Winding down

It is hard to believe that the semester is starting to wind down already!  My final observation is on Monday and then I start to phase out of teaching my classes.  Where did the time go?  The one thing I am excited for this week is to go observe in other classroom other than my own.  It's going to be nice just to see some other things that teachers do that can be helpful in the future.  The one observation that I am most excited for (if we can get it worked out) is going to Culler and seeing how they use one-to-one in their classroom.  I have a very little idea of how one works, and my future classroom is going to that way.  Looks like I may have to take a lot of notes while I am there.  I'm also excited to go observe in some block classes at Southeast.  In my practicums and student teaching, I've just been in either a regular or diff classroom.  This opportunity will be nice just to get a little experience in a class like that just in case I were to teach one in the future.  

Professional Developement

I think that the one thing that I need to work on would definitely be my classroom management.  The one thing I need to do in order to be better at this is to follow through with my disciplining.  I usually give the student a warning and the next time that they talk they will get a detention.  The first warning usually quiets them for the rest of the period.  There have been some times where the student has talked and I haven't given any discipline for it.  I can definitely tell that that has had an effect on my classroom after that.  My warnings aren't carrying anymore weight and the kids.  They'll just keep talking.  I have given a couple of detentions but that hasn't quite worked either though.  So in the future I need to be more consistent with my disciplining and carry out on the punishments.  If classroom isn't where I want it to be, I need to be a more assertive and get it where I want it to be.

Another area I need to work on is the diversity of the ways I teach my lessons.  Right now I usually have just one way of explaining things to my students.  If a student doesn't really get it right away, I have have a hard time of trying to explain it in a different way.  I do think that this will just come with more time teaching and experience.  Another thing that I can do to get better at this also is to do a little research on the topic before I start teaching it.  This could get a couple more ideas in my head for that topic so that all the students can learn from the lesson. 

Revisit: Classroom management

This past week I subbed for three days for one of my CTs.  Out of all the classes that she supervises, the hardest one for me to do was a study hall.  One reason why this was the hardest class for me was because it took forever to get over.  The other reason why it was hard for me was because it was all classroom management, and this is the biggest thing that I need to work on.  In the class aren't the type of students that will just get out work and start working on it.  I constantly had to tell students to turn around and stop talking, or to get something out and work on it.  Still no matter what I told them they would just go back to messing around and not being productive.  I had no idea what to say to them that would make them get to work.  Looking back at it, I should have disciplined one student at the beginning of the class to make them realize that I was serious and put some weight behind my words.  This is actually the one thing I need to do with all my classes when they are getting out of hand,  I think that as time goes on and I become more comfortable with disciplining, my classroom management will get a lot better.    

Inscribed angle lesson

The past couple of days, I have been teaching a lesson on inscribed angles.  The lesson was something that the PLC had planned out already.  So I didn't know how well that it was going to do with this.  For this, we had the students use a circle with 36 dots on the circle evenly spaced apart.  First, we had the students draw an equilateral triangle in the circle.  Then we had them find the relationship between the inscribed angle and the arc that it makes.  Then to make sure the pattern is true for a couple of other cases, we had the students do the same with a square and hexagon.  The one thing that I was worried about was if the students were going to be able draw an equilateral triangle other than by "it looks like one."  Luckily, there were a couple of students that I could call on to explain how they did it.  Then after that the rest of the lesson went pretty smoothly.  This was way better than a lesson that I taught in my practicum on the same subject.  In my practicum lesson, I had the students use protractors to find what the arc measures were.  The protractor skill of some students aren't really up to par.  So it was nice to have the circle where it was easy to tell what the measure of the arc was.  This is definitely a lesson I will use in my geometry lesson next year.

