Week 7

Hello everyone. I hope you have had a good Valentine’s week. My week has been good but a little different in comparison with other weeks. My CE has been out now for several days, so I have been getting a variety of substitutes. My TA has been awesome though in encouraging me and showing me various things, he does. For example, he oversees our gumball math and sight word recognition. I would rate my experience about a 4. This week Forrest Hunt had several events for reading across America plus Valentine’s Day. Though the children were a little chaotic, I enjoyed seeing their enthusiasm.

Questions:

Tell me what you feel the number one job of the teacher is?

What are the rules for pencils in your classroom?

Are your students allowed to share their supplies?

What kinds of charts are you using for literacy?

What kind of class jobs do your students have?

When does your teacher grade papers to put in the grade book?

How are you recording grades?

Observe: The accomplishment was getting through the week with a bunch of excited students. Valentine’s Day and all the activities for Read Across America were enough to get the students pumped. Every day this week students wore something special for the day to represent who they were as individuals. I thoroughly enjoyed their enthusiasm. The highlight of the week for my students was making enough AR points to throw water balloons at the teachers including the principal.

Reflect: For next week, I want to make sure I have some pictures representing president’s day on my CE’s shelves. I want to be able to represent what I am teaching about on my CE’s walls.

Focus: My short-term goals are to get edTPA finished. My long-term goal is to complete my video portfolio.

Be Productive: I need to spend a small part of each day looking over requirements for my portfolio. I spend so much time on lesson plans my portfolio is getting put off to the side.

Have Courage: I experimented with groups this week for math. After we did our focus work problem. I split students up into groups. I thought I could teach them in my group how to do the answer. It failed. Perhaps because I had the lowest group. However, next day I pulled four students aside to reteach them the skills which they did not understand. They were able to understand the information. I am concerned about my EC student. He is precious, but he often gets so discouraged that he makes up his mind not do something before he even begins to try it. I think he benefits better with one on one attention instead of group work. 

Begin Anew: I am planning to collect data for my standards by keeping different samples of worksheets to help drive my instruction.

I looked at data from the math problems the students did this week to help make my decision on whether they were confused. I used the math worksheets to help base my judgment. However, I also used the location of where students were sitting, had the student done the work on their own, had they been helped by a peer, or had they been in my group. The students who did a good job on their own understood the lesson because their worksheets were correct. I know my group did not understand the subject matter. Students who did get help from peers may not have understood it. Therefore, driven by data and what I observed yesterday with my students, I pulled students aside the next day to work with them on math.  

Advice: Always have your lessons in front of you when you are teaching. I bought a small green binder which I keep just the daily lessons in. I also use my lesson plans for a checklist so I can check my students off if they are understanding the material.

·         Standard 1d. I have made a timeline for the students to see when they graduated from high school. Next week, I am planning to take a picture of them with their sign (I will graduate High School in 2029).

·         Standard 2b: I have put a small picture of the map of the world by the door of our classroom. I have marked on the map where the Olympic games are being held, Mexico (one of my students is from Mexico), South America, one of my students is from South America, and North Carolina.

·         Standard 3a Teachers use the standards to guide their instruction. Though the Olympic games are an important subject to talk about during the month of February, I have been trying to find writing or reading standards to connect with Olympics. Integration is the key to a successful fun classroom. Students learn about cool topics while also practicing writing and reading in the classroom.

·         Standard 4g: I will use more charts such as bubble charts and KLW charts to begin my literacy lesson.

·         Standard 5: Teachers reflect on how their students are learning in the class. Since Friday is a test day, I was able to get a chance to review my student assessments. I was pleased that most of the students made over a 70 for their phonics test. My goal for phonics is to do a quick review next week on the word “their,” ee rules, and e_e rules. For my writing, I was disappointed that some of the kids did not understand the rules. I wanted them to write about an exciting experience. Instead many students wrote down several exciting experiences on one page. I will review their work next week. I also need to ask the first-grade team if I should have students redo this activity.

For my portfolio, this week I had a meeting with the technology expert on Tuesday. I was asking her what way I could better improve student’s activities in the classroom. She mentioned some ways of how I could utilize math learn and compass reading more effectively by assigning assignments for students to work on.

My CE and I do not have any questions as of right now. I will text or email, Ms. Suttle if anything comes up. Thank you for all you do.