Enjoying the Last Parts of Summer...

My blog this week will be shorter, since I am pretending that school hasn't started back and spending one final week at the beach. This will probably be the last time I am able to vacation at the end of August, as in years to come I will be getting ready to start the school year as a teacher and not a student.

Obviously, I was not able to make it to my school this week but I have been in contact with my clinical educator and she is expecting me for majority of the day next Tuesday. In the mean time, I gave her a copy of my clinical experience checklist and she has sent me a few things this week that she thought would help me in completing it and prepare me for her classroom. Some of these things included the school handbook and schedule, as well as her classroom schedule.

I have focused on reading and becoming familiar with the school handbook. Knowing this informtion may seem like a simple task, but it is an important one. The information in it helps prepare me to be a better leader in the school (NCTCS 1), and helps me create an environment in my class that best suits the needs of the school (NCTCS 2).

Tomorrow, my vacation comes to an end and next week I will be forced to buckle down and focus on school. While I dread it, at the same time I look forward to embracing it and finishing my last semester of course work with a bang. I am super excited to see what my time at Shelby Middle School will bring.

Let's Get It Done

I'm sure everyone is just as excited as me about this being the last semester of course work. I am indeed excited, but I'm also terrified! It's only week one and I am already feeling overwhelmed. There is so much to be done before December and I stress over wondering if I have what it takes to get it done. Then there's student teaching a mere 5 months away, another exciting yet terrifying experience.

During this time, I have found myself reflecting (NCTCS 5) on all that I have done and learned up to this point. Thinking back on 4 semesters of EDUC classes, I feel a little more confident to embrace the next 2 (and final) semesters for what they are. I know my content (NCTCS 3); I have been trained in classroom management (NCTCS 1&2); and I have a vast pool of resources, strategies and teaching methods to assist me in facilitating learning for my students (NCTCS 4).

On another note, I met my clinical educator on Tuesday and took a tour of the school. While I was there I had the opportunity to sit in on a team meeting. That was interesting as I was able to watch a team of 4 teachers plan for the school year. I'm already tucking away ideas for my own classroom. For example, they agree as a team to not fight the "pencil and paper battle." Students are able to check out pencils and take paper from a classroom stack, no questions asked. Another thing I loved is my teacher's "turd warnings." She has a stack of small, medium, and large poop emoji cut outs. If a student is "being a turd" she quietly places a small poop emoji on their desk while continuing to teach. The student knows this is their warning and they shouldn't let their poop emoji get bigger or they will face a consequence.

I was there for several hours and absorbed a lot more than just poop emojis, that was just a favorite of mine. I really like my clinical educator and look forward to working with her. She seems like the kind of teacher who establishes a relationship with all of her students. She said that everyday her students are not allowed in her classroom until they say hello, give her a fist bump, or acknowledge her in some other way.

Tomorrow, I get to attend student orientation and meet some of my students and their parents. So exciting! As I have typed out this blog my stress has started to fade away (I'm sure it will be back) and I am getting really excited for what this year will hold!

Writing

The past few weeks in class we have been looking at reading strategies and exploring how we can incorporate them into our different content areas. This week we bagan looking at writing strategies. In math, we probably won't do a lot of "essay writing," but I do like the idea of having students write out explanations when they are solving problems. By doing this, I of course am implementing that literacy component, but it also shows me that my students understand what they are doing. If they can  explain to me how they got the answer, then I know they understand the concept and they will most likely be able to do it in the future.

In middle school, math class starts to pick up speed. Students are expected to build on their basic math skills, memorize formulas, and learn step procedures for solving problems. Flow charts are commonly used as a pre-writing strategy, but they can also be great in math when learning step procedures. For example, see the picture below of a flow chart used to guide a student through factoring quadratic equations.

You're asking me?

Do you ever look around for an adult and then realize you are the adult? Yeah, that's happening to me a lot lately. Pretty soon we will not only be adults, but also teachers. Talk about responsibility overload. In each of our EDUC classes, we are being prepared to teach the little minds that will one day be in our classroom, but until this week I had not thought about the possibility of teaching "bigger minds." There may be an opportunity when we are asked to lead a faculty meeting, or to share a strategy that we use in our classroom (which, by the way, is something we should strive for because it probably means you're doing something right).
This week we had the chance to practice this. We were able to collaborate with each other and pull together reading strategies that could be used across multiple disciplines. Then, we presented our work to our "colleague(s)." In doing this we practiced multiple teacher standards by: demonstrating leadership in the school and in the teaching profession (NCPTS 1), working collaboratively with other teachers in the lives of our students (NCPTS 2), recognizing the interconnectedness of content areas (NCPTS 3), and taking steps towards professional growth (NCPTS 5).

