Week 7

Learning Experiences:

This week I finally got to meet with my Clinical Educator. I have been assigned to a 2nd grade class at West Elementary. My first impressions of the teacher and class are good. The educator and I discussed the requirements of all of my classes and planned out the schedule for me to observe and then teach. We spent some time going over what she has been teaching in class and setting up ideas for the lessons I am going to do in her class. The time I am able to meet with her is early in the mornings which is the time she does her math lessons. So I decided to do a math lesson with art integration. She is starting on time and money when I am planning to teach, so I am looking at having them create a clock to tell time on for the arts integration part. For my other lesson I am planning to do literacy and social studies. I am going to try to do it over spring break so that I can go during her literacy block so she does not have to flip her schedule. She did not really have a specific lesson for me to do for that, so I am working on coming up with something.

Outside Learning:

  Today was Digital Learning Day and between classes today we had a Digital Learning meeting where we all shared technology resources that we had found. It was a great learning experience and I enjoyed it extremely, and not just because we got Mexican food. Some of my favorites included goformative.com and zearn.org which were both interactive math resources, good to use as formative assessments, and learning tool for the students. The resource that I shared was an app called Toontastic 3D which is a story maker app. Students can use the app to create and animate their own stories or to recreate a story that they read to show reading comprehension. This whole day and learning experience definitely fits in with the NCTCS standard 4d, which says teachers need to integrate and utilize technology in their instruction. Today was perfect in helping us out with this. Over all the day was definitely worth it.

Future classroom:

  Working with the clinical educator is helping me prepare for my future classroom by working directly with a teacher and then making a lesson plan to actually teach to a real elementary class. And once I do my lesson she is there to give me feedback on it so that I can improve. Also learning about all of the resources is helping me because now I can add them to my bank and learn how to use them now so that I can put them to good use in my future classroom.

Week 6

Learning Experiences:

For the past two weeks I have been working on the performance task part of my unit. We have been learning about what a performance task is and the difference between that and the learning experiences part of a lesson. The performance task being the end assessment of the lesson. It is a summative assessment, while the learning experiences are tasks that lead up to the performance task and help prepare the students for it. Learning what these assessments are and how they work goes along with the NCTCS standard 1a2 which says that I will “draw on appropriate data to develop classroom and instructional plans.” I am doing this by learning how to use these assessments appropriately. I have not started working on my learning experiences yet because I am still finishing up my performance task. But I think I have a good working plan for my performance task. My conceptual lens is this: “How are communities and citizens interdependent on one another?” For the PT I want my students to create an informational product about the community they live in. I want them to create it with the audience in mind being newcomers to the community. I want them to show case their community for their new neighbors, but I also want them to find ways that their new neighbors can get involved in the community. My original idea was for them to create a booklet, but I really want to provide them some more options in how they want to present their information. However I am having trouble coming up with some solid ideas. They could do a video or maybe an interactive website, or…. If anyone has any ideas please feel free to share.

Outside Learning:

Another week at Washington Elementary has gone by. I am really having a wonderful time there and I feel like I am learning a lot from having more experience in an actual classroom. It has been decided this week that we will stick with the class we are in for the entire semester instead of rotating to different classes. I like this idea because I can really get to know the students and watch them grow, instead of being uprooted and put into a new class every few weeks. This Tuesday was Valentine’s Day and the teacher of the second grade class I am in did not let it go to waste. She had plenty of activities planned for it. First of all she had a listening game where the students each had a card with a riddle on it. They would read their card and everyone had to listen to see if their card fit the riddle. Then the student who's card fit the riddle would read their card, and it went on.  She also had Valentine activity booklets that she had made up that the students would work on when they finished other tasks. In two weeks they are going to be doing Dr. Seuss and Read Across America and the teacher has recruited the other 2 students who are working in the class and myself to plan everything for that Tuesday. I am really excited for this but I am also quite nervous. I hope it goes well.

