Week 2

I had a productive and busy week! On Monday, we had our new student from Yemen start. He has no English language comprehension, so I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out ways to help him. I took part in my first grade level meeting during our plan period with the my CT, Ms. Ezeldin (partner 4th grade teacher) principal, and the reading specialist. MTSS groups were determined for tier 2 and tier 3 students and behaviors were discussed. We also determined the plan to begin implementing the Wonders reading curriculum. Next, I delivered 4 science lessons successfully, according to my CT (though I am a bit more critical). Also, I began assisting with homework check in and review.

My goals for this past week were to plan and deliver quality science lessons, determine my EdTPA lesson set and dates of delivery, and introduce the class to the video camera. I accomplished about half of these goals. 
⛔I did not get to expose the class to the video camera as I had hoped. Although I got back all 24 permission slips originally distributed, the new student's slip did not go out until Friday. It took a bit longer since he has no English language. I used Google Translate to put my letter and permission into Arabic and then had the Arabic speaking EL teacher proof it. (I am glad I took that extra step because "student release form" translated into something like releasing a student from prison 🤣. We had a good laugh about that!)  Hopefully he will bring that back Tuesday, as I asked him to through Google Translate. 
✅⛔As for my EdTPA planning goal, I have a plan to use Origo lessons 1.8 through 1.10 which deal with multiplication of whole numbers using doubles strategies. I have a tentative date range of Mon. 9/9-Wed. 9/11 for delivery and recording. This depends on my comfort level with Origo math lesson delivery (1.5-1.7) that I will be doing this week.
✅ I accomplished the delivery of my first science lessons at an acceptable level of quality. It wasn't perfect, but the lessons seemed successful enough to please my CT. These lessons focused on the engineering design process and will sum up with conducting an investigation. Here are some pictures from the first lesson, using the process to complete the "Marshmallow Challenge" in small groups.

 

Students are having a blast building the tallest possible tower with 20 sticks of raw spaghetti, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, and 1 marshmallow. The detailed lesson is required by the district and can be found here;

Marshmallow Challenge Lesson

My goals for the coming week are to pick up the camera Tuesday (since the Trinity library was closed all weekend and I planned to do this Saturday) and begin recording Wednesday, pick up Arabic translations of some popular books so our new guy has material for silent reading, and manage the delivery of 2 content areas (math and science) successfully. Wish me luck!