November 2018

In Class

It is now the end of the semester and student teaching is right around the corner. It is so close and I am becoming very anxious with it being right here and all of the things still to be done. This last little bit of 435 has been focused on wrapping up final projects and getting ready for next semester in our clinicals. I finished the clinical checklist and have been working on my official edTPA lesson that I will be using next semester and an instruction module that I will be able to use then as well.  These are both big projects but they will be preparing me and ease my load a tiny bit when it comes to time to use them in student teaching. I have also been working on finishing up assignments in other classes like another mock task 4 in math methods, scoring example tasks in EDUC 251, and completing a professional learning module in EDUC 312. Everything is coming to a close and getting ready for the next door of student teaching.

Outside:

I have been doing a lot of research on strategies for all of my assignments and every time I create a lesson plan. This is still one of my biggest struggles. I find it so hard to find these when I am searching on the internet. Even though I am still struggling I am still working on it though. Every time I find a strategy I put it on my list that I am building for later use. Some of my professors have also given us resources with strategies that I am so happy for. One of the projects I have been working on, the professional learning module for EDUC 312, required me to build a website where I found and collected a bunch of strategies that are specific to a reading related struggle for students. What made this a little easier for me is that we have a whole textbook for this class that contains strategies all in one place that are specific for different struggles like the one I chose. Standard 2d of the NCTCS calls for teachers to adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs. As you break down the standard farther 2d2 says that a proficient teacher uses research-verified strategies to provide effective learning activities for students with special needs. Well in truth every student has a special individual need and you should do this for all of your students. This is what I am trying to do in these assignments and soon my own classroom.

Future Classroom:

Everything that I am doing in my clinical classroom, and all this lesson planning, as well as the research I have been doing, are all preparing me for my own future classroom. In more ways than one. I feel like I am learning so much at once all culminating at this point that it is hard to list out everything specifically. I am really looking forward to what all I will be learning next semester. 

October Blog 2

These last two weeks have been slightly less packed in 435, but have picked up in many other areas. We wrapped up our work on Tasks 2 and 3 of our mock edTPA and completed our peer reviews. Since these were the only major things due in 435 I went ahead and started on my 4Cs inventory assignment. As a part of this assignment, I did research and took an in-depth look into the 4Cs and their role in the classroom. These are creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. These are 4 skills that students need in the 21st century and it is important for us to incorporate these in the classroom to help these students build upon them. I researched each one and then watched for them in my CEs classroom and the school. Creativity is all about thinking outside of the box to solve problems and produce and portray ideas. Collaboration is teamwork, learning to work together and communicate with each other to solve problems. Communication works together with collaboration as well as just presenting ideas to others. Communication involves being able to clearly present something like an idea or information to others in a clear and understandable way but also being able to listen to others. Finally, critical thinking is used when solving problems or anything that requires a student to think something out, it involves analyzing something and applying things that are already known to evaluate, understand, predict, explain, or solve something. As I learned about these I also found some suggested ways that I could include them in my own future classroom. These 4Cs are also mentioned in the NCTCS under standard 4e “Teachers help students develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills” and 4f “teachers help students work in teams and develop leadership qualities”. 

The other big event that occurred just today was Hands-on Halloween here at GWU. This event called for a lot of preparation and planning before the big day. I was really stressed about it and trying to get everything lined up and communicated with everyone in our group. There was a lot of cramming last minute as we were not sure of where exactly we would be until the Thursday before. Even with all of this stress, I was really happy with how it turned out. I can say it wiped me out for the day but it was so much fun. I was extremely nervous beforehand, but I must have been able to fake it pretty well because I had a few students who came up to me and were just as panicked as I was but they thought I had it all worked out. However, once it got started everything fell into place and it was a blast. I am going to hate having to miss it next year but I have a feeling that I will be plenty busy with a new school. 

Research on 4Cs

http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/Skills_For_Today_Series-Pearson/Educators_-_Creativity_Executive_Summary.pdf 

http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/Skills_For_Today_Series-Pearson/Educators_-_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf 

http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/Skills_For_Today_Series-Pearson/Educators_-_Critical_Thinking_Executive_Summary.pdf 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jMniucqJl-LiKAQegHZoWB1uxmhgZwpN/view 

https://www.aeseducation.com/careercenter21/what-are-the-4-cs-of-21st-century-skills

October 2018 Blog

Another month has flown by. There is still so much to do and so little time this semester. This month some of the biggest assignments/projects I have done that have stood out to me were the Leadership and Collaboration project, and of course my mock edTPA lesson. I also want to talk about something we have been working on in Math Methods the last few weeks on edTPA.

