Week of October 25 Response
We talked about goals when I met with each of you. Share one goal you have set for yourself to attain by the end of student teaching. Respond to at least one other person's post. Conclude with a short reflection on the past week.
posted by Chris @ 7:45 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
When I spoke with Chris, I mentioned that one of my goals is to maintain a consistent level of respect with the students. Physical education is a more loosely structured environment than the traditional classroom, so things can quickly get out of control. With some of my classes (especially the larger ones) it is difficult to get full attention. I have found myself having to shout in order to get attention. When the students are not showing respect by following guidelines, we cannot get through everything we need to cover. Unfortunately, it is a small few in the class that make the rest suffer and not get to enjoy the actual physical activity time. Using this as a motivation for students to stay on task and get through things, has proved to keep the class flowing.
Going along with my goal, I enjoy the fact that I can relate closely to the students but also be an authority figure that they will respect and listen to. This is the way I want to stay as a teacher. I will be able to continue to work on this goal throughout the rest of my experience at the high school/elementary school and in the health classroom.
Through this week I have found that I have become more comfortable in dealing with disciplinary and behavioral issues. A particular student in my class has been showing defiant behavior all quarter long and is now on a Behavioral Improvement Plan (BIP - or "gold sheet"). Unfortunately, this has not helped yet, and more steps are being taken by the school counselor and nurse.
Also this last week, Mag video recorded all of my lessons, so I can reflect on my teaching. The week seemed to be a bit hectic with it being Red Ribbon Week (similar to spirit week) and also leading up to Halloween. I felt like some days were a battle to get the students to stay on point. Friday we had our Fitness walk in which each grade during their elective walks around the whole PHV base (3.1 miles). I was lucky enough to do this 3 times with each grade.
One of my major goals for this semester is to continue working on effectively using inclusion techniques in the mainstream classroom. In my class, we have four special education students, only one of whom leaves the classroom for special ed services. I love the fact that my mentor has taught me so many good strategies for working with special needs students. The way my student teaching class is set up, all of these students are able to thrive without being pulled out of the classroom, which can make them unfamiliar with routines and cause difficulty with socializing with classmates. I hope when I have my own classroom to be able to use inclusion for my special needs students whenever possible. My student teaching experience has given me a lot of confidence in this area.
I have been working toward my goal by trying some of my own strategies and making a personal connection with some of our special education students. There is one student in particular who I am working closely with. He has made a tremendous amount of progress this year in terms of behavior and focus during class work time,and I like to think I have been a part of that. Deborah has been a wonderful guide in terms of giving me advice and suggestions for working toward my goal.
It has been another fantastic week in third grade! We are working hard at getting ready for conferences, which is a great experience. I am also very excited to see student-lead conferences for the first time!
Chris and I talked about challenging the students more and doing more groupwork. I have been allowing the students to talk more during "homework time", as long as it is about homework. That way I'm not running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and the children learn a little more (so that the person they are asking knows what they are doing).
My own personal goal (that Chris and I didn't talk much about) is to work more on my classroom management. I think I have a fairly good hold on it, but every once in awhile it gets out of my grasp. I have been working with my 8th graders on letting them come to the SMARTboard to do examples, and have other students correct their work. They seem to really like this and pay more attention in hopes to write on the board. I am slowly letting my 7th graders do this more, yet they seem a little too immature to be able to handle this as much as the 8th graders.
Yesterday we had a lock down in which we were supposed to be quiet until 'released'. Usually I'm pretty bouncy and all over with my class but as soon as lock down hit I was wispering the whole time and my students actually listened and were more quiet. Perhaps I should do that more often..?
My students have been opening up more and more with me. They are even sharing their "lingo" with me.. which some of it I had to ban from class for inappropriateness. I like that they can trust me, but hope it doesn't get in the way of them listening during class. So far it hasn't been a problem, but it is something in the back of my mind. I just hope my students will mature and realize more that we can have fun and not be zoo animals at the same time.
Now that I have fully taken over the freshmen English/ Language Arts classes, one of the goals that my teacher has for me which she shared while Chris was here, was for me to start to work even more with the junior English/ Language Arts period as well. Though I have been helping with lesson plans and instruction with the juniors, most of my focus thus far has been on the freshmen. From here on, I will be teaching more mini-lessons and activities, and working with students’ writing more.
