It's been awhile! I have been slacking and I apologize. We are now in the third quarter, nearing the end of the year of my first 4th grade, ELA experience. Man, what a year! I don't know who has learned more, the kids or myself! As I had to take down my posters and anchor charts for the FSA writing test, the kids expressed that they REALLY didn't like the blank look of the room. I agreed; it was not our home that we had spent all year building. I reassured them that the following day everything would be back to normal! Of course, I never let a test be the reason we stop learning. There is still so much more we have yet to cover before the year's end. I had prepared my forth graders long before that they did not come to forth grade for a single test, but rather an entire year of learning and knowledge that they will use for the rest of their lives. They knew that I test wouldn't let them off the hook that easily! As I put all of our posters back up during their independent reading/work time the following day, I noticed it was very difficult for them to focus. They were looking at the anchor charts as if for the first time and many students commented that they remember when we made the charts together in class and reflected on how long ago that felt now. As a student teacher taught to reflect, there is nothing more fulfilling to witness a student reflect as well. As the days passed and we moved on to our next writing prompts and challenges, I found that many students used the anchor charts much more than they had previously. I got a lot of feedback from both of my classes explaining how helpful they found them. Most notably, the one we did together as a shades of meaning/synonym activity. (See below) I found many students getting up, standing at this poster for quite a while as they were in their revise stage of their writing. One student asked If we could add more words. Another, after standing there a while, going back to marvel at their work exclaimed, "That chart is REALLY helpful, Miss Taylor!" [Teacher happy dance] Here is an extended picture of my writing wall dedicated to (almost) everything writing related. This is by far the most interactive of walls where students have centered their focus throughout the writing process. I also included an Objectives chart along with their weekly work assignments that are due so they can have more visuals as to what is expected each day. Goals with this are to have students read and recite it each day before reading or writing, respectively so that the learning goals are explicitly stated before a lesson. And finally, to organize the workload, I created an impromptu checklist with all of the assignments to turn in with the students' name so they could self-assess wha thtey have completed and what they still have. The students enjoyed crossing off their accomplishments and seeing a visual representation of what else they needed to complete before the week's end.
In the car today I decided to record my voice instead of waiting to get home to video myself. Enjoy my thinking out loud!
Focus Points:
Charter to public, 4th to Kindergarten, emotions and take-aways from Kindergarten Day 2. Watched this about 5 times. Still not entirely sure how I feel about it. My first reaction is "Rock on, student! I respect that you're standing up for what you want out of our education!" The other side of me says, "What's the teacher's perspective? Is she really being lazy or is there more to the story we don't know from this short video?" Either way, I find this fascinating. Hope I didn't bore you with my little teacher rant. My grandfather sent me this video the other day. I have seen it a few times but each time I have a different view on it or catch something new. Here is what I replied to him in the email. "This is very interesting. I’ve seen it a few times before but like seeing things like this a second time. I see exactly where he’s coming from but also think that if religion diminishes over the years, my job as a teacher will be that much more important. We already spend an immense amount of time teaching moral reasoning to students and coping with the varying family values each child brings to the classroom. Thanks for sharing!" Here are some quick pictures of things I did to keep my class of 5th graders organized this year.
It has finally happened - the first year of my teaching career has come to an end and has left my mind spinning. So many lessons have been learned and experiences have changed my thinking AGAIN, not just on a professional basis but on a personal basis as well.
