Week 8

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone is doing good this week. I enjoyed collaborating with all of you during our edTPA conference today. I appreciate all the feedback and support during this exciting yet stressful time in our student teaching. I would rate my week about a 2. I do not feel as though I was able to get all I wanted to get accomplished this week. I feel as though I am very behind in edTPA. I look forward to the weekend when I can hopefully get most of the work done. 

Questions:

1. How do you respond when you have given a student several seconds to give you an answer? How long do you think the wait time should be?

2. How do you keep your AIG learners engaged?

3. What do your students do in the morning before lessons begin?

4. What do you put on your wall which teaches cultural diversity?

5. What are some apps or websites your school uses?

6. How do you engage your EC student?

7. What is your lockdown procedure?

Observe: Being prepared and having things on hand is so important. Because February is the month to celebrate Dental Hygiene, I was going to do a lesson on hygiene next week. On Friday, of last week I found that a lady was coming this Monday to discuss the importance of keeping your teeth clean. Fortunately, I had a craft and a writing exercise I could sneak in along with her lesson. Doing the worksheet and craft Monday made it more meaningful to the students than to have to do it the next week.

Reflect: We had a faculty meeting this week on Monday. My principal was explaining the importance of never propping doors open unless someone is constantly monitoring the open door. There is always a possibility of someone intending to do harm to get in the school, so we should always be on guard. The best possible advice is to never let people into the building if you do not know who they are.

Focus: Next week I will be planning for a 3-day week, so I hope to be able to get more of my portfolio information completed.

Be Productive: I am looking for new technologies students may like besides working with some of their old technologies like compass reading and zearn. For some students, the apps are not challenging them with enough information.

Have Courage: In previous blogs, I believe many of us have shared instances where we have learned that a child has come from a bad home life. I have had an experience this week which makes me believe there is possible abuse happening for one of my students. Teaching is certainly not just academics. The core factor is the child and what is best for the child.

Begin Anew: This afternoon, I was looking over test scores my students made for mid module math. There were six pages of questions. Almost all students got one page wrong simply because they did not look at the directions closely. Next week, I am going to have all students retake that one page.

Data Analysis: My data from my math test showed that the students are understanding the math unit for the most part. However, students were confused in adding one more ten to another number. I also looked at students spelling test scores. For some students, they do not understand the sound of wh and they are getting confused with the long e and short e. I will go over these rules next week before beginning the phonics lesson.

Advice: Always be prepared to do more activities. Students may be able to learn something in a quick five minutes.

Standard 1: Teachers lead in their environment. I have been giving my TA and sub different jobs to do. I have found my EC student works better one on one then with a group, so I send him to the sub for extra tutoring. My TA is also in charge of passing out cards if students are good or bad on the carpet. He is also working with groups when I divide up students or math and literacy. My goal in leading in the class is to use the TA for as much instructional work as possible. TA’s clerical work should only be during planning time.  

Standard 2: I had the pleasure of meeting with five parents this week to show them the progress their child is making in the module benchmarks. One of my parents had a question I could not answer. His question was about what a number meant for the scaled score on STAR testing. I asked three different teachers and even they did not know what the scaled score was. I then googled the question. I found that the scaled score can be a 0 to 1400. The number gets higher as the student increases in reading level growth. I was able to message the parent on the class dojo and explain what the number met.

Standard 3: Teachers use standards for all their teaching instruction. My grade level met with the instructional coach for the county. She explained how important it was to focus on the standard and not on a theme. She used the example of a first-year teacher who had said she was teaching about snowmen. The instructional coach told her to make sure she taught from the standard and not from a fun theme. The standard should always be the teacher’s focus as it is a guide to what students need to learn to prepare them for the next grade.

Standard 4: I have enjoyed finding a new resource which I will be incorporating into the classroom very soon. Osmo is a great product student can use for their iPad. Once the app is downloaded onto their iPad, students can scan letters, numbers, or geometric shapes depending on what subject is being taught. I am looking forward to integrating the technology into the classroom, though I am not sure what time or what day I will use the technology.

Standard 5: Teachers reflect on student work to see if students are understanding the material or if they need to be retaught. I looked over testing for Friday to understand where my students are at in their understanding of tens and ones. Most of my students understand greater than and less than and putting tens and ones together to make another number. However, students are still not understanding the tens concept. For example, 10 more than 32 is 42.

Portfolio Requirements.

I have found a useful website called epic which has over 20,000 books. The website is a free resource for teachers. I was able to add all my students on to the epic website. When students get on their iPad, they can go to their own personal epic which has books selected according to the genre they like the best. I can also assign students books to read on the epic website.

My CE and I have no questions for Ms. Suttle this week. I will email you if we do. Thank you.

I hope all of you have a productive weekend. See you on Thursday.