Week 3

This past week has been great! It was less stressful and fun. A highlight of my week is that I now know every students name. Another highlight is that one student has been calling me Miss H and one student corrected him saying my name was Miss Wyman. The boy looked at me and said I thought that your name was Miss H. We came to the conclusion that he got that because when I first introduced myself I said my last name was like saying “Why Man?” just spelled without the H. He asked if he could still call me Miss H, 8^th graders make life fun.

Something that made me think differently is that some kids can tell you everything they need to know but don’t want to do the work because something else is on their mind. I learned that if I just ask any question they will usually tell you what they need to say and after that they seem to focus so much better and actually do their work. I am learning real quick that just talking sometimes can make all the difference.

One thing I learned was that when working with messy labs is to keep all the labs on the outskirts of the room and not crammed at their desks. The more that the middle of the room can be clear of people the less mess you have. Another thing I learned that I wasn’t expecting was that if you ask the student to stand up and do 5 jumping jacks to get their blood flowing to their brains is that they will actually do it and appear more alert. I will definitely incorporate that into my future lessons.

Assessment Article Review

The article I read was called The Role of Classroom Assessment in Teaching and Learning by Lorrie A. Shepard. I will discuss the sections I found most useful in her article. She used many references and case studies to support her article.

One of the main topics she discussed was allowing the students to assess themselves. I really like this section because I believe that students should be assessing themselves. Not only will they have too and should do it when they live on their own but it will increase their learning. I think some of the problems among adults is that they never were held accountable or were taught to assess what they were doing and analyze the good from the bad and the outcomes/consequences of either one. On that note, a great chunk of learning comes from assessing yourself. When you look at what you have done or what you should do then you realize things that you may have not seen before.

One way to help students assess themselves is by giving them a rubric. Not only does the rubric help us but it helps the students see what they need to accomplish and if they did accomplish the criteria. A rubric is only one example. According to Frederiksen and Collins “the features of excellent performance should be so transparent that students can learn to evaluate their own work in the same way that their teachers would.” I really like this quote and the way they used transparent to describe what it should be like.

On the other hand, making students think about what you expect of them is another way to get them metacognitively thinking and analyzing. The article mention that “the more important reasons for helping students develop an understanding of standards in each of the disciplines are to directly improve learning and to develop metacognitive knowledge for monitoring one’s own efforts…they provide students with the opportunity to get good at what it is that the standards require.” If the students are actively engaged in grading their own work then they have a more in depth understanding of the standards required.

As a final note, I found this quote that wraps up what assessment should be. “Wolf and Reardon (1996)…talk about ‘making thinking visible,’ and ‘making excellence attainable.”

Week 1 & 2

I am now in the classroom Monday through Friday 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th periods. Because I am in the classroom so often I am learning more about my students and how my cooperating teacher handles situations. My first lesson last week was much better than last quarter. I am learning to wait longer when I ask a question or when I have asked for their attention and am not receiving it. Most of the time peer direction is much more affective then anything. At the end of the week my cooperating teacher was gone and the sub allowed me to teach the class. The sub was more blunt than I have been and I learned more from her than I ever would have thought. This week started off with a glitch where my teacher had to leave the classroom for the period and I was left in charge. The lesson went good and at the end of the period they were supposed to be working on a study guide and some of the students were not working. I was a student that wanted to work and got annoyed when the other students wouldn’t work and would talk so I demanded that they be silent and focus on working. When my teacher returned for the next class she explained to me that as long as they weren’t making other students mad it was their choice to use the time to write a study guide they could use on the test or not. That made sense. She then explained that some kids really didn’t need the study guide and got bored really easily so the best way to handle that was make them useful. One of the best learning moments was when I was grading the tests. Some of the students that were always fidgeting and talking during lecture did really good and some of the students that constantly participated in discussion and answered questions didn’t do as well. I am constantly amazed at how some students retain information even if they show all signs of not paying attention. These past two weeks have been a great learning experience.

