Reflecting on Winter Quarter

How have you grown as a blogger reflective teacher this quarter? 

• This quarter I feel like I have done the most reflecting so far in the program. I feel like I'm always reflecting to make sure my students are learning what they need to be learning. I'm reflecting on my own teaching and how the students reacted to it. I've tried new things in the class room, such as a self assess folders for my students, and continue to reflect on if it is an effective way to see how my students feel about a lesson. I'm constantly reflecting and changing and learning, and I think any outstanding teacher does this throughout their whole career.

How have you moved more deeply into the actual evidence of what your students are learning as you work with them? 

• This quarter I've looked more deeply at the data my CT has collected as I prep for building small group lessons. I also have used summative and formative assessments to see if my students are understanding the concepts I've taught with math. My approach for when I can see that these students are not fully understanding is to pull them aside after the lesson and reteach with a different approach.

How have you reached out to your audience to deepen your perspectives on your practice? 

• One thing I recently did to deepen my own perspective of my practice was to talk with the other educators in my family. My uncle is a principle at a middle school and I had him ask me questions he might ask during an interview and this allowed me to be able to communicate and also see where in my teaching I have lived my philosophy. I have also talked with my CT and other teachers about their own practice to see all the different styles that are out there. I created a teaching portfolio with my philosophy on each subject which was interesting to sit back and reflect on what I really believed was the most important thing for my teaching, my students, and my classroom when it came to learning. 

What's the one best post that demonstrates this growth? 

• I think all my posts this quarter was reflecting on how to engage students and all the great ways of learning. I had a blog post about the math tour we took around campus and Project Learning Tree and how it applied real life application to the concepts the students were learning. I think this is very important because it got the children engaged and by being engaged there was deeper understanding. 

Enjoying, Exploring, Engaging

Today we had our buddies that we work with at a local elementary school for our math methods class come to our campus and take a tour around campus and see where we could find/do math in real life. My first grade buddy group had a blast, seeing how long it took them to run the field, counting the sounds we heard from the wetlands, and figuring out how many benches were at the tables. 

One of the boys in my group is an ELL student and I have worked with him before in his classroom doing word problems and other things in math. This student was always very quite, never seemed to have confidence, and rarely communicated or asked questions. 

While on the tour I was amazed at how much he was communicating and how excited he was to be on campus and explore. I could see he still wasn't fully confident in his answer to questions we asked, as he would quickly repeat what the other students said, but I still felt as if he was enjoying being there and was engaged with learning and counting. This was the totally opposite of what I saw from him when we did math in the classroom.

I'm interested in finding ways to bring engaging learning to the classroom, as we can't always go to a college campus everyday for math. I think it's important to bring real life aspects to math and other subjects and allow for all students to have the enjoyment of asking questions and trying to explore the answers to those questions. 

Self Confidence in Students

This week I really focused in to have conversations with my students and also listen to what they were talking about among their peers. 

One of my focus students made two comments that really got me thinking. 

The first comment came when the class was working on writing down what they know about the animal they are researching. I noticed that this focus student wasn't writing anything down. I went over to talk with him and have him verbalize his ideas to me. I told him he had some great knowledge and he show write it down. His response was, "I don't want to. I can't do it. I just want my mom to be able to read it."

This broke my heart. This student does have a hard time writing and I can't really read what he writes unless someone  has helped him. While I know this is a struggling are for him, and he can see he struggles with it as well, I just hated that it his self confidence was so low that he didn't even want to try to start writing his great ideas down. 

The next time we had a sub and she was playing the game "Around the World." This game is to see who can get their math facts down the quickest. Two students go head to head. This focus student was up and he didn't get the problem faster than the student he was up against. He then said, "I'm just the stupidest person in this class."  *instert heart break number 2*

I have a hard time knowing how to bring his confidence up and have him enjoy doing the assignments and not having him feel the he is the least smart person in the class. Does he need more praise? Do I just continue to work with him until he builds his confidence and he can see his own progress? How do you make it so students don't compare themselves in a classroom? Is there ever a time where comparing can be beneficial? 

Project Learning Tree Reflection

I have never been one to enjoy science. Let alone environmental science. In fact environmental science is the only class I've ever taken and been worried I would fail. I just couldn't grasp why people enjoyed studying the wetlands or the changes of Green Lake over time. 

After experiencing some activities and learning about Project Learning Tree I'm actually feeling excited (to my surprise) to find ways to incorporate this into my classroom. I never learned science through different content areas, it was just strictly sciene is staying in science, and maybe that's why I found it so dreadful. I realized how much you can connect it to other subject areas and I really think that can make such a huge difference in a students interest. For example, the activity "Resource-Go-Round" is a great way to tie in social studies, science, and visuals to see where products come from in different parts of the world.

Another thing that I think is so important for environmental education is making it connect to the kids themselves. I remember taking a survey to see what my carbon footprint was and that really hit home with me. I was able to see how I was making and impact and how it tied in with what I was learning. I thinking showing kids how their own actions effect the environment is a great teaching point.

I'm excitied to take what I learned from Project Learning Tree and implement it into my own classroom. 

Find 3 Ways

Earlier this week at a staff meeting in my placement we watched a video of a math lesson. This teacher used something cool called, "Find 3 Ways." 

For whatever problem the students were trying to solve, they first worked independently to find 3 different ways of solving the problem. They then shared out in their table groups, and from there had a whole group share out.

I took a look at our math lesson for the rest of the week and decided I wanted to try this with my 1st graders. 

IT WENT GREAT!!!

I was able to see which strategies the students struggled with, which they preferred to use, and there was a lot more collaboration among the table groups compared to usual with our math lessons. I think the kids even really enjoyed doing something new and it really stretched their thinking because they couldn't resort to using only one method.

This is definitely something I will continue to do in my classroom.

Reflecting As A Blogger

           As a blogger this quarter I would say I’ve grown to be a lot more personal. We all have different parts of education that we are passionate about and I was allowed to blog about those things. I even blogged about how teaching and other things I do outside of the classroom connect to each other. I feel that my blogging was a lot about the day-to-day things instead of big topics that were based on required readings for the week.

            I think everyone in our cohort’s writing became more interesting over the quarter. I loved reading about what other people were doing in their dyad placements. I also enjoyed reading about those moments where we didn’t know what to do or where we felt like we had everything under control. It really became more interesting because blog posts weren’t just based on common readings that we read, it was about reading and learning things we may not have all gone through.

            I’m not sure that I have become better at generating comments. A lot of the time I was commenting on a post was to say how great the content of a post was. In the future, I would like to improve and pose questions that push the authors thinking instead of only giving praise for a great experience they blogged about.

Who I'm Becoming As A Teacher

Ayers writes, "Teaching is not something one learns to do, once and for all, and then practices, problem free, for a lifetime."

Here is a video of who I see myself, at this moment as I become a teacher. I will forever be on the journey of becoming a better teacher and I'm excited to see what changes and what stays the same in the way I view myself as a teacher.