Week 14

Week 13 was really fun at Washington Elementary! When we got there in the morning, our class was in the gym for a musical they were having that night! When the kids all went back to class, a little girls nose started bleeding and I got to help her stop bleeding and I realized that being a teacher is more than just teaching the kids. You are also a doctor, mother, dentist, and much more! After all of the commotion, the kids were working on a math activity where they were trying to make animal figures out of shapes like big squares, small squares, some different sized triangles and a parallelogram. Everyone got to create something different and then create a habitat for their animal to be in! I love seeing hands on, fun activities in the classroom that benefit the children's learning on a particular topic. Then, for the rest of the day we broke off in groups and did cute Easter crafts with the kids since they were going on spring break. I was in charge of the "create an Easter egg" station along with making carrots out of a plastic bag and orange Reese's pieces. I love to be able to watch kids creative juices flowing and see how excited they get about being able to be creative. For my outside research, even though I am in 311, I have been more heavily focusing on ways to integrate arts into my lesson plans! This goes along with standard 4 of the NCPTS which is "teachers facilitate learning in their classrooms" I think that integrating arts into your lesson plans is an efficient way to facilitate learning to your students. Although it is Easter break, the hard work doesn't stop! However, we are less than a month away from summer break! Week 14 was very busy and informative. We did not go to Washington this week, we did have class and we were able to work on our units as well as things going along with the Katie Kath event and the science night coming up. I think my hard work this week falls into the "Teachers lead in their classroom" standard of the NCPTS because I am demonstrating leadership by helping out with all of these educational events and it is expanding my knowledge so that way I can effectively teach my students.

Week 12

Week 12 was a very busy week for me as I was in Daytona beach, Florida competing at cheerleading nationals with the Gardner-Webb Cheer team. However, the wi-fi at the hotel was terrible and I could not complete any online work. I started on my traditional lesson plan and I am preparing for teaching my clinical lesson plan as well. I am very excited to see what the next few weeks of school left hold. We only have two more times at Washington for the semester which is sad but exciting at the same time because that means it is almost summer! For my traditional lesson plan, I have been really practicing my integration skills and I get super excited when I find a way to integrate another subject into my lesson plans. This connects to a part of standard 3, or teachers know the content they teach. Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines. I have been able to find a way to integrate social studies, arts, language arts, science, and math in some of my lessons and by doing that I have achieved the ability to recognize how all of the content areas connect. I will use integration in my future classroom with every lesson that I teach so that my students will be skilled in all areas and they too can recognize the interconnectedness of the content areas.