One of these discoveries is one of great value to me and will affect my choice in my future Master's degree and beyond: where I stand in the wide realm of education as a whole. Before moving forward, I'd like to announce that I made this discovery about 3 months into the school year. I realized quickly that I felt out of place in the charter school I chose to work at. I didn't feel like a total outsider, but I knew there was a school with a better fit for me. I made this discovery while I reflected aloud with my future principal. He asked me in October when I met with him, "Why now?" did I decide to consider a regular public school. I responded by telling him my needs as a beginning teacher and the wants as an ambitious educator. "Resources, training, defined curriculum and the county benefits to begin with." I also explained to him that training just wasn't the same at charter schools. They did what they could to provide trainings, but it just wasn't what I personally was prospering from. I'd like to clarify that there are absolutely NO hard feelings between myself and the charter school that I left. It was an incredible experience that I was blessed to have. At the end of the year, I told my charter principal that I genuinely appreciated everything that she did for me as a first year teacher and as a newbie to the school. I also told her that with all the horror stories as a first year teacher, I am one of the luckiest first year teachers to ever exist. I absolutely had challenges that will be easier to manage with more experiences, but overall I am extremely lucky! I had the most incredible class this year, an administration that never told me to just 'figure it out' and guided me through every situation, large or small, and I had a team that was so easy to get along with. All things considered, I didn't just make it out alive, I prospered. So what does this have to do with my discovery? If it was so great, why did I leave? I knew this before but could never put in into words: I am a very black and white thinker. There is rarely, if ever, a topic where there is gray area for me. My political beliefs are very solid, my moral beliefs are the same. When it comes to what I want, I usually know right away - not always but usually. I need concrete curriculum, guided practice, uniform schedules and most of all, structure. I felt extremely embarrassed and ashamed for having these feelings in the beginning of the year because I know there are a lot of public school teachers that would give up a lot to be in a position to run their classrooms differently than what they are told. Once I slowly began to realize my needs were valid by my teaching style I felt less selfish and more realistic that this just wasn't my fit. I felt a wave of relief when, at the end of the school year, I broke the news to my principal and teammates of my decision to leave. My principal was proud of me for all of my progress and agreed that public would let me thrive even more as a teacher. My team was very shocked by my decision as I never shared these feelings with them. They were also proud of the decision I made as it was one of personal growth and not of selfishness. I cherish the experiences I was able to have while at Learning Gate and I will take this new understanding of education with me as I continue down my career path. I have no idea where I will end up in 10 years, professionally. I have no desire at the moment to be in a administrative position but a team lead in a specific content area doesn't sound too bad. I know that I am nowhere close to that yet as there are countless lessons to be learned from being in the classroom. This is jus the beginning and I am right where I want to be - in the classroom with the greatest people on Earth, kids. Article: Famous Teachers
Posted by one of my professors weeks ago on Facebook and I just got around to reading it through. It highlights Teacher Appreciation Week for teachers and reminds us that we are famous to our students. While this does make sense, I never thought of it in that way. I joined my students for a birthday celebration at the movies yesterday and can't tell you how humbling their reactions to seeing me was. I did feel famous. (Blushing as I type now...) One of the parents reminded me that she's disappointed her son will not have me as a teacher next year with my move of schools. She said, "They love you! What did you do to them??" I just smiled and made a gesture like I put a spell on them. I love those kids and it's apparent that they love me back. This article makes this love feel normal :) I hope others can relate to this! I've made a surprisingly simple yet shocking discovery: everyone has their own definition of teamwork. Don't laugh - I'm completely serious. When I first came on the fifth grade team at Learning Gate, I was under the strong impression that team planning would happen often, in great detail and the sharing of idea would be as simple as a shout across the hall. While this was the case in the beginning of the year as I and another teacher were new the school entirely, the expectation changed about halfway through. We were expected to start coming up with our own ideas rather than hold out hands out for donations. Surely I'm exaggerating but the change happened so quickly that I was taken by surprise. I realized that what I perceived as normal was simply a polite gesture to the newcomers. While this doesn't seem a big deal, I was a huge wake-up call for me in my first year of teaching. I found I was too dependent, not coming up with unique ideas of my own, nor exploring learning strategies for my own students. "Stealing" and tweaking ideas can only go so far before you are not planning with your own students in mind. I was weak in planning overall and by running to my team first, I wasn't challenging myself to even attempt it. I had done exactly what I discouraged my students to do which is not become an independent thinker and play with trial and error of lesson planning. As of now, I am finding lesson planning a lot easier. I am able to come up with strategies and activities that correctly exemplify the objective at hand as well foster it towards my student's interests and needs. Needless to say the change was abrupt but completely necessary to my growth as a teacher. I feel well prepared to teach even more independently next year in regards to my lesson planning and the formation of lesson ideas.
First of all, I'd like to begin with background information where I learned to formally teach and where I am now. In college, I was placed in a low-income, high-poverty school with highly underprivileged students. Sometimes attendance was the biggest accomplishment of the day for my students there. At my current school, I work with middle to high-income families with high attendance rates and very few cases of behavioral issues. I am faced with a completely different mentality than I did when I was student teaching.
