End of semester wrap up

This semester has been a short one, but one that was full of excitement and projects. There were a lot of opportunities to teach and collaborate with my peers. I felt confident and nervous about this semester, because it is my last semesters before student teaching and I know that I feeling the pressure. I was excited about the field work and going to work in the school in Newburgh. This is a school that I have never had the pleasure of working in, so I was excited for the new experience.

I have learned a lot about lesson planning this semester and different ways to go about it.I have witnessed groups teach in front of the sixth grade class and in front of their peers. I have gotten to teach in front of a sixth grade class and to my peers, and I find the less stressful teaching is to the sixth grade class. I had the experience of working with four other teacher candidates that were just as dedicated and excited to teach as myself. I really liked the group I got and I liked that we all seemed to get a long well. I had a lot of fun working with these girls and creating lesson plans. I liked that we were able to collaborate with each other and bounce ideas off of each other. 

This semester we were able to look at ourselves in the beginning of school year to see how science effects us and if we liked it. The majority of class said that they did not enjoy science growing up and that they were not a fan, but I have a feeling now that the semester is over a lot of my peers have changed their mind about science. I know that I have. I thought that science was going to be hard, and uninteresting and difficult, but I actually found it a lot of fun and engaging. I have enjoyed this class so much and learning about science that I have started to do a Science Experiment night at home. Every week one night I do some kind of experiment to keep my love for science alive and my knowledge flowing. 

I am going to be sad to say good-bye to this semester and to this class. I have met some really great people and have worked closely with some of the greatest people. I am glad that I was able to share this experience with them, and I wish them all the best of luck in the future!

Working on a practice EdTPA...

This semester the biggest thing I have accomplished is my practice edTPA. This experience is one that I am going to remember for when I do my real edTPA this Spring. I know that it is not an document that you can do within a few hours, but it is something that should take time and a real look at. I know through this class that starting early as possible is the way to accomplish everything and do it with less stress. edTPA is a three task (four for elementary education) document that teacher candidates have to complete and fill out. I have heard so much bad stuff about edTPA and lots of rumors about it, but I have not hear many positive things. I hope that this practice will help me succeed in passing the real edTPA.

Working through the edTPA section by section and task by task has really helped me understand the questions that they are asking. I was able to work with my group on this and that was great for bouncing ideas off of each other and creating our documents that fit us. I like that this was an assignment, because it gave us a chance before it is the final document to work with others and to understand the questions better. I think that the hardest part is the assessment. It is not hard to assess yourself teaching or lesson planning, but it is hard to assess in a positive light. There are always things that I see that I can do better or different that may work much better. It is hard to find the one or two things that you've done well while you are watching yourself giving a lesson on video tape. I have found that assessing myself is very hard and a skill that I will have to work on so I can do it properly for the real edTPA. I think that the hardest part of the entire assessment is that someone else will be reading it, and there is always that feeling of what if I missed something in my own assessment. Although, there is a lot of dread when it comes to the edTPA there is some valid points in it. I like that they make you assess your teaching and I feel like this is a big part of teaching. I like that it makes you assess how you did on planning the lesson and how the lesson really panned out. One teacher gave me great advice, He told me to make a chart of what will go wrong, what may go wrong and what it is that I am going to do to solve that problem. I found this very helpful when planning for the lesson for the sixth grade science class. The hardest problem to solve was not having enough time to finish the lesson.  