The object of the Leadership and Collaboration project that we did for 435 was to research the school that we are working in. We were to find any information we could including basic information, testing results and demographics from the NC Report Card, local board policies, school improvement plan, and whatever else we could find. I had never thought to do all of this research on a school before and it was a good learning experience. After we learned as much about our school as we could we had to translate the information in an easy understandable way to share with parents. Then we worked with our CE to create a potential parent night for the school based on the information we found. These are things that we should be able to do when we get our own classroom. We need to be able to share information with parents and find ways to include parents and encourage their participation in the school and their student’s learning. Learning how ways to get parents involved and ways to get information to parents in a user-friendly way are good skills that we will need. Not only did this help me learn more about the school that I am working in and will be doing my student teaching in but it has also helped to prepare me for my future classroom. Being able to do this is also apart of the NCTCS, specifically 1b “Teachers demonstrate leadership in schools” by working with colleagues and other adults in students’ lives and finding, analyzing, and using data on schools.

My edTPA lesson has been a trial, as they always are. I am getting slightly more comfortable but I still have so much to go. Since the class I am in only does science and math I decided to integrate literacy and science for my lesson. It went so well, at least in my opinion. The kids seemed to enjoy the lessons and did well on the formative assessments. The problem came with time. The activities for each one took longer than expected and it was hard to get everything done in the time allotted. That is something that I am definitely going to have to work on in the future. 

In Math Methods we have been talking about Task 4 of edTPA for math. We have been working on the differences between conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and mathematical reasoning. Conceptual understanding is more than just memorizing math facts or algorithms but is the understanding of these and how they connect. For example, a student may memorize the times tables but when they make the connection that multiplication is just adding a number over and over that is when they have a conceptual understanding. Procedural fluency is knowing when and being able to use a procedure or method to solve a problem. Mathematical reasoning is when students can reason through a problem and come up with a solution to solve the problem.

One of the things we worked on in EDUC 251 last week was researched strategies and theories for teaching. This is one of the things that I have struggled with since the beginning. I could never figure out exactly what we were supposed to do when finding these or how to include them in our lessons. I am glad for the time to learn more about them in this class. We have also been working on them some in Math Methods. I think I am slowly getting the hang of it more.

Another assignment I did was examine a substandard from the NCTCS. The standard was 2a “teachers provide an environment in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults”. The most important thing I pulled from this was that we as teachers need to build relationships with our students. Positive relationships, that are nurturing and show that we care and shows each student that he or she is important.  During this project, I found multiple sites that give strategies and tips to do just this. 

http://www.nea.org/tools/51057.htm 

http://www.apa.org/education/k12/relationships.aspx 

September 2018 Blog

I cannot believe that we have already made it through 4 weeks of the semester. It feels like it just started while at the same time it also feels like it has been 4 months instead of 4 weeks. 

So far this semester the most focus has been in my clinical while my assignments for most of my classes have been focused on edTPA. We have done a lot with edTPA these 4 weeks, breaking it down and really analyzing it. In the new 251 seminar, the first thing we did was come up with a plan for learning the vocabulary associated with edTPA. In 435 for week 2, we went through all of the commentary questions and rubrics and highlighted all of the keywords and made connections between the two. We also looked at an example commentary from tasks 1, 2, and 3 and scored them with the rubrics, I felt like I got a lot out of this assignment being able to see an actual completed set of commentaries and going through and looking for the things that an actual scorer would. Finally, in Math Methods we looked at task 4 in class and went through each part highlighting and discussing important things from the task. Besides edTPA, I have spent a great amount of time in my clinical and I am loving it. I am learning so much from being in an actual classroom consistently week in and week out. I am enjoying getting to know the students and learning how a 5th grade teacher runs her classroom. One of the first assignments for 435 was observing the classroom and asking the teacher about her classroom management. There are so many moving parts to the classroom and to keeping students engaged and behaving. I saw some things that I would love to take into my own future classroom as well as somethings that I thought were neat but maybe not for me. One of the things that she does that I would like to use is how she does positive reinforcement individually as well as whole class. I have never seen a teacher have both before and I feel like it is a great thing to do. You have what keeps each individual in check but also when the whole class is doing well or poorly you can take care of them all at once. This also helps with your students who never seem to get an award because they continually lose it, because with the whole class award they can share in the prize and see how nice it is to get to be involved in the award. After this project, I got to put what I learned to use in the next project where I created my own management plan that I might use. I created this plan as if I had the class I am in because I needed something to focus on so a future class might not work quite the same, still, there are many things that I would take with me. 