With all that being said, the expectations for my students are extremely high as set by mostly their parents, by me as their teacher, and even themselves. They have a very clear understanding that education leads to success. It is clear this has been discussed in their homes on multiple and frequent occasions. One of my biggest fears going into my first year of teaching and in fifth grade was teaching math to my students. My confidence was extremely low and fifth grade math as I was told was "no joke." I played it off well - acting confident in front of my class but sweating bullets when it came to planning beforehand. As it turns out, my fifth graders come with great background knowledge in math and are very vocal in sharing their current understanding making my job to identify strengths and weaknesses that much easier. Sure, I have the few quiet ones who won't tell me whether they do or don't understand but for the most part, I am an extremely lucky first-year teacher. On the other hand, I have been floored to hear the question multiple times: "But what's the answer? Can you just tell us the answer? I don't understand how you got the answer!" This quickly turned into a nails-on-chalkboard type of question for me. They were missing the idea that I didn't care about 'the answer' but rather the thought process that went into getting there. After this discovery of high expectations from their parents and their own high expectations, I started a lesson within the first month of school with a mini lecture. I explained that it's okay to be wrong, be confused and not know what you're doing at all. It's okay to ask for help and admit you are in the dark. I also explained that IT'S NOT ABOUT THE ANSWER!!! I think I might have shell shocked them when I told them that I didn't care if they got the right answers or not. They had been so focused on the end product without wondering about how they used their brain to get to that answer - they had no idea WHY they were correct or incorrect. So it became a motto in my classroom: "It's not about the answer, it's how you got there." I had the kids repeat it back to me. I had them answer it aloud. "Does Miss Taylor care about if you got it correct or not??" "No." They'd answer. "She cares about the process it took for you to get there." I used a visual with students' names. I explained it's like a scavenger hunt and each person takes a different path to get there. Some paths taken are shorter, faster, longer, more steps, less steps and so on. The most important part is, though, that they all ended up at the same place - 'the answer.' I also explained that sometimes we don't always find the hidden treasure and that's okay too. Within this mini lesson we also discussed the power in sharing our thoughts. I often say to them: "Don't 'show your work' - put your brain on the paper. This way, they know that I want to "see inside their brains" so that I can better help them. Without even trying, I broke down walls. This gave them confidence to take mathematical risks, knowing that they would fail during this process and strengthened my class's community. We ended the mini lesson with high hopes, confidence and smiles that said "bring it on, Miss Taylor." It was a good day in math class that day but it's even better to hear my fifth graders explain what's going on in their brains and have the confidence to say they are completely lost in front of their peers. So the expectation has been laid and the motto rings in their heads hopefully long after fifth grade with Miss Taylor: "...It's not about the answer, it's how you GOT there." The time has come! My first year of teaching couldn’t be more real and the first day of school is on Monday! I have the weekend to gather myself and get my lesson plans together for the week to come.
Open House was tonight and I got to meet all but two families on my class roster. The parents seemed ready to send their kids back to school and while many of the kids were nervous, they were also equally excited. While many people sympathize with the students’ anxiety over a new school year, the teachers at Learning Gate are just as nervous with butterflies of excitement. It’s a strange concept that veteran teachers still get jittery for the first day but it’s also inspiring to think that they are still in tune with their teacher ways. I feel excited yet calm about many situations. I did my best to gather essential information about my students without bias from former teachers. A few glances at my roster had my grade team jealous as they said I have some top-notch students that I can call my own for a year! This makes me very happy but I will wait to see for myself just how special this class is! This is a video that was shared with us by my math professor. I really like the dynamic of this concept; splitting students into groups without a negative connotation attached tot he "reteach" group. The students interviewed understand that the reteach is a 'never-give-up' attitude shared by the teachers. They refuse to let students move along with the text book's lessons and be left behind. Some questions I had while I watched this were:
Original site domain: http://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-budget-assessment-video
Today I had the opportunity to sit in on another set of parent-teacher conferences. In the past few months, I have come to view myself as a teacher, a professional. As such, I act like one. Not that I didn’t before, but I now carry myself much differently than I once did with the label as an intern. The kids see it, the staff see it and even the parents see it. My CT has made mention several times at how much more organized and mentally prepared I am for things since the beginning of the year. I feel so comfortable and a thousand times more confident than I did a year and a half ago. I’ve come a long way – something that I didn’t think I’d ever see at the beginning of my Residency.
With all of that being said, I did a particular “teacher” thing today. I called a parent to inform them on something extraordinary about their child today. It went a little something like this: “Hi. Is this ________? This is Courtney Taylor, __________’s teacher. I just wanted to let you know how proud I was of _________ today. In math, they answered a question by helping out a student that was showing us a problem at the board. They were having some trouble explaining their thinking even though they got the correct answer and _________ responded with such an authority that it truly impressed me. They gave specific reasons and spoke so clearly even though they are normally soft spoken. I meant to write it in their agenda but ran out of time.” Needless to say, their mother was elated. She explained that the student’s granddaddy had been working with them every night in math and that he would be so proud of them. I encouraged her to tell him immediately as he had every right to be proud of their student. It is moments like these that make the hours after midnight of planning, researching for new ideas, and difficult times in the classroom all worth it. To bond with parents in this way truly made me want to cry of happiness. This relates back to my belief that learning is between the triad of the teacher, parent and student. I know I chose this career for a reason and hearing how proud a set of parents were of their child made my week. I will make a better effort to call parents with good news more often rather than the notes home in the agenda. It is so much more personal and connecting. I'll let you decide how to feel about this story.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/10/10/643429lteacherdisciplined_ap.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss Below you will find a series of documents with regards to my math research in Spring 2014. This is my last semester of my final internship. I have many working inquiries, this one pertaining to my Math II course specifically.
