Week 6 September 24-28 2012

This week I continued full time teaching, making it my 2^nd week. What I have found these past few weeks is that there is literally no time during the day to get anything done! I reached for my teacher notebook to look at notes I had taken about this week and was surprised to find that I didn’t have any! Full time teaching has forced me to make mental notes about things I have seen and hope that in between class periods if I am not making copies of something or preparing for the next group of kids to come in…there is no time to take notes!!! Even though I arrive at school earlier than I am suppose to, prepare at home, and use every free moment at school to review lessons and see what changes I can make, there never seems to be enough time!

On a more positive note, my mentor teacher and I decided we would tackle our 3^rd period collaborative math class together. It is a collaborative class after all. So, my mentor teacher, the SPED teacher, and myself all teach this class together and switch off between example problems and walking around the room to help various students. This has seemed to work the best! It has also given the SPED teacher an opportunity to see how my mentor teacher and her collaborative teacher did things last year…she is used to more one on one resource room teaching.  I have to admit collaborative teaching is something I really enjoy and would like to learn more about and get involved with when I become a teacher in the future. I think this really helps the students because sometimes other people are able to explain material in a different way that different students will understand better.

My English class is still moving forward with their novel Walk Two Moons. My mentor teacher gave me some suggestions with this class and their tendencies to ask many questions that really do not need to be asked. During one lesson, we were checking a paper that could have more than one answer. As soon as we were done reviewing there were about 8 hands in the air. I asked them if they had a question about whether their answer was right or wrong, than they needed to put their hand down. And ALL the hands went down! I don’t think this was to harsh because I had spent 5 plus minutes explaining to them that their answers may be very different than others and that was ok. My mentor teacher also suggested that when their questioning gets to out of hand, to tell them if they have a question, write it down and come to me after class. This helps save time during instruction.

We took our students to the “safe place” this week also. This is a place the school is suppose to me incase the building is not safe. My mentor teacher has to carry a bag with parent numbers, emergency contacts and a lot more. This definitely opened my eyes and made me think that when I am a real teacher, I will be in charge of 25 lives at all times and it is my job to make sure these students know what to do and that I know what to do in case of an emergency. It is very scary and overwhelming knowing that soon I will be the one in charge.

As I being my 3^rd week of full time teaching I am expecting on being exhausted, but I am also expecting on learning a lot and taking in as much as I can about middle school.

Week 5 September 17-21, 2012

This week I took over my mentor teacher’s collaborative math class. We both felt like this was a good idea because our collaborative class is one day behind our first math class. This allowed me to watch her teach the first math class and then the next day I would teach that same lesson. I felt really comfortable doing this which made me more comfortable to take over BOTH math classes the following week!  Teaching the collaborative class wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be! My mentor teacher was in the room along with the collaborative teacher. This really helped me keep the lesson moving while they helped out around the room.

This week there was also a sub in my class. She was a lot more helpful than the previous subs I have had in this class. But, I did all the teaching! I was so nervous once collaborative math rolled around because the collaborative teacher also had a sub! We did a 5 minute check quiz to see if the students retained the information from the lesson the day before. I learned from this quiz, that they did not retain as much as I would have liked them too. This was a great opportunity for me to assess and act on what I saw. So, I decided on my own that I would reteach the lesson from the day before. When I talked about this with my mentor teacher she said it was a great decision. I noticed that the students had a lot more respect for me as their teacher this day with the sub than the previous days with the subs. They came to me with all their questions and followed all the classroom rules. I only had to hand out SRs to students who didn’t complete their homework.

In my English class, we are moving forward with the novel Walk Two Moons. I have really enjoyed this class and my lessons because I am a BIG literature person! I am looking forward to my lessons this week because we are discussing metaphors and similes. We did literature groups for the first time and they worked out great! This group of students can work independently, with a partner, or in a group wonderfully! They discussed the book with one anther without being told to and they looked out for their vocabulary words that they will be quizzed on soon. This class really wants to do well in school and this means they ask questions and participate in class.

One thing that I have really been utilizing while I am full time teaching is the SmartBoard with Microsoft word. Before each class I put a list of things the students need to have out on their desk that way once everyone is seated, we can start the lesson and there is not confusion on what needs to be out and what we are doing. It avoids a lot of questions and gets the students focused as soon as they walk in the class. This is definitely something I will be doing when I have my own classroom. Another thing I tried this week was playing music during my English class. I played some classical music while the students worked independently and silently. Many of the students commented on how it was really relaxing and it kept the room from being completely silent 

Week 4 September 10-14, 2012

For the past few weeks in my PDS, my mentor teacher and I have been implementing her form of classroom management. I have found it is a lot different and sometimes harder to create a management plan when you are teaching in a grade that switches classes every period compared to a class (like an elementary grade) that stays in the same class the entire day. Luckily, I didn't have to think to much about some type of plan for my classes because my mentor teacher has already developed a really good one. She has all 5 periods of classes she teaches written on the chalk board with 5 blank spaces going out from each of the 5 periods. Her plan is that she will not ask a class to QUIET down. She will go over to the board and write a letter each time she feels like the class is out of control. At the end of each week, the class that has the fewest letters receives an award like an Opps Coupon, or first to lunch coupon. This is a great system because the students are still really young, just coming out of elementary school and they are still competitive and awards like the coupons work well for them. If a class gets the entire word QUIET spelled out, they eat lunch in our classroom.

