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