Learning through groups

Learning to teach through cooperative learning lessons was an interesting thing. I was confused at first about how this would work, but after participating in it, I feel like this is a great way to teach. I thought the concept of having a group but working with another group to teach the first group was confusing, but after going through the process it was a lot of fun. I really liked that I was able to learn with others about the prosita kingdom. I thought it was great to work with a few other people to create a power point to teach my first group all about the kingdom. I thought that the small group teaching was great and it kept everyone on track and focused. I feel like sometimes students get zoned out when it is presentation after presentation. The pressure is "off" for those who don't like to talk in front of the class, because they get to teach in small groups. I think that its a different way to teach, but its an effective way. I thought that it was a lot of fun to learn about the other kingdoms and I forgot a lot of the information that I learned in middle school. I really can't wait to use this type of lesson in the classroom. I could see using this in my unit plan on rocks. Having groups of 3 with the topic of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. The groups would meet with their peers who have the same topic and research their rock. Then the groups would meet and teach each other about the other rocks. I think that this would work in a school that has the proper technology to support it. The students having the internet at their fingertips would make this project better, because they get to use resources outside of their book and thus coming up with more interesting facts or discoveries about rocks. 

I really like this type of lesson because every group member has a job and a task that they have to complete. I like that it is hands on and engaging to students. It is something different and I like the idea of having the students work on their social skills. Working together is a skill that students will have to learn how to do to get a job, so I support getting them used to it at a young age. I think that this is a great way to get students to work collaborative and to get them to engage with each other. This would be great for students who have trouble engaging with other students. It would be great for beginning of the year ice breakers as well, because the students will get to know each other quicker. Having a classroom where students are able to work collaboratively would be idea for me. 

Key assessment 7: Direct lesson

Working with a sixth grade science class has given me some great experience and some not so great experiences. I have seen the mistakes that could happen if just one thing has gone wrong or if time runs out before your lesson is over. I think that this experience has taught me a lot and I will use it to help myself prepare and write lessons for the future.

Over all I believe that the lessons went well, and with only the time managing an issue during the Inquiry lesson. During the direct lesson the students seemed to be engaged and able to follow along. Although, I would change a few things on the hand out that was given out. I did not like how we used the word magma when it should have been lava. I thought that the hand out looked like it was easy to follow until the students were having trouble following it. There were certain parts during the lesson that the students didn't realize that a fill in the blank word was needed, and I think that was because we didn't think to underline or bold them. This would have been helpful to the students who were having trouble following along. There were two students with learning disabilities and I thought that the lesson would accommodate them, but the fill in the blank did not suite the students as I thought that they would. I thought it would be easier then writing a full sentence, but it was confusing to the class. I would change this for next time so that it was a combination of both, and I would explain that to the class before starting the organizer. For the guided practice part of the lesson due to time I had to cut out a slide, and looking back this was a bad choice. This slide would have assisted the students in answering the questions for guided practice. I thought that the students would have understood the cycle, but this was not the case. This was something that I knew that I had to review in the next lesson.

During the introduction of teaching I asked a lot of questions about the last lesson, and I tied it into what the students would be learning about today. This gave me some great feedback to see what the students understood and what needed to be gone over again and again. During the one slide I had a back up plan to have the class say the words together, and to say the definition, but when I taught this information and asked a question almost the entire class could answer the questions, so I decided that it wasn't needed, but I was happy to have it as a back up. I put in my teaching some checking up on understanding to see where the students were at after teaching certain things, and this was great because we did have to go over a few things, but other things the students got. I noticed that the class didn't understand the rock cycle and so the next lesson was all about the rock cycle so the students had a clearer understanding of how it worked. I also ended the lesson with asking the students to write how they feel about what they have learned so far and write a few things they learned or a few things they were confused about so I could go back over them. It was overwhelmingly a high score for me because only a handful of students were having trouble, and the next lesson was designed to help answer and support those learners.

Some of the lesson was adapted to engage and support all of the learners in the classroom. I used fill in the blank for the students who had learning disabilities so they didn't have as much to write, but wrote the key words. More text was on the power point for the students who need that to learn rather then just hearing it.

The students were given homework that was designed to make them think and problem solve. The students were given a blank document and asked to fill it out according to what they had learned today. This came back with a positive result.

While teaching the students I used a stoplight system to get feedback from the class. The students did well with this and It helped me figure out where the students stood on content knowledge. During direct lesson there was not much interaction between each student during the direct instruction. I believe that the lesson went over well and that the students really understood the ideas and concepts that were discussed.