Classroom mangament on friday in Brent's room

I am so glad that you and Brent work so closely together in terms of planning and teaching.  It makes for transitioning to other classrooms smoothly.  I am able to use the same discipline because it is what they know from all the switches.  Along with that, I am thankful for the Give me a T and Red Paw system at Bursley.  This makes management in other grades such as Spanish Immersion or Julies first and second graders.  The speaking softly and waiting till I have everyone has really increased their learning time as well as their focus.  They know that it is time to learn and while I am teaching it is under control.  I am struggling with transitions and getting them to focus at the beginning.  It is time to learn and not chat with friends or sit at the wrong seats.  When talking with classmates, it seems that a few others are struggling with this time as well.  In fact that is what some of them did on their Action Research project.  Any suggestions?

As far as those who are causing trouble, I am finally feeling that I am reigning them in.  It is not quite there but getting there.  I know that I still need to be firm in where I stand.

March 19

I was so impressed with the management yesterday.  I held my ground firmly and stuck the bar higher.  I felt this was easier to get the kids on task and keep the task.  Everything just seemed to flow better when the management was there.    Kids were more respectful towards each other and kids were more respectful to me.  The kids needed to see that I can set the bar high and hold the bar.   For instance, the going was not tolerated especially during bell work.  I feel they have been slacking with bringing their book to read after.  At first I felt mean, but I knew it was the right thing.  You have to have rules and structure.  I felt the rules and structure then allowed more students to open up personally and tell stories.  I was a bit surprised by this fact.  True capturing kids heart at play here.
Things that were difficult is because my bar is set higher now, trying to get all kids to that level right away.  Something that I noticed you did and worked on in the beginning.  I have tried to incorporate the reflective behavior question like what are you doing.  what are you suppose to be doing.  Were you doing it and not excepting any excuses.  This was a big idea in Ed Ford RTP.  I like how it gets kids accountable for their actions.  It seems that that pressure and questions reinforces the positive behavior expectations that was set. 

Students:  Chris and Tyler and Parker.  Tyler and Parker because they want to move seats and not be in the right seat.  Chris because of his constant standing. I am working with Parker and Tyler and just nipping in the butt those actions that are disruptive.  Chris is a bit more of a challenge.  I will continue to stand firm with Chris.

Classroom Management for 3/18

• What went especially well? I tried the voice turning down and watched my volume.  I know there was times that I still had my pool voice, but become aware of the fact and turned my volume down.  Tomorrow, I hope to utilize this awareness to my full advantage and keep talking softly so they can hear me.  
• What successes can be celebrated? During instruction time I held my standards with Zeth and a few others about when I say go then instructions.  Those that were not following the rules during vocab or getting the computer, had to wait till the end.  I used positive compliments on their behavior and saw some improvement in some of those kids who were complimented on their being ready.  Later, some of the students craved those compliments as well.  For instance in Social studies, I saw Andrew and Matthew ready for the movie with out having to remind them to quiet down.  Today, when I waited patiently, I also saw how kids waited patiently instead of yelling GUYS SETTLE DOWN.  This seemed to put me in control rather than the students.  
• What was difficult? Math was difficult.  I was trying to engage in conversations with everyone about their cylinders and the misbehavior and getting out of the seat.  I did not nip this in the butt fast enough.  ACT coming in late and both our students getting settled in as well as Mr. Huck's students asking me what they missed while I was giving instruction.  I felt this was not addressed well.  I wish that I had addressed this concern by saying  Let me finish my instruction, sit down and I will be with you in a moment.  Or even asked them in front of their peers what they were doing?  What I was doing?  Was this the best time to be asking this?  or something like this.  They may have felt the pressure of their pressure of their peers and realized it is not polite to be doing this.
• Which students are causing the most problems or needing the most redirection?  How can we support them?  This was addressed with the new seating chart.  Less redirecting occured today than other days.  Zeth is my big one, Tyler getting the eyes right away, and Hallee, Rylee, and Alexa to get focused on their work the whole time. 
• Do you see a change in your instructional time? I did notice that the time getting them back on task was slightly shorter, as well as less times trying to get Ts to redirect them.
• Do you see a change in student work ethic, work completion and/or responsibility? Not yet today.
• Are there aspects of classroom management that you'd like me to model for you again? 
• What more can I do to support you with classroom management?  How do you fill the voids of going between technology or if their is something you are looking for or reaching for you material.  That small little gap where there is a break of me talking for one second?  I feel the students always try to fill any break with chatter.

Parent Contact

In regard to parent contact, I will start off with addressing parent teacher conferences until I have a further prompt.  Parent teacher conferences seem very intimidating to me at this point in my career.  Your there with 15 minutes to tell them everything about their child both what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.  Except with the wrong, it seems so hard to sit there and tell them about their "innocent child" that they are doing something wrong.  Do you find it is easier to have parent teacher conferences with the child present?  How did you feel when you first had to do them?  Did you feel that it was not enough time? 

