Week 6

Hello Everyone, 

This week was a very strange week. The TA and my CE were out of the room quite a lot this week plus I was working on my edTPA lessons. My lesson went much longer than 30 minutes however since we did not have a tight schedule until Thursday due to IME groups. I would give my week a 4 simply because I am glad to have edTPA done except for my reteach math lesson.

Questions for the Week?

What are some good activities to do for the Olympics?

What are some good games to do for 100th-day celebration?

What are some good classroom management strategies you use?

What do you think about the idea of having students sit quietly or having them talk about the lesson?

What do you do in the classroom to celebrate Valentine’s Day?

How do you differentiate between an EC student?

How do you differentiate between an ESL student?

Observe: I was happy to complete my edTPA this week. Though some of my video footage was bad due to the telephone ringing and a student throwing up, I believe I have enough good footage to cover video requirements.

Reflect: Students were great working in small groups and whole groups. I had to do some whole group for math this week instead of the small group due to the TA testing with a student. What I did is do a few problems with the students. Then I let students do a few problems on their own. I would walk around the room to see what answers they are putting down. Their individual answers gave me an assessment of what they understand since there is sometimes not enough time for an exit ticket.

Focus: My short-term goal is to do 15 to 20 lessons every weekend, so I do not have as much lesson prep work on weekdays. My long-term goal is to complete edTPA task 2 and 3 with the data I have been given from my students.

Be Productive: I wish I had spent more time this week looking at my video for edTPA for task 2. I did review what I need to insert into task 2, therefore, I do feel good about some of my video footage.

Have Courage: I am the type of person who always wants to start on schedule and I get very discouraged when we start a lesson later than what time it is supposed to me. My CE advised me yesterday before I started phonics to let the students finish up their breakfast. Many of the students came in late. Other students were still working on their morning work. I gave them about 5 minutes to finish up. The few who came in very late ate breakfast while we did our phonics lesson, so they were able to watch and learn. A delay in the lesson helped everyone get ready and focused on the lesson. If I had told them to come without finishing their morning work, students would have been distracted and may not have done as well on the lesson of building words. 

Begin Anew:

I looked at the data of the worksheet assignments the students did for edTPA. Students had to answer a question from the story using text from the book to explain their answer. One of my takeaways which I will enforce in further lessons is to make sure when the students put,"the story says," to explain their answer they need to give a paraphrase or use exact words from the story instead of making something up in their head which was not even in the story.

Advice: Never complain in your school setting. Always be optimistic, positive and cheerful.

Standard 1: My CE has been out for two days this week; therefore, the school called a sub to come into the classroom. Though she was the sub teacher, I lead the classroom for the week. I tried to think along the lines of what my CE would do. I did the lessons while I asked the sub teacher to work with individual students who needed help. 

Standard 2: I had the privilege of doing a parent conference this Friday. My CE always schedules conferences whenever benchmark assessments have been completed, so she can explain to the parents how their child is progressing in school. My CE could not be at school on Friday, so I did the conference. I showed the parents the MClass scores, MAP testing, and STAR scores. With my CE’s permission, she allowed me to meet with more parents next week. I am grateful for the experience as I want to be able to work more with the parents of the students.

Standard 3: Teacher know the content they teach well enough that they can integrate any type of subject with literacy. Whenever students do something besides a normal LIF lesson I make sure it has the type of literacy in it. In math, students may have to read the problem before I do or sound out words on a worksheet to get that literacy piece.

Standard 4: My CE has realized what a benefit classroom dojo was for this week. I sent out flyers for next week Read Across America Activities, contacted a parent to change her parent conference, and sent out a document to advertise about dressing up for the 100^th day.

Standard 5: I reflected over my edTPA in math and decided what would drive my next lesson since most of the students understood tens and place values. Some students did not understand the difference between place value and ones, therefore more lesson will center around the subject for Monday.

For my portfolio, I am still working on excellent classroom management strategies. The marbles have worked excellent for student transitions from class. The line up is quicker and quieter so they can drop a marble in the jar.

Thank you for your support always Ms. Suttle. I do not have any questions as of right now. I will text or email if I do.