What All Teachers Should Know Before Starting Area. Today we learned a valuable lesson in relearning all of that geometry from our high school years. Surprisingly, I remembered much of it. I actually enjoyed geometry and trig. Algebra wasn’t something that came as easily to me. Some things to keep in mind when teaching area: Make sure to clearly state the attributes connected to the math concept. In this case, it is comparing and estimating using non-standard unit of measure such as our hands or books. 1.) Compare 2.) Estimate 3.) Measure with non-standard unit – tiling 4.) Measure with non-standard unit – iteration By going through these steps, students will not learn to view measurement as another thing to cram, but rather a relevant tool to understand the world around them. They will also gain a strong basic understanding of the sizes of various units. Later on in their K-12 education, they will be asked to compare and convert units. Using this process will make those transitions much easier for our students. To clarify on tiling: tiling is the use of as many units or objects as needed to cover the area of a given object or shape. You could ask the students to estimate then measure the area of the table (as a 2D object) using index cards. By then providing students with an amount sufficient enough, they can explore and see if their estimation was close or correct. There are three things to keep in mind when letting students use the tiling strategy to measure area:
I questioned in class why tiling didn’t come after iteration. To me, it seemed that you would give the students a harder challenge through iteration measurement then introduce a strategy that would allow for a more concrete visual. It was explained to me that iteration is far more advanced than tiling and giving students, especially younger ones, a focus of frustration rather than encouraging discoveries can be very counterintuitive. For advancing area knowledge, a technique I found interesting was the concept of missing or covered up information. Students would transition from the array model of multiplication to graph paper models of area. Between those two concepts, the teacher can guide the students to make the connection between multiplication and the area within a given shape (usually a rectangle). After that connection has been made or almost made, the teacher can give the students a picture of an array or rectangle on graph paper with the length and height units of measure. A piece of paper or other object with be covering the majority of the shape. Students can be asked to find the area of the shape with only the given information. From there, the connection of length X width (or base) is multiplied to find the area of a parallelogram. There are a lot of things that new teachers should know about teaching mother math curriculum. I'm going to focus today on length specifically. The first would be that when comparing two objects' lengths, it is important to make sure that your students are starting the one jets at the beginning of the unit of measure. For example, if using a ruler, students must recognize that a pencil in the middle of the ruler is not where it end, rather the length that is missing from the beginning of the ruler to the beginning of the pencil's starting point. From there, it is also important to know that if comparing two objects, the unit of measure is the same. If you are using inches to measure, compare in inches. If using paper clips, keep to paper clips throughout.
With that being said, the unit of measure must be established. Don't accept answers without a standard or nonstandard unit of measure. Five what? Five kilometers. Sixteen what? Sixteen canoes. Finally, a best practice for teaching length specifically is as follows:
In the past 8 weeks, a lot has happened! We’ve had Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving break, the Book-O-Ween assembly and lots of other great events! I’ve noticed how tricky integration can be. Teachers have to deliberate, conscientious, and careful in their integration objectives. I personally struggle with this concept. For instance, I could easily integrate social studies on the same week as nonfiction text features in reading. There’s no better way to do it! But for integrating writing, this is a lot harder for me. I have learned from 6 + 1 Traits of Writing along with its ‘workbook’ Getting Started with the Traits that including these writing traits are complicated. I have heard over and over than instruction must be deliberate. If the objective is not clear to the student, they may be mindlessly completing activities all day long. So how can I integrate the 6 + 1 Traits?
