Student Teaching Week 3

Hello everyone, I hope you all have been having a good week. It is truly amazing how a winter storm can mess the whole week up. My school was out of course for Martin Luther King day so we came back on Tuesday. This day was the only day we saw each other.  I would rate the week a 4. It has been a good week to get ahead in lesson plans and complete work for our portfolio even though I wish I could have spent some time with my Kindergarten children. This was my last week in the classroom before I go to first grade. 

Some questions I have for the week are as follows.

Questions for the week.
How do you handle a student who refuses to listen to you?
How do you handle a student who wants to help you with classroom jobs, but you do not need the help? Instead, you want them to listen and to learn. 
How do you handle a student who refuses to go inside the classroom?
How do you handle quiet transitions from literacy station to literacy station?
How do you handle a student who is sassy and talks back to you?
How do you handle a student who simply refuses to do their work?
How do you handle a student who cares more about the friend she is sitting next to than the lesson at hand?
I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of having an internship in the Kindergarten classroom before I move on to teach first grade. Some of the questions above, I have struggled with during my two months in the classroom. I have learned a teacher has many jobs including a psychologist. By this role, I mean a teacher has to decide simply what to say to get the student to stop doing bad behavior or to do the good behavior. Because some students were paying more attention to the person beside of them then the lesson I had to be the mean teacher and move their places at the table. Whenever a student refused to do their work, they had to do it after they finished lunch. After literacy rotations, I had students quietly line up before transitions. When a student was sassy, I pointed out how wrong this was. Though I know I made mistakes during my internship it was a great experience to see how a successful classroom management plan and teaching instruction are linked together. 

Observe: Because of the winter snow, I was able to work on lesson plans for the week after next week. I am trying to get a week ahead so I will have plenty of time to work on my edTPA work. 

Reflect: On  Tuesday, I tried to teach three math lessons in one day since it was a simple subject discussing more, less than, and equal too. The students seemed to get the concept pretty well. I was so close to the end of the unit I was hoping to finish up the math on Friday so that the substitute teacher who came after me would have a fresh unit, to begin with. I now question the wisdom or lack thereof in this. I wish I had been more focused on making sure the students understood the material than making sure we got the lesson in.  To have courage, I need to remind myself that the goal is not to get the worksheets done and the lesson taught but to ask did the students understand the concept. I could teach 1000 lessons, but if the students did not understand anything I would fail as a teacher. 

Focus: I am still working on my short term goal to get my planning commentary rough draft finished before our edTPA meeting on Friday. My long-term goal is to study my student who will be the focus of my classroom management plan. I am currently making an assessment for the student to take so I can know his interest, goals, and how I can help him in the classroom. 

Be Productive: I wish I could have spent more time working on my ed TPA work this week. I am trying to get my lesson plans for math and literacy completed along with my math context for learning, and the planning commentary. I will continue to work on these. 

I did not look at any data this week with my CE, but today I am going over to the house of the teacher who is in charge of the Kindergarten classroom. She is in the process of making report cards for the students and she is going to look at the assessment information the teacher's assistant and I have tested them on. The assessments include rhyming, segmenting words, ending and beginning sounds, letter recognition, and number recognition. 

The biggest thing I would advise everyone including myself is to stay focused on the activity you are doing. I have a very bad habit which I am in the process of correcting is laying down worksheets, paper, etc. and forgetting where I put the material. Unfortunately, I have five things at once going through my head and I will lay items down to take care of something else. Five minutes later when I try to find the items they have disappeared. This of course waist time and it is not so good for my sanity either. Hopefully, you do not have this problem. I am planning to do better by making sure I put items in the right place and not to start a job until I finish one.

Standard 1: The teacher leads in the classroom by overseeing all classroom duties. I tried something different from the norm for math. I had half of the students go to the teacher assistant group and the other half go to my group. This worked out very well for students doing the work as a group instead of independently. I could quickly assess if they were understanding the material by looking at their papers and asking each student a question about what we were working on.

Standard 2c: Each student is special and important in the classroom there are not two students who are exactly alike in the classroom. When I talked individually to the students in the Kindergarten classroom, I would talk more firmly to some than others. There was one little girl who cried very easily, therefore I would use a gentle tone with her while for someone else I would be firmer.

Standard 3a: I have been working on lesson plans for next week and the week after. I have found that the instructional guides for our county do not have standards listed. I had had practice this week linking up standards to the different lesson content areas. This correlates to standard 3, teachers connect with what they teach to the standards. 

Standard 4a: To make a math lesson more engaging this week. I had the student throw each other a big inflatable dice. For students’ paperwork, they had to roll the dice and add one to the number they got. I chose which student was listening and following directions. Students loved the activity and were their behavior was much as better as they wanted to be the one who caught the dice.

Standard 5a: Reflection is one of the best ways a teacher can correct her mistakes and do better. One of the activities I did this week was read a story to students called Knuffle Bunny. The book is fairly a simple plot. I gave students the problems which went with the storybook. Students had to answer the questions on their own. My teacher assistant and I walked around the room and went to those who needed help. Many of the students who did the activity struggled with spacing their words and they were getting confused on how to sound out their letters. I know one thing students will need work on is word spacing and writing sentences.

This week for my portfolio I have been working on my website and classroom management project. I have created a google forms which I have inserted in my website, so parents can contact me about the website if they choose to. I am also in the process of creating a document for a classroom management survey which I will give to my selected student at the beginning part of next week.

 My CE does not have any questions right now, but I will let you know if she does.

I do not have any questions right now for Mrs. Suttle, but I will be sure to email you if I do.

 I will see you on Saturday at the edTPA meeting.