And in the spirit of the event that happened this week, I'll end this post with a motto from Wahoo Schools...
IT'S A GREAT DAY TO BE A WARRIOR

Job Search

Since we didn't have school this week, I thought about writing about my experiences with the job search.  During spring break, I had my first interview.  I had no idea of what to expect when walking into the interview.  I tried to tell myself not to be nervous, but no matter how hard I tried, I was still really nervous.  Luckily, I was provided the list of questions I could look at during the interview in the order that they were going to ask them.  This was very helpful because I could kind of prepare my answers in my head while the interview team was writing things down.  Hopefully this is the case for every interview I have because I don't know what I would have done without it.  The other thing that I didn't like about having my first interview was that I didn't know how well I did because I don't have any other experiences to base it off of.  So when people asked me how the interview went. I didn't know what to tell them because I had no clue on if I did good or bad.  I didn't think I did too well in the interview.  I was a nervous wreck and thought I could have done way better.  Luckily, someone I know is good friends with one of the interviewers and they said I didn't do too bad, so fingers crossed that this will be the only interview that I have to do!

Parental Interaction

I haven't seen that much parental interaction with my CT.  One thing that my CT does is at a certain point in the chapter that we're on, she'll send out an general e-mail to parents of students that are missing more than 4 assignments.  From what I've seen, I'm not sure that this does too much to get the students motivated.  It may do something with just the kids because it seems like it's something that my CT said she has been doing for a while.  I also think she wouldn't do it if she doesn't see an impact that comes from it.  There is also one student whose parents are very involved with their kids learning.  My CT is in contact at least once a week and telling them how he is doing in the class.  There have been a couple of times where my CT has had to call home to parents.  Once was about a kid who wasn't paying attention in class and would just look at a calculator the whole class period.  She had to call home and tell the parents what was going on.  She found out some information on why the kid was struggling in class.  From this, I think that it is best to call home when there are behavior issues that are going on in class, and not necessarily when the student is falling behind on work (unless it's really really bad).

Hearing Impaired students

The topic for this week is the accommodations for students with special needs.  I am very fortunate to get to work with a couple of kids that are hearing impaired.  One of the students is partially deaf, so he can hear and talk but usually uses the translator.  Then the other hearing impaired student is completely deaf.  They're both in the same class together so we have a translator in my classroom for them.  The one thing that is hard for me is when I am giving a lesson and I'm trying to speed through some stuff to get it all in, the translator has to stop me and tell me to slow down.  That can kind of screw with the pace of the class.  The other hard thing is that you can't communicate with them yourself.  I think sometimes with the translator, some things may get lost in translation and may not get to the student the way you wanted it to.  Luckily the translator that they have is pretty good at math so she does a good job of trying not to change what I am saying up a whole lot.  With that being said, I really enjoy having those students and their translator in there.  They are all teaching my how to sign, so they're are a couple of things that I can sign now.

Assessment and paper load

First there are a couple of great things that one of my CTs does for a students self-assessment.  One is for the homework.  She usually has them up a one sentence summary of of how they felt about the assignment.  Usually, students just write it was fine.  However, there are sometimes where a students writes "I really didn't get this" or "This was hard for me."  I think even that little of a statement is very useful.  If they say either of those, we can pinpoint who's getting and who isn't getting the material.  We can then look out for them while they are in class.  One other thing that my CT while going test is have the students fill out a chart on the problems they got wrong.  Some of the choices are "silly mistake" or "I didn't understand what it was asking for" etc.  I think this helps us especially with when we take the cumulative.  This also helps us pinpoint what we need to go over before they are tested over it again.

One thing that we do to reduce the paper load isn't really reducing the amount of paper at all.  We reduce the amount of work for grading.  What we do in our classroom is that we grade 6 random questions in the assignment.  We grade them on accuracy.  Grading this way usually takes only about 10 min.  I think that this is a good balance of getting students feedback and not spending the whole night grading one homework assignment. 

Pacing

Pacing is something that I have trouble with.  First off, it would be helpful if I could read a clock.  In one class, I looked up at the clock and thought that I had 10 min left, bur in reality it turned out that I had about 3.  So that's one thing that may be helpful.  But in all seriousness, I think that it is better to be over prepared and have too many things to go over.  It also isn't that hard to come up with things to do.  For example, if I'm done with a good chunk of time left in class, I'll have the students work on the first homework problem or so and see if they have any questions.  This is a good way to use the last 3 or so minutes in class where students won't start doing their homework on their own.  One other thing that helps me with my pacing that I need to start doing more is using a timer.  I have used one a couple times in the past but always forget to use it more.  I like using it because it sets a deadline for the students when they need to get their activity done.  But then if I didn't give them enough time I can give them more and then adjust that for the next lessons coming up.