  What about phone calls?  Do we start with a positive on the phone as well before we get involved with misbehavior problems?  How often do you get parental calls or emails?  

Praise 2/26

I know you haven't posted the questions for me to think about, but I wanted to get a head start on answering this question.  One area that I reflected on about praise was related to getting kids on task.  I have been good about rewarding good behavior during bellwork, but I tend to neglect the good behavior through the rest of the day.  I am going to work as a goal to praise the table that is ready and doing things when they are suppose to during every subject.  I saw Joan do this with her clip up system and the younger grades as well as with green paws.  I think the group accountability and peer pressure is a healthy pressure to put on students.  I like the idea of scrabble cards, but that immediate gratification that the clip up or Paws or even candy like Julie has done, is a tangible reward that puts it immediate response to the situation rather than delayed with the whole group scrabble cards.  I am just torn because I know that internal praise and reward is better than external rewards, but sometimes that external reward is needed.

I will wait for more questions on praise and parental contact.

Professionalism 2/20

One of the aspects that you asked me to address is how professionals need to be mindful of having an outside life from school and separating school work from home.  I felt that last few weeks that I have been on my own has been difficult to actually separate those responsibilities.  The extras like planning and grading take up an abundance of time and emotion. I was so caught up in the lessons that didn't go so well  or how my classroom management has been affecting the learning of all students, that those feelings of failure began to consume me and induce unnecessary stress and anxiety both at home and in the classroom.When failed lesson do occur, I know I need to take time away to reflect on those mistakes and make changes so it wouldn't happen again.  I remember the teacher leader interview that I did with Amy, and she was saying that was one of the hard parts in her first years of teaching as well.  I knew this past weekend that I had to free my mind and escape in order to maintain a positive healthy state of being.

The second aspect of professionalism I would like to address is the being a friend and the boss at the same time.  I know it is important to maintain a fine line of friendship so they feel comfortable talking with you if they need it.  The friendship relationship with students also eases them in the classroom by lightening the atmosphere.  It shows them that you are supportive of their hopes and dreams.  At the same time, that friendship piece can allow students to take an advantage of you and the classroom expectations or behaviors.  Asserting the authority lets them know you are the adult capable of handling the situation and if punishment needs to happen, it will.  I found this piece was hard to do while we were at camp with the environment being more relaxed and sharing a cabin with 14 girls.

Professionalism 2-19

Today, I was mindful of my classroom management and how it effects the behavior of the kids and their learning.  I realize this fine line that if it is the whole class, that I wait for them until I have all set of eyes.  I need to stick to a bar and hold my kids accountable to reach this bar.  I feel that because I am not handing out Red paws or sticking to the bar, that I am being taken advantage of.  I truly believe they want to learn and they need structure and consistency.  I realized that the transition from lecture to independent work time does not flow and my expectations for this transition time is not completely clear and consistent.  With that, I continue to struggle with the management and talking out of turn or during independent work time.  I saw that sheet today and hope that this can help me keep track of those misbehavior creating expectations and an environment that is conducive to productive learning.

I realize that there is that fine line of when to have conversations with the teachers.  I tried to watch other teachers in this area.  Some I see as a quick conversation from the door way in one sentence and some it is a meaningful conversation after school.  Certain 1 sentence check ins or conversations, I feel is done mostly through the google chat.  But it is hard as a preservice teacher to have these conversations with others on the google chat. I feel the fine line between Google chat is that you don't want to come across as always being online during your student teaching which leads to face to face conversations that may be at the wrong time. I feel some of these conversations though naturally lead to suggestions or tips on how to present things.  I guess this comes across as intrusive on ones space and time.  In my observations, it seems best to just wait and come back later.

Professionalism

The first professionalism that I want to address is mine.  Brent encouraged me to look at how I address failed lesson when the students are not where you think they should be.  This week I feel that this has been my struggle and upset with my reading lesson and with my math lesson.  He asked the question, how do you address this with out loosing your credibility as a teacher.  I think doing the assessment and telling the students we need to step back and revisit this  is a good way to not loose credibility.  Earlier this year, you had that conversation about making mistakes and how it is OK to make mistakes.  I thought this was a way to address the professionalism of making mistakes in front of the students.  I am feeling that these past lessons that didn't go well has really shook my confidence.  In reflection, I need to present or look like I am presenting with utter confidence.  Confidence will help the students feel that you know what your talking about.  I can see how this is a fine line for new teachers to feel arrogant.  They have all these fresh ideas that their schooling says is the best way, but it isn't always the best ways.  When conversing with some of the new teachers, they all said to slowly try the new ideas so that you seem like you are willing to go along with the rest of the staff, but also willing to change and embrace new ideas.

