Reflections

My student teaching experience has been really positive. I have enjoyed working in the school system and have had a really wonderful site teacher. I really lucked out in terms of getting a really experienced and organized site teacher. She has taught me all about how to create lesson plans, manage the classroom and make the best use of my time. She is open to new experiences and willing to listen to my thoughts and ideas and we have worked really well together. She arranged to have me teach a lesson for the school Principle (like I will once I get a job) and although I was very nervous I think that it was an important step to take to help me be more comfortable teaching on my own. I have also taught with other teachers and parents in the room. I have practiced going up on stage at awards ceremonies and have been involved in all areas of student learning while I have been at my site school.

My Impact learning project was  really fun but also very challenging. I learned several valuable things over the course as I taught my lessons. There are several things that I would modify if I were to re-teach these lessons again. First I would be less timid with my behavior management from the very start of my lessons. My lack of firm discipline in the beginning of the lessons led to wasted instructional time. I also would allot a solid block of time for these lessons. I could have moved the word study lessons into the smaller blocks of time to keep the science lesson fluid. I think that keeping the lesson fluid and being more firm with discipline may have kept the lesson shorter in overall time by cutting down on the talking the time it took for transitions.

 I also would have started the lesson with the preferential treatment of the LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention) students. I started this after my first lesson and they may have gotten even more out of the unit if I had started it sooner. In the future I will also track down more technology for any science lessons that I do. Now that I know that there is a lack of technology. I will also find an alternate way to do my science experiment. For the experiment we created saltwater and then left it outside to change to freshwater. It needed to be aided by the sun and we had to wait several days due to poor weather to complete it. I need to have a back-up plan next time in case of poor weather. I sent lesson materials down to the staff lounge to be copied (as is school policy) and I didn’t get my entire lessons packets correctly copied. A few were missing pages. The next time that I teach I will be more careful about checking the packets. I had extra copies of each paper so it wasn’t a huge deal, but I could have saved time and confusion by double checking each one.

Overall the lessons were a success, but more extensive planning on my part could have improved all the areas of my lessons. I will spend more time planning in the future to try and ensure that I have thought of all possible scenarios (hopefully). I enjoyed teaching and was grateful that I had a very organized and involved site teacher. My site teacher was huge help and I learned a lot about organization and planning from her. I will be using all of the tips that she taught me in the future. 

Differentiated Instruction

My understanding of differentiated instruction is the process of modifying a lesson or group of lessons to help better fit the needs of gifted or below level learners. According to Tomlinson "The model of differentiated instruction requires teachers to be flexible in their approach to teaching and adjust the curriculum and presentation of information to learners rather than expecting students to modify themselves for the curriculum. Many teachers and teacher educators have recently identified differentiated instruction as a method of helping more students in diverse classroom settings experience success". In the classroom that I am student teaching in we have differentiated reading and math groups. A few of the students are also in LLI Leveled Literacy Intervention to help them catch up with their peers that are at grade level. In this class there are a wide variety of learning levels we have some readers that are still at or below grade levels and some that are a 6th grade reading level. I have been doing the lesson planning with the help of my site teacher for the last two weeks and it is challenging to say the least. We have guided reading groups three times a week and the lesson plans for  those groups are very extensive, especially for the higher level reading groups. I have really enjoyed teaching I have taken over full teaching and planning for the class for the last two weeks. It is very important to differentiate instruction because not all students are at the same learning level. All students deserve to be challenged and to be taught at a level that they can understand. 

Bibliography:

Tomlinson, C. A., (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms. (2nd Ed.) Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Motivating Students

Motivating students can be tricky. Teachers want to positively motivate the students to learn, but too many rewards are not good for any age. If you offer students too many rewards they don't learn to enjoy school simply for the joy of learning. Learning can be made fun and should be encouraged even when there is not an external reward. Children need to learn that learning in it's self is it's own reward. Giving rewards to often can also cause the students to only work if they are going to get rewarded. I have found that the younger students need more positive reinforcement and more external motivation. I feel like we live in age that offers too many choices and far too many rewards for students just to try and get simple things accomplished. Not every behavior or action should be rewarded. Students need to learn that there are expected behaviors that are required simply because they make the world a safer and more productive place. Finding the fine line line between extrnal motivation can certainly be hard.

