. I am thankful for that, but wish I could have understood better what they were trying to ask. My regular students practiced their listening and speaking this skills by following instructions while making stem-and-leaf plots and box-and-whiskers plots. They had several assignments on each of these. I also had them take turns explaining what they did to their fellow students as we worked through the homework examples together. I hope to keep using more and more of these skills with the students. My second goal was to use my time wisely to plan while the students took their ISAT's. I did just that. I re-edited lesson plans for last week and came up with a few graphs to add to each lesson. I also got the chance to catch up on grading some homework.
My goals for the upcoming week would be to work with my para to come up with ideas for the students chapter four test and start grouping the kids together with her. She has a real gift with knowing which students work best with each other. I also want to use her as a resource as I plan a project for a test grade. I want the students to work together in groups for their test creating the graphs we are going over: stem-and-leaf, back-to-back stem-and-leaf, box-and-whisker, bar graph, histograms, and line graphs. A second goal for myself is to try to get caught up on some things for my student teaching class. I still need more video and to continue editing it, I need to fix my resume, and do some work on my action-research project yet.
This week we were supposed to focus on collaboration. A good teacher should be able to collaborate with colleagues, students, parents, and the community. I took it upon myself this week to start dealing with a parent who seems to e-mail every week multiple times. I have kept up communication with this parent all week and have responded in a timely manner to all his/her questions. It is interesting how well parents respond to even a student-teacher. I am interested in how relationships with students parents will continue to grow as I become a teacher in my own classroom. I have seen already in this placement the parents that don't care and the over-concerned parent. I have also worked on forming some good relationships with some of the other teachers in the building. It is an interesting dynamic that compose the types of teachers in this school. All of them seem so willing to work with me and give me advice and help. I hope my first job is in a place as welcoming and warm as my student-teaching placement. I have been able to really work closely with some of the teachers on the team. I have been able to work especially close with the para in the room. We go over information together every day. She is willing to back me up when I need it, give me advice about what I'm going to teach, and encourage me to try new things. I am so thankful that she is in two of the three of my regular education classes.
As the weeks continue I hope that I can set up another co-teaching lesson. Every day the para works with the LD students to enforce what we do in the classroom. She is also in the classroom to answer their questions when they have time to get started at the end of most lessons. I would love to set up another lesson where my cooperating teacher, the para, and myself each take a group. Working with a smaller group could really have its benefits with these students. I also love that co-planning time is built in every other week with the other team's math teacher. We get to talk about where we each are. We have even exchanged some lesson plans with each other. It will be interesting to see what she has after spring break. She currently has a SmartBoard. My cooperating teacher, is getting one during spring break. I would love to share some of her lessons for the SmartBoard.
I look forward to the coming week as I continue to grow...
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