When addressing the solicitation and embracing help, this is where a kind email or the meetings during planning will help feel like you are balancing this.  I noticed how much planning has been going on with emails and chat and less at lunches.  This allows the teacher who may be drowning to keep her her own time to catch up but still be in contact with the rest of the school and her colleagues.  New teachers need that mentor teacher to teach them and embrace that environment but hopefully the mentor teacher is experienced and not drowning as much.

I will continue to address professionalism observations next week as well.

Feb 4 5 6 7

1. What strategy did you use to promote student engagement in the classroom?
2. Do you think that this strategy worked well for your lesson?  Do you think students were more engaged with the use of this strategy than they would have been without it?  Explain.
3. What other strategy/strategies could have worked well in the same setting?
4. If/When you teach this lesson again, what will you do differently to increase student engagement?
5. What more can I do to support you with lesson preparation? 

With this blog, I know I communicated often to you about the different strategies that I can use for engagement.  

So far my favorite strategy to use is the white boards.  It allows me to see their work and informally assess their achievement and understanding while keeping them engaged and focused on doing the problem with the entire class. The strategy allowed more kids to practice their skills rather than calling on a student to do it at the board.  I used this strategy twice in math this past week and it seemed to work well.  Other strategies that could have worked would have been popsicle sticks in this setting.  But with popsicle sticks I can't see if everyone got it or not.  

We also used think pair share during our writing of our introductions.  I introduced what should be in a introduction and they had to think about what could make their introductions better and share with their neighbors about how their introductions could grab the attention of their readers.  This is a real quick way to keep someone engaged in the topic.  By walking around too, I could tell if they were ready to go on with their introduction or if they needed more time for learning.

Another strategy that I have used in the past was the move around the classroom.  I have not got a chance to use it lately, but I like how it forces them to get up and pay attention because they might have to defend their answer by going to one place or the other. 

During my writing lesson on sentence variation, I had them read a section of an article about sentence variation.  Afterwards, they had to turn and share with their neighbor what they took from the article about how they could vary their sentences up.  It kept them focused because they were held accountable for what their partner would not have read.  

Wait time is also one that I have been working on.  I am really trying hard to not call on the same people for questions and not call on the first person that raises their hand.  I feel that no matter how long I wait, I am still getting only the same people raising their hand.  Do you call on people that are not raising their hand?  

I am still working on choral response.  It is difficult to get them to choral respond.  I try to word things the same as you and repeat myself and it still isn't working.  This is new to me as I do not use this in the pool either.  I tried with my swim team as well and it was the same thing.  only about a fourth repeat then a third and then a half.  What can I do to make this better?  I see that you get a choral response with out saying the words repeat after me.

This week I plan to do ticket out the door and popsicle sticks as discussed in social studies.  

One more question.  How do we do clicker response.  Is this done through infuse learning?

February 3

1. What strategy did you use to promote student engagement in the classroom?
2. Do you think that this strategy worked well for your lesson?  Do you think students were more engaged with the use of this strategy than they would have been without it?  Explain.
3. What other strategy/strategies could have worked well in the same setting?
4. If/When you teach this lesson again, what will you do differently to increase student engagement?
5. What more can I do to support you with lesson preparation? 

 In consideration of preparation was my own mistake.  I  thought DATA review was today even though my calendar said it differently.  I wanted them to make flashcards, but I was going to have a template made up a head of time.  I think the flashcards and the reminders on the board help them to refresh their memory.  Good thing I was prepared a head of time on what my week would look like.

Today,  for strategy, I used walking around the classroom and moving around through out the day.  This kept the noise level down and kids were on task more.  I removed bean bag time and extra computer time and monitored which kids were on Google docs doing vocab and who was not).  I felt they were more on task and engaged in the conversation.  I knew this is what I would have to do in math since it was review.  Part of today's conversations were my pre assessment for the chapter.  During writing, we independently worked on our introduction for part of the time, and then we had to report to a buddy about our introduction giving feedback and tips to help engage the audience/ readers.   I felt this small group discussion and announcing a head of time kept them focused on their writing and engage in what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it. They were held accountable for the work to be quality.  I used Popsicle sticks. but not in the way they are fully used. I never want to pressure someone who isn't comfortable reading to read aloud, but the Popsicle sticks still kept them focused on the reading and what was paragraph was next.  During this time, I also moved around the classroom to make sure they were reading with the class instead of fiddling around with their snacks.

Today, I feel the lessons went smoother and was respected with the directions.  I feel I wouldn't change anything today because I am still getting comfortable with the techniques.  I really want to master the repeat after me.