This week I tried doing some partner/group work with the English class I have taken over. It worked really well! This particular class gets a long very well, even though they are awfully chatty! They still get quality work done, so as long as they are working cooperatively and not disturbing other groups, I don't mind if they talk. They worked with a partner to fill out a few sheet for their Chapter 1 grammar test, and they enjoyed it. I think this was a great way for the students to work together on something that can be kind of boring and tedious, so it was just something different for them.

This week I also got to sit in on a SAT meeting. It was very eye opening. It truly showed me how much the teachers and administration care of each and every student. They took their planning time to meet along with the student's parent. I was able to see all the documentation like SR's ABC's, grades, and papers done by the student that is needed to prove this student needs a SAT. The mother of the child really seemed to want to help her child, which seemed to make the meeting more peaceful and move smoothly. My mentor teacher cautioned me that sometimes parents become defendant of their child and look past the issues that may be there. I saw how the team of teachers came together and formed a special plan for the student in order to get them back on track with their grades and classwork.

The team of 6th grade teachers at my PDS have built a really great professional learning community. They come together everyday and discuss everything from announcements to issues in their classrooms. They offer each other advice and critiques, but in a way that is helpful. I hope that when I become a teacher I have a strong relationship with the other teachers around me. They have each other to fall back on when something isn't going well. I think the most important thing about being in teaching profession is to build that strong relationship with others and share advice and ideas with others. We shouldn't hide behind our classroom doors and not be open to suggestions of others. We should let other professional educators in and hear their advice, even if we do not agree with it.

Next week in the English class I currently teach, we are starting a novel study and I am really excited because literature is my favorite thing and the group of students I have do really great work!

Week 3 September 3-7

I have slowly started to take over more and more responsibility in my classroom. I am now fully in charge of my mentor teacher’s English class. I am so excited to teach these kids! Not only do I love English, but they are also a really great group of kids who work hard. I have also started teaching the skills group station in the Read 180 class. This class includes a full group lesson for 20 minutes, and then 3 rotations of computer, silent reading, and skills group each for 20 minutes. With this type of schedule, I teach the same lesson 3 times and I have noticed over the past few days of teaching this class that I become more confident and comfortable by the third rotation. This shows me how great it will be down the road when I am teaching the same thing year after year. I am able to reflect on how the lesson went in between rotations and hopefully change a few things before the next rotation.  However, I feel bad for the first group of students because I feel like I don’t provide them with a good enough lesson compared to the middle and last group. Is this the case? How can I change things throughout the lesson in order to benefit all students?

After one of my lessons this week, my mentor teacher discussed some things she noticed. She had a ton of good things to say but she also gave me some suggestions. I love getting feedback from my mentor teachers because they are the professionals and are helping me become a professional myself. She told me during some of the lessons I need to try to move quicker, specifically during skills group. She noticed this with the first rotation group and said the pace greatly increased as the groups rotated through, as I became more fluid with what I wanted to teach them.  She said that I ask a lot of questions, which can be a good thing, but she suggested I try to form some of my questions into commands. Instead of asking who would like to read a passage, I could say, “(student’s name) please read the passage.” I tried to use some of these suggestions the next day when I taught and she said she noticed a definite change and I seemed more confident. I can say that each day that goes by I am becoming more and more relaxed with my classes. I know I have an issue with moving quickly through lessons because I am so used to primary students and working at a day care over the summer, that I want to make sure each and every child is aware of what is going on, but sometimes you must move on in order to get through material. The students are old enough by now to know that they need to be paying attention and it is there responsibility to ask questions and get help if they need it. Timing of lessons and keeping them moving will be some thing I work on as the weeks progress.

Next week I am fully in charge of the English and Read 180 class! I have developed my lessons and am very excited to get started. With the Read 180 class, since it is a special program, I can’t really deviate from the material, but my mentor teacher told me I can switch things up as I come to them if I would like to! She is awesome about sharing her class with me and really encouraging me. She has really great ideas so most of the time I have been using her lessons and adding some of my own things. Next week I will also start taking over one of the math classes. We have one regular class and a collaborative class. The collaborative class makes me kind of nervous because I just want to be able to reach all the students. With the collaborative teacher’s help, I can move towards this goal. It is still sad to see students struggle so much. Each Friday my mentor teacher and the math collaborative teacher plan together. I really like this because they are able to talk about what they can do to help the students in their class. Today they decided to take the SPED teacher’s case load to a separate place in the classroom to help them complete a 5 minute check. They also took a few other students in order to mix it up and not make it so obvious that only certain students were getting pulled away. This really helped because they were able to go over the material even slower and it helped the other students in the class because they could move at a faster-pace as well.