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.  

Tests

The past couple of week our class has had a number of tests.  So during the time the students are taking them I have gotten to think about if I like the way LPS has the standardized test that the district writes.  The positives that come out of the district writing the test is that you don't have to write it, so you can spend more time on grading for other classes or just time relaxing.  Another positive from this is that you get help form other teachers if you have a question on how to grade a problem if you have trouble with something.  The negative (and I think it's a pretty big one) is that it limits your individuality in designing a lesson plan.  Having the pre-written test makes you have to teach to the test a little bit.  Our CT does this in his lessons.  He has to make sure he has examples that are going to be on the test so the students get to see it at some point.  After weighing the positives and negatives, I think I'm still indifferent about it.  I would be fine with it if the district I teach in in the future does either of these.