Week 6

This week brought a few of "firsts" for me. On Tuesday, I attended my first school field trip (without being a chaperone). We went to the Homewood Science Center for an STEM engineering activity. We learned about the Homewood native, John Miller, who was considered the "father of modern high-speed roller coasters" due to his component inventions. Then, students got to use various materials to design and create a marble roller coaster. Then they identified failure points and made improvements. (This would have been great when we were doing the engineering design process.) Here are a few of their creations;

   
I also created my first test about plants and photosynthesis for science. Mt CT approved it and offered me suggestions to modify it for the students who are EL learners or have IEP's. I also read the test to those students. This was not as successful as I thought it would be. There were 7 students who scored below 70%. They will be allowed to make corrections for more points on Monday, so we will see how that goes. I also experienced my first lock down drill (which interrupted my test review activity of Quizlet Live on Thursday). 

My goals for this week were to remain sane during the EdTPA lessons, which were Tuesday - Friday, and to have an improved and positive observation #2, which was Monday. 
✅I felt surprisingly calm during the delivery of the EdTPA lessons I recorded. I thought I would be on edge, but I felt much more natural up there than I have before. Hopefully, my viewing of the videos will reflect that, as I have yet to watch those.
✅My second observation was also positive. I was a little nervous, but not like last time. This time she observed a math lesson. She was happy to see how I handled student mistakes or misconceptions in a way that allowed learning without shame or embarrassment. There was even a point where a student was thought to be wrong in his calculation by most of his peers, however he was using higher order thinking in his work. Thankfully, I was able to catch what he was doing and explain how his thinking was absolutely correct. The main criticism was that students were not coming up to the board to show their work. I explained that I had been doing this before, but my CT wanted me to cut that for time sake. I will just have to find a happy medium between what I want to do and what she wants me to do. I also need to work on my pacing.

My goals for the coming week are to be approved to stop writing these time consuming lesson plans that no actual teacher ever writes, begin tackling these EdTPA videos and create my task 2 outline.  

Classroom Confidential

Chapter 9 really emphasizes the need and value of incorporating movement and music into the classroom. I especially love the ideas of using "galloping grammar" when making sentences, and "show me" for discussing elements of stories. That could even be used for any subject! So many learning standards are dry and outright boring at face value. I am seeing that in classroom now. As I read this, it made me think of how I could have used movement to act out pollination in science class, then maybe they would have remembered what it was. My CT doesn't appear to share my view on movement and noise from students (as long as it is constructive) so, I may be waiting until I have my own class to try these ideas out. I'll see what I can get away with while I am here though.