This week went by super fast! I can’t believe I only have two weeks until spring break now. This just reminds me that this semester is going by fast, and I need to take every opportunity that I have to develop my teaching skills.
In my Instructional Planning class on Monday, my teacher was reviewing the topic of co-teaching. She really wanted us to not only read about the different types of co-teaching and what it looks like in the classroom, but to actually experience it and see how it is implemented. To do this, she decided to co-teacher her class with our instructor for Integrating Exceptional Students, who was also teaching about co-teaching. During this class, we learned about six types of co-teaching including, one teach-one observe, station teaching, parallel teaching, alternative teaching, team teaching, and one teach-one drift. Learning about these methods was really enlightening and it helped me think about the type of teaching that my CT and I engage in while teaching. I identified with several types of co-teaching that happened throughout my internship. In the beginning of my internship, I mainly engaged in the one teach-one observe strategy. As I became more comfortable in my classroom, I began to drift more in the classroom, helping students when they needed it while my CT was teaching. During the last part of last semester, I began to teach some subjects and my CT began to have the drift role, occasionally stepping in while I was teaching. This semester, I am engaging more in the one teach-one drift strategy. I am teaching math and sometimes reading and my CT drifts and helps students. Sometimes she will let me teach the whole class, engaging more in the one teach-one observe strategy.
I got to engage in a new co-teaching strategy the day after I learned about them. I engaged in the parallel teaching strategy. Parallel teaching is when the class is divided into two groups and both teachers are teaching the groups the same content. When this happened in my classroom, I was working with my math small group on the previous day’s lesson and I had to teach them that days content while finishing up from the previous day. When I was teaching, my CT was doing the same thing with a group of her own. We taught the class the lesson, just in a smaller grouping format. When I was teaching like this, I found the lesson to be extremely effective. I was able to sit closely with the students on the carpet and introduce a new topic. I could easily attend to each students needs and the needs of the group. The students were able to ask questions with ease. I was able to make sure that each student understood the concept and if they weren’t, I could help them without having to interrupt the instruction because I could address the question in the lesson. Even though I may not be able to implement parallel teaching unless I am in a co-teaching classroom, I do plan on using small group instruction in my class. I feel like I can reach the students’ needs easily and that the students are able to be more engaged in the lesson.
This week in my internship, we were teaching the students about observations of temperature, wind, whether it was wet or dry out and the cloud cover that day. Each day, we went outside to observe these things. I really liked taking the students outside to learn. It was nice getting a change of scenery, and I’m sure the students liked escaping the classroom for a few minutes. I think they will be excited to go outside again next week when we learn about clouds. I plan on being able to take my students outside on nice days to learn. I think it is important that students are able to escape the classroom, and experience fresh air and natural sunlight. Plus, I think they will be more engaged in the material since they will be excited to go outside.
I have an RTI group of two students whose main goal is to improve their fluency. I noticed that their fluency went down since the last assessment I gave them. This is a problem. I talked with my PRT and CT about the problem, and we thought that they weren’t reading enough outside of the RTI group. I talked about some strategies I could use to improve the fluency of my readers and we came up with a couple of suggestions. Before they come to the RTI group, they had to have practiced reading their 2 fluency books multiple times. I also decided to record their first reading of their new books, and one to two more readings until they are assessed again. I have found these strategies to be quite successful. I recorded my readers twice and they already have made improvements. What I like about recoding their reading is that they can listen to their progress and their faults. They can hear themselves read and see what they need to work on. After each recording, I compare their last read to what they read that day. We check for progress, what they noticed was better, or worse, and what they need to improve on. This gives my readers a goal to work for. I have also noticed them reading their fluency books during independent reading time. This makes me happy because they truly want to improve their fluency. As I continue to monitor their progress, I will keep you updated on their improvements.
I am really excited about this coming week. I will be teaching math, as always, plus science for the whole week!
First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day! Holidays in the classroom are always so much fun. We get to integrate exciting activities into our lessons, allowing our students to have fun while learning. I saw a lot of it this week in my classroom, as my teacher and I created fun activities for our students.