Behavior Problems

Behavior problems occur for a variety of reasons. A few of the most common are boredom and testing the limits of the teacher. Students also seem to do better when the classroom has a  predictable set of rules and structure.I am working with children that are in first grade and we have a fairly wide age range in our classroom there are children that are just turning 6 as well as children that are going to turn 8 over the summer. The biggest problem that I have seen are students that talk too much and and students that resist getting their work complete by fidgeting at their desk or disrupting others. In this class there is a behavior notebook that is tied to the classroom behavior board. The behavior board is made up of soccer balls with each child's name on one and you are either in the send off zone (green expected behavior) The hat trick zone (purple above and beyond excellent behavior) or in a five minute time out (yellow behavior had 3 warnings) or on the bench (red behavior 3 more warnings needed after moving to yellow, a note is headed home). Each child receives 3 verbal warnings before they are moved from green where they start each day to yellow. We use the notebook to keep track of who has been verbally warned and how many times they have been warned through out the day. There are also 2 students in the class that have individual behavior goals and behavior charts that help keep them on task. Those students have a harder time staying on task so their goals are broken down into smaller areas in order to help us monitor behavior and keep them on task more effectively. I think that these measures help to keep the class running more smoothly. Seating is also arranged to make sure that the students that tend to talk a lot are not sitting by their friends or other students that talk as much. These kids also have a constant schedule so that they know what to expect and that helps a lot.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Video 1

One example of a self-fulfilling prophecy that came to mind for me was when I played volleyball in middle school. One of the players on our team was always told by the coach that she was the best player on our team. Our coach praised her more than any other player and spent time practicing with her privately outside of regular practice times in addition to spending lots of regular practice time with her. As a result all of the extra time and attention that player was given ended up making her the best player on our team. 

 My video lesson this week was really interesting. I loved teaching the lesson and I felt that it went fairly smoothly until I started using the technology that accompanied it. My site school uses a device called an ActiveBoard that allows the lesson to be interactive and run through the computer onto the screen at the front of the room. This device is great when it is working right, but can be a real hassle when it isn’t functioning properly. About halfway through my lesson there was a glitch with the device that caused it to stop working correctly. I was able to correct the issue, but it was definitely a learning experience! I know that things like that will probably happen again but I was relieved that I was able to keep teaching through it with minimal disruption. Technology really wasn’t my friend this week at all! I was really looking forward to viewing and critiquing my video, but I was really disappointed to find that the first half had been erased. I knew that there was a camera change mid-video due to a camera issue, but during the changeover something went wrong and the first half of my lesson was lost. Even with all of the issues I experienced I really felt like I learned a lot this week. I think I learned even more than I would have learned if everything had gone perfectly. I hope that you all had a better experience than I did this week or at least learned some valuable lessons. 

Introduction and Expectations

Hi my name is Denea Rice. I am originally from Prescott Arizona, but I have lived in Northern Virginia for the last 12 years. I have been married to my husband for almost 14 years, we met while we were serving in the Army together. We have 3 children. Our daughter is 10 and  our sons are ages 8 and 6. I love working with children and I have a heart for the little ones. I have a BA in Child and Family Development. My preferred age group is the younger elementary aged children. I am really drawn to children with special needs and I am planning on getting a certificate to specialize in that area once I am finished with my masters. In the future I see myself working with special needs children in either an elementary education setting or an early intervention setting with children that are infant to age three. I am hoping to learn how to effectively teach my own classroom and how to make lesson plans that work. I have seen others teach and I have created lesson plans, but I haven't had the chance to teach on my own or use my own lesson plans exclusively. I have always worked with children (except for my military career) my first job was at a daycare center. I worked as an infant and toddler specialist at my last job, and I love working with children. Teaching them new things and watching as they learn is one of my greatest joys.  I am hoping the student teaching experience will hep me understand how the school district balances the standard for the children to learn with the need to address each child as an individual.  In addition I am looking forward to getting more experience with lesson planning and fully running a classroom.  My overall expectations will be to determine what grade level I am most interested in teaching.  I look forward to sharing my experiences and learning from the other students as well.