Classroom Management Article

New Practitioners Forum: Making the Transition from Student to Teacher

Although this article is specifically for pharmaceutical students becoming professors or teaching a college course, the information it provides it still very practical to any soon to be teacher/first time teachers. The article gives many scenarios that will come up during teaching and provides some suggestions on handling the issue or going about handling the issue. The first item the author discusses is the biggest jump from student to teacher. It is a completely different occupation and one that I didn’t realize how much of a conscious effort it would take. There is a lot more reflecting when being a teacher than when being a student. Reflecting is a major must in the next topic of time management. One of the scenarios presented was a workshop where not everyone got around to each venue. A solution proposed was to reflect on why the students didn’t have enough time and what would work better next time. The problem is still that the students didn’t finish so a study guide was given to students about the venues they were not able to observe. As a first year teacher, and most likely throughout my career, I am going to find this will happen when presenting new labs, lectures, or worksheets. I will definitely write down the time it took and reflect what needs to change or if more time is needed. Unlike the workshop, I can have my students finish the next day but I may have to write the study guide anyways so that way we don’t fall to far behind. I have learned that being flexible requires that maybe an extra day is needed and as long as the students are getting the most out of it that is better than moving on and leaving some students in the dark. One way to keep the students out of the dark is to make sure you engage them in the lesson. Students are different and therefore learn differently as well. Trying to accommodate all learning styles is hard but worth it in the end. If the students know you are trying to accommodate them they will be more apt to pay attention. Another way to keep their attention is learning their names and actively asking questions and calling on your students. Calling on your students is a good way to cut down on side chatting because they don’t want to look like the fool that has no idea what is going on. Another way to deal with disruptive behavior is to talk with the student(s) after class. This works extremely well in my 8^th grade classroom. However, if the whole class needs redirecting a brief 30 second talk about focusing and coming back from a task is a great reminder.

http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=7&sid=e605c967-9836-4bbf-904d-8d083345de14%40sessionmgr113&hid=121&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=85895165

Context For Learning Assignment

Assigned school:

Middle School

Expectations/requirements of planning and delivering instruction:

The Cheney School District uses EALR’s for their standard requirements. Within the Cheney School District the science teachers agreed upon what EALR’s were going to be taught in which specific grade. Due to so much curriculum in the 9^th grade standards the 8^th grade teachers are teaching some of the 9^th grade EALR’s. My cooperating teacher sits down every Friday with the other 8^th grade science teacher and discusses what they accomplished that week and what they have planned for the following week. They are free to make up their own lessons and labs which is nice for creativity in science.

Classes:

8^th Grade Earth and Space Science

8^th Grade AVID

Course Length:

5^th, 6^th, and 7^th periods 5 days a week for a quarter

Class Length:

47 minute periods

Resources:

Smart board, computer, projector, doc cam, textbook, balances, sinks, and lab equipment.

5^th Period:

 all 8^th graders ranging from 13-14 years old

                        Students: 29 total

                        Males: 16

                        Females: 13

                        English Language Learners: None

                        Gifted Students: None identified

                        Students with IEP’s, 504 plans, or special needs: 5

Response To edTPA

I had a teacher once tell me that when I teach to give feedback in a positive-negative-positive fashion. Well I had a friend describe his IM swim event as an Oreo cookie with the cookies (which are the butterfly and free style) being the solid/pristine strokes and the gooey middle (which are the back and breast) as the messy/inconsistent strokes. I love this analogy that the start and finish should be solid positive things and the gooey middle is the part that needs work and want to apply it to my feedback practices. Thus I will tackle responding to this assignment using the “Oreo cookie method”.

The first chocolate cookie of this edTPA is that it makes writing the TPA very structured. I especially like the extra questions that could be addressed under each category. The titles in each category are bold and direct which makes it easy to look at and find what you are looking for. 

Now I will discuss the gooey part of the cookie that either needs work or I do not understand. I understand the need for a lesson plan but this one is so detailed that it seems ridiculous. If you only teach the lesson once then this would be somewhat okay, but if you teach this lesson more than one period everything could change by the end of the day. My cooperating Teacher uses sticky notes in her calendar because NOTHING is ever set in a middle school classroom, you have to be flexible. Anyone that has ever been in a classroom knows that the first time you teach something you learn would you would do differently and the next class period you adjust. This happens even if it isn’t the first time you teach the lesson, different class periods have different dynamics that could make how you teach the lesson significantly different. All those details are just busy work, I propose a lesson plan with bullet points or a universal check list so teachers can look at their lesson and make sure it has everything it needs. The teacher needs to be flexible in order to meet the students’ needs and thus a detailed TPA is not so flexible. One thing I don’t understand is that this says it is a lesson plan but is not used in any of the schools I have been too/observed in.  So why are we doing it specifically? Another confusing thing about the edTPA is how repetitive it is. Sure, there are none of the same exact questions but they are reworded in disguise (which isn’t a very good disguise because I found Waldo). For example, “how will students demonstrate this? Describe observable and measurable actions” and “what type of assessment will you use to measure student learning” and “describe how you will gather information and data from students that inform you of their knowledge of the learning targets” which are all from different categories but are asking how will you assess them.

          Finishing the cookie on a good note is the fact that it makes teachers responsible for aligning the lesson with objectives. In some classes I think why am I doing this and making the teachers review their EARL’s and targets/goals helps (or it should) keep the “busy work” at bay.