Week 10

This week was the start of my full week of takeover. Over all it was very successful, I did have to do some readjusting since I was out Monday and the plan were changed a bit. I really enjoy having the full days to myself. I would say that the only thing I wish I had done is make backup plans for science and social studies both of these content areas in my district seem to be less organized. The social studies curriculum is phasing out next year so it’s a little bit more laid-back in what needs to be done. With team planning, seems to be thrown off quite a bit. I would say I think that I should be more flexible in being open to changing my lesson plans. This week one of my students is moving to Poland his last day was Friday and this really opened up my eyes to classroom expectations and setting expectations early on. It was a very hard last day for him and his behavior was, rightfully so, very erratic. I wish I had more support for him on his last day.

Building off this idea, this really got me thinking about what type of behavior system I have set up in place and what type of reflection system I would have in my classroom. About halfway through the day my student who is leaving and the student who is his best friend but also the worst behaved student in class really had a hard day. At the peak of their disruptive behavior I did pull them to the side to tell them that if their behavior did not stop that we would be having a reflection time before lunch. I found a reflection sheet that I think works really well, but it was on the fly. I would’ve loved to have that reflection be something that was in instituted idea before an instant occurred. I think the reflection sheet was really amazing and easy adaptable to the lower level students. However could work as well for my higher readung and writing students. I would like for student to have access to this if they were having a moment where they need to reflect on their behavior good or bad. I’ve seen this work very successful in classrooms, I just wish I had it in place earlier and now that the students have worked on one with me they may be able to do it independently if they need just a moment or a couple minutes to reflect in a isolated area.

This week my focus is really building a solid science curriculum, the curriculum that is currently in place can definitely be utilized to be more engaging. I really leaned on the information I learned from our methods of science teaching. I referred back to the website that I’m included the five E’s of him a successful science lessons; Engage, explore, Explain, extend, and evaluate. Within this week I hope to come up with lessons and experiments that the students can really get excited about science. I have a couple ideas about two specific lesson plans I’d like to incorporate into the pacing schedule that science has already been set to. And I found it really helpful website that will help with planning.

Week 9

This week was a short week with the holiday. I have a really good grip on science and was able to get a lot of work done with planning. Tuesday starts my first day with a full take over. I am very excited about it. One of the things I was nervous about was planning for the entire take over. This week I was able to plan out next week fully by Thursday and was able to talk to my teacher for feedback and approval. I really liked having it all organized prior to the week beginning like the previous weeks have been. In planning I feel like I got that confidence I was looking for. I was able to see what areas I would need to really dive into and focus on. The challenge this week was VR googles. We had a lesson this week, were we able to use Virtual Reality googles. I would say this was a challenge to put together while leaning so heavily on technology for the success of a lesson. I was able to get it up and running, but after a 1/2 of setup and a lot of hiccups. My biggest takeaway with this is that I will insist on a trial run the day before to ensure I could figure it out.

In terms of new ideas I would say that I learned a new strategy for comparing and contrasting within this district. I know that the school limit the ability for the students to get involved in shared reading. However, I think a good idea would be that I team the students up to compare setting, characters, text features, problem/solution and instead of a turn and talk the students had a team time to come up with the answers they felt were important. This gets them more involved while still maintaining a modeling support for the students who require it.

Lastly I was working on getting a handle on science. I came up with stations for a leaf lesson. It worked really well for the students, and they LOVED it. It was fun for the students to complete the task quickly and have their full attention for each activity. In reflection, I would have had a small checklist or worksheet for the reading group, but they really enjoyed partner reading. I had paired up the strong readers with the students who needed more support. I hope to continue this success for next week and really be successful with taking on all the lessons for the week.

Week 8

 This week was a good week for me. I felt really comfortable in my teaching this week. One day in particular was great. I was able to take over the whole class, my cooperating teacher went for a training and directed me to stay and teach the class. It was a great way for me to experience having the classroom fully engaged with me. The substitute was a really nice and helpful aid for classroom management. And wanted to take a small group so that worked out well. I do feel like I am excited to fully take over next week!

I also had parent teacher conference as well this week. There was a lot of insight shown for preparing for conferences. One of my big takeaways from the conference was to be organized in my setting up for it. One big stressed seemed to come from not having everything the way my cooperating teacher want it to be in. During conferences, it was good to see how repetitive each one was. And how to stay consistent with each student and the benefit of being prepared. I also go to see that I would try to make the students more the center of the conference, however it is so difficult to maintain focus throughout the conference.

Last week I set the goals to feel more comfortable in my content areas. And I would say that I have done a great job in teaching shared reading. We took out common assessment in shared reading which is the one area I have been teaching consistent since I arrived at the school. Almost every student did well on the assessment, and showed growth in the comparing and contrasting portion from the first common assessment. I can not help but feel some success from that. I hope to find some more ways to have a better control of carp yet behavior

Week 7

This week I was able to take over math on Friday. This is exciting for me, I really like Math. It was a good lesson but again I felt nervous. Partially because I was being observed by a District representative, who wanted to see how the students from our ASD program were included. The lesson went well. I felt confident in the lesson, if I could have retaught it, I would have used base ten blocks to show the partner groups, and had the children come up with doubles facts they knew, so our friends with IEP, ELL, and ASD program could have a couple reminders. The students this week have become very comfortable with me. I love seeing my guided reading groups. They put in a lot of good work with their task, and are excited to learn and read which is awesome.

This week I was able to observe my teaching calling home for students. She let me know to always have a solution in mind, and a way to help the student with whatever issue we are calling home for. This was a helpful advice that I will definitely take into consideration for when I call home. I think it is important the parent knows that you are push for the success of the student. Some teachers in the school have shared experiences where the parents believe the do not like the student or do not have good intentions. With the solution in mind, it will hopefully tell the parents that you have hope things will get better and you want to help the student with achieving success.

Last week I took over Science which was fun. I hope to get into the pace of taking over more and more. I still have to have the principal come to my class to observe next week,  which is scary but he came in with the Superintendent, for a couple minutes and that was successful. This week I hope to have more meaningful connection and build my confidence in my new content areas.