Week 11

This week was a very busy work week for me and my classmates! This week at Washington in the morning, I was having one on one with a child who has a very small attention span and it was very difficult to make him focus, I tried my best to make the math games we played meaningful to real life in order to grasp his attention. After lunch, I was with three students playing a board game that built upon their spelling skills and word recognition. One student was clearly more advanced than the others and was trying to help the other kids playing the game. For my outside research, I have been finding technology resources every week for my resource kit that I can take with me to my future classroom. I have been doing a lot of work for ssed307 this week on perfecting my flipped lesson plan! I also have been doing work for my fine arts integration clinical lesson plan and that has been a great learning experience for me to learn to integrate multiple subjects into one lesson for my students. Being able to connect lessons and integrate multiple subjects into one lesson is important for me as a teacher. This connects standard 4 of the NCPTS which is facilitating learning to your students and I believe that integration is definitely one way to facilitate learning in my classroom. I will use integration in my future classroom with every lesson that I teach. It allows for the students to expand on their knowledge of multiple subjects.

Week 10

Week ten has been a struggle with trying to get back in the swing of things after spring break but it has been a great week! On Monday at Washington, Michaela and I’s teacher was absent, so there was a substitute teacher in the room. Before the teacher started her instruction, another teacher from Washington came in the classroom to have a “class meeting” and the students sat in the floor with her and they talked about teamwork and how they as the “fourth grade” can work together and be there for each other. I thought this was beneficial for me to see because school isn’t just about the curriculum you learn including math, science, social studies, language arts, etc. School is very important in developing social skills and character traits that the students will be able to take with them through life and in their future careers. On Tuesday at Washington, Gardner Webb’s school of education gave the teachers a duty-free lunch and it was really cool to interact with some of the students and to allow their teachers to have a break and eat some yummy tacos! After the duty-free lunch, we went to our normal classrooms and helped as usual. I was able to do some one on one time with three students for language arts instruction. I was sad we didn’t get to spend as much time as usual with our classrooms but the duty-free lunch was much needed for those teachers! In class this week, we broke off into groups and each had a different task from edTPA. Savanna and I had task 3 and we had to find the top ten most important things we need to know. I learned a lot in class today, although we only talked about task one and task two. For my outside learning and research, I have been reading over the edTPA handbook and making sure I know what everything means so that way I can be prepared when I start writing my lesson plans. The standard that connects to this weeks learning is standard four which is facilitate learning for their students. This is a direct connection to standard four because by using edTPA, I will be able to differentiate for my students, and know how each student learns so that way I can teach them effectively. I will use the “class meeting” in my future classroom because I think knowing how to treat others and work together is very important for my students to know. Also, edTPA has taught me that planning, teaching, and assessing are very important in order for my students to learn effectively, and for me as a teacher to teach and assess effectively.

Week 9

Week 9 was a very fast, busy week! On Tuesday at WES, I worked one on one with a little boy and he had a serious issue concentrating. This helped me to learn and grow as a future teacher because I know all of my students are not going to be focused all the time while I am teaching. I had to practice some management skills and tell him he would have to remove a star if I call him down one more time. Even though it was difficult to get through, we finished our math cards and he knew exactly what he was doing, he just struggled paying attention. That was a great learning experience for me as a future classroom teacher. Outside of class this week, I did some additional research for my PDP which is all about the 4 C's & 21st century skills in the classroom. I found some websites that really explain what those are and how to implement them in your classroom. My PDP research connects to standard 4 of the NCPTS because I am learning how to facilitate learning in my classroom by using technology and other means to make sure my students are learning everything they need to know. I would connect all of these in my future classroom by following the research I've done for the four C's and 21st century skills. Also, I will remember everything I have learned in my clinical such as how to accommodate to a student who has trouble paying attention!

Week 8

Week 8 was fun! This week at Washington, Caroline, Megan, and I got to teach an Arts integration lesson to our classroom and it was fun! It was Dr. Seuss week so we chose to read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” then followed up with a math worksheet for them to complete. Then, we talked about the kind of habitat that fish live in and it was interesting to hear what all the children said. One child said “a dentist office” so that was funny. Then we created a fish bowl out of a paper plate to integrate the arts. I think the class really enjoyed doing this lesson! Our Social Studies class was online this week and we had breakout groups to make a visual for SAMR, I think this helped a lot for me continuing writing my unit plan in this class because I learned what Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition is and how to implement these areas into my unit plan. I have been researching some things for my PDP conference on Monday and finishing up what I want to have done before the meeting. I have learned a lot and found some great resources through doing this. Me researching things and finding resources is a direct correlation to standard four D of the NCPTS which is facilitate learning by using technology in your classroom. Week 8 seemed a little less busy than the other weeks for some reason, I know that week 9 is very important and will be a busy week but I look forward to conquering it with my classmates!