Tech Edge Conference

Going to the Tech Edge Conference was a great experience for me.  It was cool seeing what Aurora is doing with their 1-to-1 classrooms.  Even though it was a conference on one-to-one classrooms, I think that I learned a lot that I could use in a classroom that isn't.  Especially in the first classroom that we went into.  I thought that the heads up game was a great way for students to review vocabulary and sayings that will help them with assignments and tests.  I also thought that the QR reader for the students to see the answers to the review questions was smart.  It's a way for the students to complete the problems without having the key to them right in front of them.  I also thought that the ebackpack was a really good idea.  I wonder if that could still be effective in a non 1-to-1 classroom?  Because I would definitely use that now that I am seeing how unorganized some students are.  One question that I have is how the administration got the teachers that I have been at the school a long time to buy into becoming 1-to-1.  Those teachers have been teaching without it for a long period of time, so I wonder how hard it was for them to accept it.  After this conference I would definitely enjoy teaching at a 1-to-1 school.  The opportunity for every student to have technology in their possession, and using that to supplement their education would be an awesome opportunity.  

Cooperative Learning

For my two teachers, they are on the opposite ends when it comes to group work.  In my advanced algebra classes with my other CT, we do not do any group work at all.  Most everything in that class students do individually.  Then, with my other CT, we usually do group work everyday.  I think the group work is the most effective when we are using a discovery activity in class.  Sometimes we try to have the students try to answer each others homework questions.  When they do that they usually don't do it or just copy off of each other.  In the class, the students sit in groups of 4.  Usually, the group work will be as a table, or with your table partner.  Usually, the purpose of the activity is a discovery activity where the students have to do a task to find what they are learning for that day.  We usually sometimes assign them roles.  For example, we were having the students build triangles and "impossible" triangles with Anglegs.  We had them work in pairs and we assigned one person as the builder and one as the writer, then they changed roles.  This kind of makes it so that one person isn't going to do all the work while the other sits there and does nothing.  We really don't have any type of accountability for the students.  The only sort of accountability we have is just asking them what they found when we bring it back as a group.  With our groups, the main role of the teacher is to keep the students on task while they are doing the task.  I think without this supervision and push to complete the task, the studetns would never complete it on their own.

Lesson Planning

This week I am starting to do my own lesson plans for a class.  One form that my CT gave me uses the 5 E's.  The five E's are engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.  My CT said that this is the one that the department uses when they have to do evaluations.  I like using this one because it gets you to think about what can come up during the lesson, more than what is actually in the lesson.  At our school our lessons and activities are very similar for each teacher.  So this lesson plan template gets you to anticipate what is going to come up and questions that the students may ask.  I don't think that I am the best at planing these those because I just haven't had the experiences designing them for students.  However, I do think that when I get more experiences with actual students, my lesson plans will get exponentially better.

Student Teaching Week 1

One of the classrooms that I am in, the desks are put into groups.  This, I think, helps build a sense of community among the students.  They are always working in pairs or in groups.  In the other room that I'm in the class is in rows.  This doesn't really build a sense of community in the class.  However, the teacher seems to know something about every student in the class.  She has something to talk about with each students and that helps build that community.  One thing that is going well is that there haven't been any kids that have been misbehaving.  They seem to all be well behaved and won't cause that many problems in the future.  One idea that I have come up with is to use my iPad and notability for the notes when I eventually take over the classroom.  Both my teachers write under the doc cam or just on the board.  This will make it easier to upload onto the website for the students and it also may be easier for the students to see because the doc cam is kind of hard to see in my classrooms.  There aren't that many special rules that are in my classes.  Both of my teachers haven't really communicated what the consequences of breaking the rules are to the class.