One other assignment that we did in Math Methods was choosing a domain from the math standards and scaffolding the standards under this domain all the way from kindergarten through 8th grade. This assignment allowed us to see how the standards built upon themselves as they went up through the grades. It was an informative project that helped opened my eyes a little more of how one standard starts very basically in kindergarten but 8th grade has the same standard basis with more built on. With this project, we found instructional supports for each grade that would help teach the standard in each grade. 

I mentioned a Facebook group in my last blog that I have joined. It is such a great group to be in. I get to see the questions different teachers post and how other teachers respond to them and help them out. It is a community of teachers being supportive of each other and doing what they can to help each other. I have even been able to give ideas and suggestions to people and I am sure if I had a question for them I would get plenty of response. The group is very large and made up of people from all over. It is mostly for pre-k through 2nd grade but it is great for other grades as well. If anyone would like to join the group it is called Kinder/Firstie Curriculum with Tara West (Prek-2). It is a closed group and you have to be approved by an admin of the group but I wanted to include it here just in case.

The last thing I wanted to talk about today is my after school group. For those of you who do not know. I am a group leader in the after-school program at my local elementary and have been for going on 4 years now (not including the time I volunteered there during high school). This year I am mostly working with 3rd grade. I help them with their homework and tutor them every day, and after homework, we do planned activities with pre-k through 5th grade. I have been struggling with my group of kids and getting homework completed within the short time we have. I usually have between 10 to 14 kids (which is soon going to be 18 if they all get approved), at least 8 of them have ADHD, some on medication other not, but even so by the time they get to after school, their medication has worn off. It is a huge struggle keeping them corralled and focused on their work because almost all of them need one-on-one help and they continue to distract each other as well as themselves. I have been trying different plans trying to find something that works for them so that we can get homework done in our allotted time. I have created a routine that they are expected to follow which helps them know what is coming and know what is expected. I am also having them run a few laps in the gym before we start homework and play a goNoodle song to help get some energy out. I have also assigned each student a partner and a specific table. The two students are assigned by how well I think they can work together and also with one student who I know understands the material who can help the other student if needed. This way if a student has a simple question their partner can help while I can help students who are struggling more. Even though it is a huge struggle I am so happy I have the opportunity to work with these students and I am learning so much from them. 

I found a lot of standards that connected to the things I did this month. First, while working our classroom management project we learned a lot about standard 1a which talks about leading in a classroom as well as standard 2 which is all about establishing a good environment for students. Classroom management is a huge part of both of these standards, you have to have good management to make a good environment for students. Scaffolding standards in math connected to standard 3a, because we are working to learn more about the standard course of study so that we can better align our instruction. With my work at after school, trying to fix things to where students are working together in the best groups for them I met some of standard 2c and 4f by using what I knew about individual students to group them and putting them into groups allows them to help each other and build the skills they need to work together.

Someone shared this poem and I thought I would include it here.

Take my hand and come with me,

I want to teach you about ADHD.

I need you to know, I want to explain,

I have a very different brain.

Sights, sounds, and thoughts collide.

What to do first? I can't decide.

Please understand I'm not to blame,

I just can't process things the same.

Take my hand and walk with me,

Let me show you about ADHD.

I try to behave, I want to be good,

But I sometimes forget to do as I should.

Walk with me and wear my shoes,

You'll see its not the way I'd choose.

I do know what I'm supposed to do,

But my brain is slow getting the message through.

Take my hand and talk with me,

I want to tell you about ADHD.

I rarely think before I talk,

I often run when I should walk.

It's hard to get my school work done,

My thoughts are outside having fun.

I never know just where to start,

I think with my feelings and see with my heart.

Take my hand and stand by me,

I need you to know about ADHD.

It's hard to explain but I want you to know,

I can't help letting my feelings show.

Sometimes I'm angry, jealous, or sad.

I feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and mad.

I can't concentrate and I lose all my stuff.

I try really hard but it's never enough.

Take my hand and learn with me,

We need to know more about ADHD.

I worry a lot about getting things wrong,

Everything I do takes twice as long.

Everyday is exhausting for me...

Looking through the fog of ADHD.

I'm often so misunderstood,

I would change in a heartbeat if I could.

Take my hand and listen to me,

I want to share a secret about ADHD.

I want you to know there is more to me.

I'm not defined by it, you see.

