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.