On Tuesday, I had what educators call a “teachable moment”. I have read about moments like these in almost all of my textbooks and they are using our student’s comments and interests to teach them more about a subject. A student was reading to me, practicing her fluency by reading her guided reading book to me. The book was about storm chasers and how they understand tornadoes. She asked a question about the difference between hurricanes and tornadoes, which turned into a whole discussion about their differences. I began to describe both of the storms, listing their differences. I drew pictures on the board and showed her pictures of hurricanes and tornadoes on my phone. Other students began to gain interest in our conversation, and before I knew it, I had five students gathered around me listening to our discussion. After our discussion, they excitedly ran to my CT to tell her what they learned. When I am a teacher, I would take their interests and capitalize on it further. I would provide them with a book about hurricanes for their next assignment and maybe give them a project comparing tornadoes and hurricanes. I was genuinely surprised at how interested they were in the storms and this showed me that I need to plan my instruction around the interests of my students, to get them motivated to learn.
This week, I held a small group math instruction lesson. At the student’s requests, I gathered a small group of students on the carpet to practice the math problems of the lesson with them. This was anther effective use of instruction time. I felt like the students really learn well in the small group. They are able to get more individual attention and they are able to participate more. They do not have to compete with the students who know all the answers to answer questions because the students in the small group all need help. I see a lot of the students in the group answering questions when they normally wouldn’t in whole group instruction. I am able to help them one on one while the other students in the group are working on problems. I am able to see where they struggle at and provide the support they need. I am also able to easily check all of their answers and provide the positive feedback they need. I even utilized a smiley face when I was checking their last question as a testament to their success with the lesson. They also seemed proud that they earned the smiley face. Seeing the success of the small group instruction on class, I plan on utilizing this to the fullest from now on and when I am a teacher in my own class.
Since Valentine’s Day was on Friday, we planned some fun activities for our students, while integrating math content. The first thing we did was have them make valentine carriers for all of their valentines they would be exchanging at the end of the day. This taught the students about lines of symmetry, and how they have to fold the paper in half and draw the heart on the line of symmetry. When they finished cutting they would have a heart with two equal sides. They also had to make arms and legs for their heart people. They did this by folding a paper in to four parts, along two line of symmetry. They then cut the paper, having four equal strips of paper. They then glued the arms and legs to the hearts and made a cute heart person carrier for their valentines.
The next activity we did was to sort and graph the different colors of the valentines heart candies. Students were given a package of the heart candies. They then had to sort and graph them by color, figure out which color had the most, which color had the least, and what the difference was between the largest amount and the smallest amount. At the end of the activity, the students got to eat their candies. I thought this was a creative day to integrate the holiday within our math block. During this time, I went around with my teacher and collected some anecdotal notes of the student’s performances. We noted that some students did not know that a chart starts on the bottom and not the top, and that some of our students fail to read directions. This provides us with specific information about our students and tells us about what we need to work on with our students.
Overall, this was a fun week and I am looking forward to the week ahead!
Last week was quite a busy week, and we got Friday off because of Fair Day. I never knew about Fair Day because I went to school in a different county, so I thought it was a nice perk that they students got a free ticket to the State Fair.
In my teaching math class, I read about ways to strategically form groups in the classroom. The text said to form groups that have a make-up of mixed ability students, like higher level students with lower level students. They also talked about the where to place English Language Learners (ELLs) in the groups. ELLs should be with a group that will enable them to practice their speaking skills. So having an ELL with a classmate who is fluent in English but also speaks the ELLs home language would be strategic. This way, the ELL can feel comfortable practicing their speech with and they have someone who can help them with the words they don’t know or understand yet. In my class, we have some ELLs, but they are all almost fluent in English. However, they can always practice their speech and group activities are perfect for this. We were doing a compare and contrast activity for reader’s response where they had to compare and contrast each other. (We made the lesson about comparing and contrasting personal because they compared each other instead of just another book, in hopes that this will help them apply this skill in other contexts and give the lesson meaning to the students, another strategy I learned in math) We had the students pair up into groups of two, comparing and contrasting themselves. This gave the group members a chance to talk to each other and ELLs to practice their speech.
There was another purpose for this group activity. Earlier in the week, we did a group activity in math where the students had to work together to make a specified amount of money out of fifteen coins. We noticed that the students had trouble working together. There was a lot of arguing, with one student overpowering the group and some members not participating. We then decided that we needed to improve our students group working skills. We talked to them about the importance of group work and what working in a group looked like. The next day, we did the same activity but with different numbers. We noticed that there was a major improvement in our students. They were taking turns talking and all participating. I was impressed with their progress and we decided that we would like to include more group work in the future.