On a side note, the semester is on that downhill plunge towards summer!

How Do You Read?

"How do you read?" is a hard question to answer. At this point in our lives reading is not something we think about. We just do it. So as (probable) future middle and high school teachers, we expect our students to "just read" something we hand them. Unfortunately, it is not always that simple. It is a scary fact that 19% of high school graduates cannot read (according to a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 2014). It is quite a possibility that a student will enter your classroom and not be able to read, or read below their grade level. So how do you tend to those students?

After today's guest speaker in (EDUC 316) class, I thought on this question. I did a little bit of research, and found a few ideas to ponder and attapt to fit my future classroom:

• Amend your materials to talking and listening activities
• Design assessments as oral (either for the whole class or just the student who can't read).
• *****Remember! Just because they can't read, doesn't mean they can't learn.
• Get parents involved. Encourage parents to read to their children, starting at infancy.
• If you do organize an activity around reading a text, either plan to devote yourself to helping the illiterate student through the activity, or assign the student a "work buddy." The work buddy should be someone who possesses patience and enjoys helping their peers. 
• You may have to spend extra time with this student, in class and after class. Don't be to busy for your students!
• Find resources for the student that can help them gain the literacy skills they need. 
• Be the teacher that goes above and beyond!

I am also taking ESOL 335 this semester and as I was researching ideas for differentiating for illiterate students, I realized I could also use these ideas to differentiate for ELLs (English Language Learners). ELLs are not necessarily "illiterate" but they too can struggle when it comes to reading academic texts. 

As teachers there will be times when a student enters our classroom and we have no idea how to teach them. That doesn't mean we should give up on that student and allow them to get left behind. Don't be afraid to research new methods. Get creative. Reach out to other teachers. There are umlimited resources out there for you to use. Some of the biggest parts of being a teacher are creating a classroom that is built for the learning of all diverse students (NCPTS 2), facilitating learning for all students (NCPTS 4), and reflecting on what can be done to improve academic achievement for all students (NCPTS 5).  

What Am I Doing?

 This week in class we took a look at rubrics. I received a few rubrics in high school but I honestly didn't use them much. In high school I found them as more of a nuisance. Looking back, I don't think I fully understood how to use them. Throughout my college career I have fallen in love with rubrics! If I don't have one I feel like I'm driving blind, especially on big assignments. Rubrics tell students exactly what the teacher/professor expects. It gives you a target to aim for and tells you exactly what you need to do to hit that target.

I don't know how frequently I will give my students rubrics in my math classroom. I could see creating one for a project, but I am also toying with the idea of giving students a rubric for the entire year. This rubric would tell students what I am expecting from them every day. It would include ideas like participation, completed homework, critical thinking, mathematical reasoning, respect towards teacher and peers, cooperation during group projects... They may or may not receive an official grade at the end of the year on some of these, but it would give students a sense of direction in my class as well as tell them what I expect of them as learners.

Rubrics allow the teacher to demonstrate leadership (NCPTS 1) as well as reflect on their practice (NCPTS 5). A teacher's expectations may sometimes be to high for the students. A rubric would allow the teacher to see how many students are reaching or exceeding her expectations and can make changes accordingly.

Love to Assess

On Valentines Day we discussed different types of assessments, which is a teachers favorite thing to do right? It may or may not be, however it is extremely important in the classroom.

There are 2 types of assessment that we, as teachers, are expected to utilize: formative and summative (or informal and formal in EdTPA terminology). The main goal of formative assessment is to allow the teacher to monitor student learning during the lesson, while providing feedback to the student. These assessments are not usually given a grade. Summative assessments tend to have higher stakes. They are given a specific grade and are used to measure the students' mastery of the learning standards. They are usually given at the end of a unit or chapter and at the end of the term/semester.

We also talked about "Assessent of-for-as Learning." Assessment of learning is a summative assessment where a grade is applied. It is given at the end of learning. Assessment for learning is a formative assessment which is on going during the lesson. Examples of these are tickets out the door, quizzes, homework.... Assessment as learning is where the student self assesses, or where peers provide feedback to one another. It is also on going during the lesson. Some examples of these are rubrics, peer feedback groups...

It is super important for a teacher to assess her (or his) students. A teacher always needs to know where their students are performing. If I had to pick one, I would say that formative assessment is more important. It allows the teacher to monitor student learning everyday. They are able to make sure that each student understands a concept before moving on. This helps every child to succeed. It also allows for a teacher to reflect on their practice (NCPTS 5) by helping them discover gaps in the students' learning. They are then able to adapt their teaching methods to better suit the class.