I'm sensitive, kind and lots of fun.

I'm blamed for things I haven't done.

I'm the loyalist friend you'll ever know,

I just need a chance to let it show.

Take my hand and look at me,

Just forget about the ADHD.

I have real feelings just like you.

The love in my heart is just as true.

I may have a brain that can never rest,

But please understand I'm trying my best.

I want you to know, I need you to see,

I'm more than the label, I am still me!!!!

~Author Unknown

August 2018 blog

Hello everyone and welcome to the beginning of a new semester. I hope everyone had a fantastic summer. I did something really cool this summer, my family and I went on a cross-country trip. Driving from North Carolina north-west toward South Dakota, then to Yellowstone, down to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon, back up to Moab in Utah, and back east again. It was such a cool but exhausting trip, but it was a trip of a lifetime for sure.

This marks the beginning of the end for me. I am on my last leg of the race to becoming a teacher. There is still so much to do this semester and I am both nervous and excited to be so close to student teaching. This has only been week one of the semester but that ball has already begun rolling extremely fast with great ferocity. For everyone who doesn’t know I am taking EDUC 251, EDUC 435, MAED 330, and EDUC 312 this semester. This week in my clinical setting I have met my CE and toured the school I will be working in. I have attended open house for this school, meeting the students who will be in our class and their parents. I also wrote an introduction letter to the families of these students that will be sent out on the first day of school. This will be something that I will need to do throughout my career so this gave me a good start. Open house was a great experience for me too. Getting to see that from the teacher’s point of view and learning how it can go. Watching how my CE interacted with the parents and ran her part of open house I thought of some ways that I would handle open house for my own classroom. One of the things I noticed was how awkward and forced the conversations with parents were and how little was learned about the parents or the teacher. I think open house is a great opportunity for teachers to really see where their students are coming from and to start a relationship with them and their families. I decided that I would like to have an activity planned for an open house that would give the families a real chance to get involved and get conversations started as well as help me learn about them a little more. One of my ideas was to have a kind of survey where I had multiple bulletin boards set up around the room with questions that the students and parents could answer together. These questions could be something like, “what is your favorite subject?” “What is something you are curious about that you would like to learn this year?” “How many people are in your family?” etc. Setting up a network with parents is an important piece of a teacher’s job, it is even a part of the NCTCS. Standard 2e says that teachers must “work collaboratively with the families and significant adults in the lives of their students”.

Some other things I have done this week in my classes include making an organizing document for the 4 tasks of edTPA. I tried to pick out everything I had to do for each task and make it into a sort of checklist. I think this will help me remember everything as I work on each task. I also started examining and breaking down standard 1a from the NCTCS for another assignment for EDUC 435. Those are the biggest assignments that I have started on so far. I also found and joined a group on Facebook that is made up of a bunch of K-2 teachers who use it to share ideas, ask questions, and help each other out.

April Blog

Learning Experiences

This month in Social Studies Methods the focus was mostly on finishing up our long-term projects like the Virtual Museum and our units, and in my case my clinical experience too. Another short project I did this month was the hour of code. I think the virtual museum is one of my favorites out of them all. I loved taking a physical museum and putting it into a new format. I actually did the Cowpens National Battlefield, which is more of a park than a museum which made the project very interesting. I thought my project turned out well but honestly I wish I could have done more. I would love to do something that worked out as a more virtual tour, where you could actually move around the park and interact with it more. I think it would also be cool to create something like an app that people could use while actually at the park to give them a guided tour. My problem with these ideas is that it would really need to be done by someone who had a better understanding of technology. I can do a lot but this project in the format I did took a very long time and I am sure taking it farther would be even more time-consuming. Doing the project, however, kept me thinking about other places that could be done this way and how museums from across the world could be done like this so that students from all over could visit without actually having to travel there.

When I completed the hour of code project I thought back to my museum and the things I wanted to do with it. The hour of code project was just that, it was an hour lesson in coding for computers. Creating programs, websites, apps, and other things. I realized in this project that learning this skill could help make my idea about the museums a possibility. In all honesty, I do not know if I will ever be able to manage something like this just because of lack of my own time to learn how to code on that level. But it is something I would love to get the hang of more. And even if I never make it to that level there are still a lot of things I can do with it. And even more possibilities for my students if I use this in my class and give them an opportunity with it.