Future classroom:

A couple of weeks ago I said I was researching activities and resources in Fine Arts to use in lesson plans. This will come in quite handy these next few weeks as I prepare for the Dr. Seuss day at Washington. And planning this day is going to be a great learning experience to help me with my future classroom. It also goes hand in hand with working on my performance task and learning experiences for my unit plan. As I get practice doing these things, it will hopefully come more naturally to me and I will become more efficient in making them.

Week 5

Learning Experiences:

For one of my learning experiences this week I have been learning about Today’s Learners. Who are they, what they need to learn the best, and how to teach them. Throughout the years the way people are learning has constantly been changing. With computers and other electronic devices today, pretty much every student has access to some kind of device and this puts the internet and the world at their finger tips. The way these kids are growing up has effected how they learn the best. These students are independent, technology driven, creative, and social. They need freedom and choices, have opportunities to work collaboratively, opportunities to create, and be able to use technology which is so much apart of them. As a teacher I need to embrace technology and not be afraid of it. I need to put it into use and provide those opportunities listed above for my students.

Outside Learning:

This week was our first week at Washington, and it was awesome. I had so much fun and learned a lot. For this month I am in a fourth grade classroom on Mondays, though only for a very short time. On Tuesdays I am in a second class for most of the day. Since Monday was not very long we did not get to do much more than observe the class. We did participate in some small reading groups but I mostly just listened in on what they were doing and read when my turn came around. However, on Tuesday we did a lot. First thing was we learned how to do ORF testing, which is Oral Reading Fluency. And we did that with the students while the teacher worked on the lesson. After that we worked on preparing things for the activities the students were going to do later. It was the 100th day of school so the students were doing a bunch of projects and activities for that. We did so much that it would be hard for me to talk about and explain it all, but it was a great experience and I cannot wait until next week.

Future classroom:

Learning about Today’s Learners will help me better understand and prepare myself to teach them. I need to know how they learn the best so that I can teach them more effectively. 

Week 4

          This week has been a highly stressful week. About the time I think I am getting the hang of it all of it goes out the window. I feel a little bit better now then I did at the beginning of the week, but I’m still having a hard time with it. 

Learning Experiences:

          For class we finished up our goals for our PDPs. Which was really hard for me. I knew in general what I wanted my goals to be, but getting them down in words and making them clear was quite difficult. My main goal is to come out of my shell and improve my communication skills. That is a must have as an educator. It is really a needed skill in any kind of job, but definitely as an educator. You must be able to communicate to your students. As well as fellow educators and faculty members, and parents of your students. If you have difficulty in this you are going to have a difficult time in this field. This is not one of my strengths right now, so it is something at the top of my list to work on. The teaching standards constantly stresses collaboration and communication. 1c2 says the teacher "begins to develop professional relationships and networks." 2e1 requires that the teacher "communicates and collaborates with the home and community for the benefit of students." 4b1 calls for a teacher that "collaborates with colleagues to monitor student performance and make instruction responsive to cultural differences and individual learning needs." And so on and so on. All of these standards require me to be able to communicate and get along with colleagues, parents, and others. So this is definitely a skill I need to work on.

Outside Learning:

          In another one of my classes, Fine Arts Integration, we have been working on finding more learning resources to go with a unit being used by a teacher at Washington Elementary. She has a unit on Kill Devil Hills that she is doing with her students. She sent a copy of it to us and we have been researching some other activities and resources that she can include in her lessons if she chooses. This is a great learning opportunity for us. We are learning how to integrate and connect different things to an established unit. We are learning to research activities and learning resources. It has been extremely enlightening and a lot of fun as well. It is also great help to the teacher. She is a full time teacher, who probably does not have time to go to this extent in researching these things. We are helping by providing a list that we have already researched and connected to the lesson and it is all in one easy place. Now all she needs to do is decide if they will work for her class and if she wants to use them.

Future classroom:

          Making these PDP goals will help me continue to make goals in the future that will help me grow as a teacher. Accomplishing the goals I have already made will help me gain the skills that will help me to be the teacher I need to be. The things I have learned this week in Fine Arts will help me with my future lesson plans. Because of this practice in researching activities and other sources, and connecting them with the standards and working them into an established lesson, I will be much more adept to doing it with my own lessons.