I also experienced a fire drill for the first time in my internship. It was an interesting experience and I’m glad I got to experience it. We all were frightened at the sound of the alarm, even though it was a drill, but the students knew what they had to do. They calmly lined up and went out the door. They were very well behaved, and I was impressed that this. I also observed another class running in the hallways and down the side walk to the road. I was shocked because I had never seen students act this way. This reminded me just how important the skills I learned in classroom management are. Classroom management doesn’t exist only in the classroom, it is a synonymous throughout the school activities, including outside of the room activities. Classroom management procedures have to be taught for every procedure, including fire drills, so the students can get out safely if there was a real fire.
This week was a good week and I’m looking forward to teaching more next week!
This week was a full, busy, busy week and I am actually beginning to feel like a teacher, not just an intern. I believe this is because I am beginning to take over more responsibilities in my classroom. I started an RtI group in fluency which consists of two students I will meet with three times a week, and I now have a small group for math instruction. I am learning to analyze data to figure out the best path of instruction for my students, while evaluating end of unit assessments to see how much our students learned from the unit.
On Tuesday of this week, my math teacher came into observe me teach a small group math lesson. At first, I was a little scared because I have never taught a small group of for math and I did not know what to expect. I talked with my CT about which students needed to be in a group. We went through all of our students, deciding which ones would benefit from the instruction. We thought about which students asked the most questions in class, our own observations of the students, whose text scores were in need of improvement, and who would show the most interest in wanting extra instruction and help. Based off of these observations and data, I picked four students who I believed would benefit from the small group instruction ( FEAP 4. a). This process also shows what I have learned about using data to drive instruction. I did not just pick any group of students to teach in a small group. I analyzed student data, went off of observations and general information I have learned about my students in the time I have been there, picking students who would best benefit from the extra instruction and individual help. My process for group picking correlates to what I read in my math textbook, Elementary and Middle School Mathematics by Walle, Karp, and Bay-Williams, about grouping styles. The book explains that “groups can be selected based on the students’ academic needs” (67), which is what I tried to do, pick my group based off of the students’ needs to increase their math skills and comprehension of the concepts.
When Tuesday came around, my math teacher came in to observe me. When I pulled the group over, I have them all white boards so they could work out the problems. We engage in group problems to learn the concept and then they worked individually while I went around, helping them as needed and checking their problems. I would give them feedback on their work wither asking them clarification questions or telling them to move onto the next problem. (FEAP 3. i.)When we were done with the math lesson, one of the students in the group asked me if we were going to do this again because it helped him learn. This warmed my heart. I never thought of doing a small group and I was planning on doing this just for my observation. But I told the student that we were absolutely going to do our math group again! I love that he let me know this helped him learn, and I will not have the math group every time we have math instruction. (FEAP 3. j.)
When my teacher observed me, she took notes about her general observations and the questions I asked the students. I realized I did a lot of the question asking and the students did the majority of the talking. I mainly asked them to walk through the steps of problem solving and the steps it took to solve the problem. I wanted them to be able to tell me what to do to solve the problem so they could solve the problems themselves (FEAP 3. f.). I think having them do most of the talking is beneficial to them because they have to actively think about how to solve the problem and they are not just having me tell them what to do. I think this enhances their learning. (FEAP 1. f.).
In my teaching social studies class this week, we learned about the amazing resources the Library of Congress has to offer. As a part of this learning, I took part in two training modules on the Library of Congress site. One was to learn about the resources of the library and the other was to learn about primary sources. Because of these trainings, I now know how to navigate the Library of Congress. I can use it to find resources to use in my classroom while teaching, but not only during Social Studies. (FEAP 5. e.) I can implement the resources into all subject areas while teaching. These resources can enhance the learning and understanding of my students because they will be able to see the actual things we are learning about on the site, instead of only using the textbook for resources.
My certificates from these training modules include America’s Library for Educators and Analyzing Primary Sources: Photographs and Prints” as part of the teachers’ online professional development series from The Library of Congress.
This week, I also started an RtI group to work on fluency for two of my students. Before I could do any fluency work with them I had to give them a baseline assessment for fluency. I had them read a passage for a minute to see how many words they read from the passage. (FEAP 1. d. and 4. c.) After the assessment, I looked at the data and assessed where they were and where I wanted them to be. This first week, I had them pick two books which we would work on for the week. We did some choral reading and echo reading. First, the student would read the book by themselves and I would see how they read. Then I would read a sentence, and they would read it the way I read it. Last, they would read the book by themselves, trying to replicate the way we read it before. I will continue to assess the students, monitoring their growth and improvements in words read per minute.