These standards stem from the Common Core State Standards as well as my and my CT’s persona standard of what good writing should look like. We assessed the students’ writing at the beginning of the year and found that complete sentences as well as the use of conventions were a weakness in our class across the board. We set these standards from the beginning in hope that complete sentences will be seen in all subject areas, not just in the ELA block. In science, we have the students copy the essential question and read it three times throughout the learning cycle. We have the students go back at the end of the cycle and respond to it in the same format that they would in reading. The trait that I’ve had the most difficulty with is Voice. Letting the students write in the way that they would typically talk is a problem only because of the limited opportunities that we, the teachers, are giving them. Narrative writing is not something that we have done all year. The closest I have come to narrative writing is a learning cycle where we learned about internal monologues. The students read a one page article about a boy getting ready to go shark cage diving. He talked to himself and his thoughts were not italicized like they usually are, but had quotes around them like any other dialogue in the story. The students first had to identify the times when the boy was talking aloud or in his head. After they found the internal monologues, we defined it for them and discussed our own feelings when we talk to ourselves or have personal thoughts. We gave real-world experiences to connect with the text such as when parents scold you so you walk away muttering under your breath or when you are nervous and think the worst possible outcome. The students also participated in turn and talks with their tables groups in order to share their thoughts, cutting down on blurting out connections. In the end, the students created a short narrative of a situation where they talked to themselves. They gave great examples! One student shared when their mother was yelling at them to clean their room. They argued aloud that the mess was not theirs but their younger brother’s. Their mother didn’t accept their argument, forcing the students to clean the mess. They gave so many examples of the things that they said under their breath and in their heads as they cleaned up the messy room! The last thing that I’d like to share is a foldable activity during reading. In the past week, we have been learning about text features and how they help us find out more information about the topic. My CT made a folder style foldable (pictures to come) and gave each students three standard 4x6 notecards. They students were asked to glue the three questions on the blank side of the note cards and also the label of each of the two stories we covered in that week. When the students were ready to answer the questions, they were only allowed to answer on the lined side of the notecard. This helped guide them to write in smaller spaces, keep their answers short and concise, and we also reminded them to use the standards we’ve set for answering text depended questions including the 4 traits previously discussed! I was going through my teaching videos and found my enthusiasm to be very dramatic. I find that this expression is common in my videos and even when I self-reflect on my level of energy during a lesson. I like to keep the mood light - obviously - and get the kids excited. You may find more pictures like these later because I can't post any pictures of the kiddos on here. Enjoy! :) Today, I had the great pleasure of joining the administration and my CT in a “data chat” where we get together and discuss the overall scores of the class and grade level as a whole. We made goals for where we would like them to be at the end of the year. We discussed our class specifically and placed students in the Tier II group of RtI as needed. I have been anxiously awaiting this meeting for weeks now as it directly affects my RtI inquiry research. My goal, which is now solidified, is concentrating specifically on no more than three students at Tier II or III. From the agreements made today, I am in charge of exactly three students and their RtI progress monitoring. When our class goes to the computer lab for a thirty minute period each day, these three students will be pulled by me in order to get the intense interventions they need in a given area. While we know that reading and literacy is our focus, the specific point of focus had not been determined. Once we start our regular schedule with the computer lab, I will update more on the small group lessons I will be choosing, planning, and executing. I am so excited to get this started!
In math class, our professor showed us this video. Dan Meyer speaks about the abstract concepts that students are expected to know and understand from their current math instruction but that these abstract views are neither realistic nor real-world application for our diverse student population. I couldn't agree with him more. A colleague pointed out that she, too, completely agrees with everything that Dan was saying but shared her struggle with implementing these new ideas in the classroom in a short year when we are all on our own. She brings up a great point. If, in fact, she is still teaching Kindergarten, how will she have her Kinders think abstractly if they don't even know how to count to 100 yet? What if I land a third grade position and have a student with lacking number sense while the rest of the class is understanding double digit multiplication? How can I challenge them while not confusing/frustrating that other student and wasting his/her time? I love this concept of the flipped classroom like Dan is talking about but I still struggle with my colleague of where and how to begin this process.
In math class today, I was wondering about the learning process as we discussed how counting is a developmental skill and cannot be forced. Okay, that sounds easy enough. We have spent some time this semester discussing the concept that teachers are not a body of knowledge and cannot simply spit out everything they know so that students can "absorb" their knowledge. If only teaching and learning were that simple! I thought about my K-12 education, how hands-on it was and all of the teachers that I remember being effective. I remember distinct qualities about them that made their teaching so effective for me.
I then reflected to my college education. I have always viewed my teachers as superior in knowledge but never as much until I reached the collegiate level. I watched my math teacher lecture some more and thought, This is the 'pouring of the knowledge' that we were talking about. The students sit and listen with some discussions and questions answered here and there but for the most part, the teacher is sharing her knowledge and we take what we want out of it. So I ask: Does the "transferable knowledge" paradigm not include the collegiate level? If not, then why is that? Is there really a huge difference between 12th grade English and Comp I & II in college? I'd love to hear some feedback! |
Author Notes:Here, you can find blog posts from what I am experiencing currently in the classroom. I also use this as a platform to share my thought on education in general. Categories
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