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...
Tammi,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the world of high-stakes testing. It seems everything else takes a back seat for a while, doesn't it?
I wonder if you are taking any steps to help understand what students are asking you when they have questions. Maybe you want to try rephrasing the question, which is part of active listening.
My eyes can't take your color choices. You have a dark gray background, so a white font would make sense. The green last week was hard to read, but the blue is even worse.