Jan 30 and 31

After the four snow days that we had, I really felt that the kids were going to be hard to control.  But surprisingly they were not that terrible.  I guess they needed the structure that school provides for them.  As far as preparation for these two days, I felt like there wasn't terrible amount of preparation that was different.  I do believe that I had to change things up a bit to accommodate the week off and refresh their minds.  For math, we reviewed questions and I went around asking and checking their work to see if they still understood the questions.  Most people did well on the test.  Some that usually do well, did not.  But when walking around they understood the problems and never came to me expressing the need for extra help or clarifications.  Thursday's vocab preparation was to finish their vocab.  Which is where I am struggling.  It is hard to get the students to finish their sentences or google doc.  I don't feel that it should take that long but it does.  I felt  reading and social studies was already planned and prepped because of the bio cube and you finishing up Latin America.  The one thing that did throw me off, was how much you were involved with the Essays and then the email had me teaching introductory paragraphs.  I felt comfortable with teaching this..we just ran out of time and didn't have time to work on our paragraphs.  I did have to look at resources before school and during prep to help me get to this comfort level.

Each day I am trying new things in terms of management.  I feel they look to me as the nice one (not saying that you are the mean one, but they know that you're the ultimate authority in the classroom).  I am going to implement bean bag time and not let them take advantage of using the bean bags all the time.  I am also going to monitor this a bit more closely on who is always on the bean bag. I feel quite frustrated that I can tell them to work quietly and 5 minute late the noise level remains.  It seems to be the entire class and I can't pin point just one person to punish for Mrs. Steele's recess club.  Deanne told me to hold the whole class if it is a problem,  but how does that work if it is the math groups?  I am using the positive reinforcement often but I feel the sixth graders like the idea of tickets and scrabble cards, but it isn't changing their behavior.  What more can I do to gain their respect of working silently?

I am eager to begin the book clubs, but nervous as this is my first unit that I created that I am teaching. 

Week one preparation

 I really like the idea of this reflection.  I wanted to reflect back on this as something that won't get lost or deleted from my inbox, so I decided to post it in my blog that I created for this reason, but never actually typed in it.  I would love that you post a response as a communication.

In response to the preparation, I feel that I spent many hours this past week learning and planning the material that was to be taught and even went further to explore thesis statements and topic statements in case that you wanted me to teach it this week.  I was prepared.  You mentioned how in the teacher assisting how you spent countless hours making ITIP lesson plans but in the student teaching phase you couldn't do this planning.  I felt this way since the beginning of this semester.  When talking with other teachers and asking you and Kendall's teacher about how you do you lesson plans, I have just decided to write notes and essential questions that I want to ask.  I have created examples that I would like to do on the board for math to be prepared in our conversations.  The one day that I didn't have examples, I felt lost and not prepared.  I didn't want to feel that way again.  I have prepared the first 3 lessons already for chapter 9.  The thing that threw me off this week in math class, was how well they seemed to know this chapter.  They seemed bored and ready to move on.  They were not asking questions that seemed to indicate an struggle.  I had to think on the fly twice this week.  One to create a more engaging activity which was just thought up on the fly and went OK.  Most kids seemed to enjoy the change of activity but I didn't like how competitive they became about points and how it seemed to get rowdy.  Controlled rowdy, but it wasn't the ideal classroom management.  The second time, was during review when a few kids said they lost their flashcards and I quickly made a review power point and went over these fractions at the end of review.  I loved how I was able to get this out to those kids who wanted extra practice with some of the fractions to decimals. Chapter 4 was just a nice transition lesson into teaching because I could get in the groove, with them already knowing and feeling comfortable with the material, but it was frustrating to see the lack of engagement associated with this attitude.  I am hoping with the conversions, that this does not become the same thing.  

I felt well prepared for the time line activity, but in looking back on  the week and their timelines, I wish I followed up and done a different example with them and emphasized intervals more.  It was easy for them to use intervals on their own life since it was only 12 years and their were 12 boxes, but I wish that I had done a character that was older to explain how to use our divisibility rules on their time line.

I have been working hard on the book clubs and how I am going to present the mini lessons as well.  I feel a bit nervous though with the book club discussion.  I hope I can stimulate deeper thoughts about the books, and I hope that I can keep up with the two books.

I'd like the focus of our first week of reflections-over-email to be on preparation.  Specifically, I'd like you to reflect on the following questions related to each lesson you teach this week:

1. Did you feel over prepared, under prepared, or prepared just well enough for the lesson?
2. Did the lesson go just how you thought it would?  What surprised you?
3. What did you do in advance to prepare for the lessson(s)?
4. What thinking-on-the-fly did you have to do to execute the lesson(s)?
5. If/When you teach this lesson again, what will you do differently to prepare for it?
6. What more can I do to support you with lesson preparation?

Don't feel like you need to write me a novel as you answer these questions...but please think about each for each lesson you teach, and share with me the thoughts that you think matter most.  :)