Along with this, one personal goal I have for myself is keeping up levels of participation and on-task, engagement in class activities and discussions. Now that we are well into the school year, students (especially the freshmen) are feeling much more comfortable and at ease in the high school and classroom environment, and there are many more extra-curricular and school spirit distractions. Between Homecoming Week and Halloween, athletics, many three day weekends, and more, there are many exciting things going on in these high schoolers lives, and literature discussions or writers’ workshops aren’t always at the top of that exciting list. While the students are for the most part really interested in the novel we are currently reading and getting their work done, I feel like I more and more frequently need to remind them to stay on task. So, my goal for the rest of the semester is to continue to work on even more efficient classroom management, which will prove to be an even bigger challenge as four-day weekends, Thanksgiving break, and then Christmas break loom in the not-too-distant future!
These week has been great! The students are still showing a lot of interest in our novel and we’ve had some great class discussions. One of the high lights of this week was the opportunity I had to co-teach with one of the other student interns at the high school. During one of my planning periods, she teaches Special Education Language Arts, and I got to help teach her students how to write paragraphs. I really enjoyed co-teaching and it was a great opportunity to work with another student intern and specifically students with special needs.
Reading over what Kellen and Laura posted, I completely relate when it comes to classroom management and developing more effective methods. Like Laura alluded to, the more comfortable your students are and the more they trust you, the chattier and more random tangent prone they seem to be, at times. This has been a good opportunity for me to adapt what methods of classroom management work best for different students and classes.
One of the major goals that I talked to Chris about was maintaining a manageable classroom. I have very talkative first graders, whose attention spans are very slim. Being able to have the management for these students will not only help me with getting the things done, but help with the classroom as a whole. What I need to do in order for achieve my goal is to have smooth transitions to one lesson to another. I have realized throughout the past couple of weeks that students, especially my students need to have smooth and easy transitions so they can move quickly without wanting to talk to their classmates. I need to make sure that I follow through with it.
I was reading was Camerin said about using effective and mainstream techniques to help the classroom, I need to make sure am doing that as well, even though I don’t have any students described with having special needs, each one of my students learns a different way and I need to make connections with my students to meet their every need. It seems that Camerin is doing a good job on that.
It has been another great week in the first grade. We just started our first science unit with Earth Science. The class learned a song about all the wonderful things about the Earth and we are talking about rocks and soils. The students love when they can learn about things that adults learn about. They love they can be called “geologists,” this makes them feel more adult. This next week will all be about getting conferences set up and ready. Time is definitely flying by.
One of my goals is to be able to have really strong classroom management. Kindergarten has been a new experience and sometimes it is difficult to find the line between firm and effective, but also still being kind. Kindergartners can be so sensitive and also you never know what they are going to say at home about what happened at school that day. I have been so fortunate to be in Cyndi's classroom because she has such a good balance of respect and fun in her classroom. She has implemented things like the safe place, calming cream and concentration cream. Also she has taught me that it is O.K. to call kindergartners out when they are being disruptive or distracting during learning time. Making everything into a positive learning experience can be challenging, but it is so crucial to teach kids at a young age how to problem solve and make good decisions. These are all things I am working on and by the end of the semester I know that I will have a lot of this techniques down.
What is absolutely great about this goal is that I can integrate it into other areas of my future life. Learning good management techniques will help me for example in my next chapter of my life as an Au Pair. It can always be a challenge to be working with someone elses children, having to discipline in front of them. What I am learning now is going to be so helpful for that. Also I believe that Kindergarten is the foundation for all good classroom management and with the strategies I am learning now, no matter what grade I teach my classroom management will be excellent. Just the other day I was relaying some of the techniques we use my classroom to my Mom and she was like, "I think I'm going to have to use that with my 7th graders!"
This last week has been really fun. We were getting reading for our Where the Wild Things parade. The kids were coming in with their awesome Monster Masks. In math we have been working on 2D and now 3D shapes and objects which has been fun to see them really understanding complex ideas like faces, edges, plane and solid figures.
I feel like in Kindergarten there is always something exciting going on and great projects being made. The students have become obsessed with the science center since we have one of the apples slowing decaying under the microscope. It's so brilliant to see them so fascinate with apples rotting!
Can't wait to see whats next.
In response to Kellen's post I can really relate with the defiant behavior. We do have two very oppositional students in my class. I have had to learn how to deal with them in a way that wouldn't cross a line. It is hard in middle school because these students are focused on image and in Kindergarten that has not occurred to them yet, so the reasons for them being defiant might be a little easier to work with. Normally we just have them go to the safe place until they can make a good choice. But it is true that one student can ruin the learning environment for the whole class with their behavior.
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