Outside Learning

        Some of the experience I had outside of this class that stood out to me this month was one my clinical observations for my PHED 300 class. For this class, I had to spend 5 hours in an elementary PE classroom. I did not go to a public elementary school when I was younger so I never really had this experience as a student and definitely not as a teacher. It was very interesting to see how a PE teacher handled a class of students compared to a classroom teacher. My biggest eye opener though was when the teacher I was observing had his adaptive class. Every day there is a 30 minute time period for the EC kids to have PE. Now, these students cannot do the same activities as other students in this setting, but it was interesting how the teacher still worked with them on basic physical skills. While I worked with him we had the students out on the playground and was teaching them how to roll hula hoops, at times it was very productive and then out of nowhere a student would change moods and it would change the whole dynamics of the whole class, and we would have to adapt to it. It was just a completely new experience for me. I also saw how he made sure to include the students with muscle problems that was confined to a motored chair. Though this student could not do what the others were doing, the teacher used the hula hoop to do stretches and exercises that this student could do while still allowing him to interact with the hoop.

Connections and Future Classroom

With regards to the virtual museum and the hour of code, teachers who use this are really utilizing and integrating technology in their classroom which is what standard 4d of the NCTCS says we should do. If we included some hour of code projects in our classroom we would be helping students use the technology to do many things. I would love to take the time to practice more with this and learn more about it to use in my future classroom. Do this also fits standard 5b which says that teachers need to “link professional growth to their professional goals”. Learning how to code is just one way I can develop professionally as a teacher. 

When thinking about the PE observations, especially those in the adaptive class, standard 2d comes to mind. This teacher was adapting his teaching for all students involved. He was also collaborating with the EC professional teachers to learn more about the students so that he could be more effective with them. This is important to do no matter who you teach.

February Blog

Learning Experiences

February is another month that just flew by. Where is the time going? We did a lot this month and learned a great amount. Some of the big things we worked on in Social Studies methods this month were performance tasks, our Today’s Learner project, and edTPA. Our Today’s Learner project was a group project where we worked to understand how the students of this time and age learn versus how we may have learned when we were in elementary school. The goal of this was to see how much of a change there is in kids that are growing up with all of this technology and with different views and how this impacts how they learn. Students today need to be active in their own learning, let them drive the learning in the classroom. They also like to collaborate and need to learn the communication skill to be better off in life. Group activities are a good way to do this. They are problem solvers and critical thinkers and we need to hone this skill. 

We have been steadily working on our Units for class. One of the big pieces we worked on was our performance task. To do this we had to learn what these were and what made a good one. A performance task or culminating task is an assessment project where students go beyond proving their knowledge. They are actually demonstrating their knowledge and skills. We learned how to use GRASPS to create our performance tasks. GRASPS stand for goal, role, audience, situation, performance, and standards. So what the student’s goal is, their performance and product and why. What their role in this process is (who are they in the situation). Who their audience is and what their context is. What they are creating. And how it connects to that state standards. We also learned how we should work backwards from this final project to create the lessons and learning experiences in the unit so that they lead to this task, making them valid.

Since we have been going to Washington Elementary on Tuesdays we are limited to only having in class Social Studies on Thursdays. For the past few weeks we have put a huge focus on edTPA. I now have 3 packets printed out to read and study on edTPA so that I am prepared for it. EdTPA has so many parts and seems so daunting, but it is all connected when you look at it as a whole. I am glad we have been going over this little by little in class, even if it is overwhelming at times.

Outside Learning

My other classes have been no less busy. In my EC class we have been going over eligibility of students for special education services. I have learned that there is a 3-prong test for these students, to determine their eligibility. These 3 prongs include whether the student has a disability, whether this disability has an adverse effect on their academic performance, and whether they require specially designed instruction. They must meet each prong to receive SDI. In my Integration and Assessment class we have still been working on assessments. We learned what makes assessments valid and reliable and what that means. We then put it into practice when we had to create our own assessment. In my Elementary Health class, I have learned how to spot certain symptoms for sicknesses and diseases in my students and what to do, plus many other things. I have also enjoyed being at Washington and working with the 4th graders there. It has been a great opportunity to see what is going on in the classrooms. Today I had a completely new experience. Today I observed both an inclusion class and a self-contained class at my local middle school. I have seen inclusion, so that was not too different, but viewing the self-contained class was such a different experience. It was very surprising and not what I expected, I am not sure how to explain it exactly, but I was glad to experience it. I feel like it opened my eyes some, and gave me more understanding of these students.

