Week 9

I am happy to be fully immersed in the role of teacher, but  absolutely exhausted and drained with all of the demands being placed on me right now. Now that I am doing all subjects, the grading load is huge and very time consuming (if I am going to do it well). That coupled with EdTPA finalizing is an excessive workload. So, it is hard to have these other time consumers like this blog and continuing to write long LP's for observations (Yes...of course I have one this week).

My goals for this week were to go through my clips and make an outline of task 2 and to deliver ELA lessons well. Both were a success. My goals for this week are to finish my EdTPA submission to my liking and not alienate myself from everyone in my life who matters in the process.

Week 8

I cannot believe that we are at the half way mark already!  Over these last 8 weeks, I feel I have made substantial progress with most of my students. They feel comfortable enough to write little notes on assignments when they don't understand something, work though problems even when they get stuck, and to challenge solutions to problems (even if they end up being correct). So far, we have had 2 pre and post tests in math and in each case, they nearly doubled their scores. We've had significant growth! We have been working on rounding, which has been difficult for several students. I started with about 15 students who were struggling and now I am down to 4. 

One of the fun things we did in math was a "Roll and Round" game in small groups. Each student in the group rolled 6 dice to create a 6 digit number. Then he/she picked a card that determined which place value to which the number would be rounded. All students worked to complete this on their own sheet and each student got to roll and pick a card. They really enjoyed that. Here are some pictures of the groups.

So, I have been teaching the math and both science classes for the last 2 weeks. Starting next week, I will be adding ELA which means I am taking over EVERYTHING! My biggest struggle at this point is grading. I am trying to offer feedback and tips for success I can honestly say that I cannot see how that will be possible. The amount of time it takes me now is mind blowing. Hopefully, I will be able to figure something out now that I will be doing all subjects.

My goals of picking my clips and finishing the outline were not met so they are still on my agenda for this week. My additional goal is to successfully deliver ELA lessons this week. 

Happy Day off!

Week 7

I can't believe that I am already approaching the halfway mark...it is going by fast! I've learned a whole lot since the first day. I am now very familiar with PowerSchool and did my first grade input using this platform. I have also become familiar with the other platforms used such as ORIGO, BrainPop, and Mystery Science. Plus, there's a great classroom library resource for students to check out books inside the classroom (in addition to library check out) called booksource. It allows teachers to catalog every book and students to check them out. I've also discovered just how many challenges and interruptions there are from day to day. 

My goals for this week were to be approved to stop writing the Trinity lesson plans, begin tackling my EdTPA videos and create my task 2 outline.  
✅I was fortunate enough to be promoted to "Plan Book" lesson planning, so I began teaching both science classes this week and will be adding reading soon. This was very good news.
⛔The process of uploading videos has been rather time consuming, so I did not tackle them as I had hoped (unless I make uploading them count).
⛔I did not create a task 2 outline.

My goals for this week are to create the task 2 outline, go through all my video clips and choose the 2 I will use.

Classroom Confidential

Questioning is a very important part of engaging students in meaningful class discussions. I frequently use the frame of "what do you notice" in questions during math lessons. This gets even the students who are not confident in their computations to be able to make an observation on patterns or similarities and differences. The best part is that no one can be wrong for what they notice. I liked the "Brain Gym" segment of this chapter. It put the mind of a student into perspective, especially pertaining to closed questions. It had not occurred to me that so many spiraling negative thoughts would be going on in a student's mind if unsure of an answer.