Connections and My Future

This month the Teacher Candidate Standards that I connected most with were probably 2d, 3d, and 4e. In my EC class we have been learning a lot about 2d: “Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs”. We have been learning about who these students are, and what they need. We have also been learning about how to get the students what they need and everyones different roles in these processes. Going into Gen Ed, I feel like this is great knowledge because I think many teachers do not understand these processes and I think they should. I love knowing and understanding these things so that I can be more help to my future students. But I have also been thinking that this might be more of the direction I want to take myself. Standard 3d. “Teachers make instruction relevant to students” talks about incorporating 21st century skills into my teaching, and 4e. “Teachers help students develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills” fits right in with this. These are both some things I connected with during out Today’s Learners project. I believe that these skills are so important, if students have these skills they can make their way in the world so much better. These skills also transcend so much. I do not think these skills are new to the 21st century either. They might not have been focused on in the classroom, but they are timeless skills and I want to make sure to apply them in my classroom, not matter what I do. 

January Blog

The new semester has started off with a strong bang. Much has been covered already this first month. I am taking four classes this semester. Social Studies Methods, EDUC 410 Intro to Curriculum, ECE 270 Critical Components of Special Education, and Healthy Living for Elementary. Besides these classes I am still working at the after school program at my local elementary school, I have started getting my clinical placement set up at another elementary school close by, and our partnership with Washington Elementary is about to begin again in a couple of weeks. I am really excited about how this semester is going so far and cannot wait to see where it goes.

So far in Social Studies some of our big topics have been concepts vs topics in social studies, wisdom from experience, and our personal development plans (PDPs). We started off the semester hitting hard on concepts vs topics. We learned that social studies is turning away from being topic based lessons to basing lessons on concepts. We learned what concepts are and how to judge whether what we are teaching is a concept or a topic. Concepts are timeless, they are not stuck to a specific time period, they do not have a begin or end date they have just always been. They are universal, meaning they span the whole world, they are not limited to a town, or state, or whole country, they are applicable to everyone. Concepts are also transferable they are not limited to one subject or on topic but are applicable in many places. Finally, they are abstract, the Big Ideas, they are broad and not so narrow that they are specific to one thing. Learning what concepts are and how to apply them in my lessons will really help me in my future classroom. I do not want to only use topics in my lessons, I want to use concepts that my students can really make connections with which will help the lesson be more meaningful to them. 

We have been working on our Wisdom from Experience projects where we interview 2 teachers, one from K-2 and one from 3-5 about their experiences in teaching, specifically with social studies. From my two interviews I learned that there is very little time allotted for teachers to teach social studies, if any at all. Because of this teachers try to find other ways to integrate the subject into other areas as best they can. For the lower grades they use holidays and themed lessons in which they integrate both their science and social studies. I asked both of my interviewees what they thought about the concept vs topics change and if they used it in their own class. Both of them had heard a little of it but did not do it themselves. After I thought about their limited time for social studies and how the teaching of concepts work I feel like it would actually be beneficial for teachers to focus on concepts because of their transferability. It would be easier to integrate a concept vs trying to integrate a certain topic.

I created my goals for my PDP this month as well. I focused on the NCTCS when creating my goals this time. For my first goal I used the standard 1a “teachers lead in their classrooms.” The unpacking of this standard mentioned how a teacher should have structured transitions for their classroom/school environment. I wanted to start finding ideas for effective transitions to help with managing my classroom. The other standard I used was 2d “Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs.” A part of this standard is to locate and implement research verified strategies for students with special needs. I want to start finding these strategies now so that I can implement them for my future students with learning needs.

I have also been doing a lot in my other classes. In my EC class we have been learning about the different laws and policies that effect students with learning needs and disabilities. We have learned about IDEA, IEPs, 504s, Child Find, and many other things. Child Find is something that really stood out to me. Child Find is a requirement of districts, they must identify, locate, and evaluate every student who may have a learning disability and provide the supports needed by these students. It does not matter where these students go to school or their living arrangements. They can be homeless or migrants, and they can be in a private school and they must still be provided these things. In a twitter chat I did this week I learned about doing breakout rooms for a classroom. I have done one breakout room in Greenville but I had never thought about doing something in a classroom. This is mostly for older grades but I think it is great for things like critical thinking, problem solving skills, communication, and collaboration between students. In health class this week the professor was talking about keeping students active in the classroom and not having students stuck in their desks all of the time. One of her suggestions was during reading time to let students roam around the room with their books instead of sitting still. I thought this was cool because lately I have been doing that with my students in after school and I have found that their attention on the books and behavior has increased dramatically. I think this would be great to continue in my future classroom. 

https://www.breakoutedu.com