Week 13 (PDS Reflection)

Again this week was only a four day week since we got Monday off for Veterans Day. Students were very energetic and talkative this week because of Monday off and the following week being the Thanksgiving Break. Thursday and Friday students worked on a scale project that I put together for them. Friday was also a crazy day, students had an extended first period then an attendance reward at the end of the day so we had seventeen minute classes.

Week 12 (PDS Reflection)

 This week was only a four day week since Tuesday was Election Day. On Monday students reviewed for their second test, Tuesday there wasn't any school, Wednesday students took their second test, and Thursday and Friday we went over ratios and rates.

Week 11 (PDS Reflection)

  This week, due to the snow and power outages we only had school on Monday, so it was a nice week. :)

Week 10 (PDS Reflection)

  This week students had an early release on Wednesday, also on Wednesday the 7th grade students went to  Fairmont to go to NASA for a presentation. I went on the trip with the students and also rode the school bus with them. It was an interesting experience to see the students outside of a classroom setting. Some students really surprised me with their behavior on the trip, both in good and bad ways. I was also surprised that I was the only staff member that rode in the back of the bus with the students and I was also the only staff member to sit with a student on the bus ride.

Week 9 (PDS Reflection)

 This week was a shorten week at school, Monday was an ISE day so I saw none of my students on Monday. Then the rest of the week we had to change my original plans since we did not get everything accomplished the previous week. We continued to work with integers and equations. Students also worked with special equations (perimeter, area, d=rt)towards the end of the week.

Week 8 (PDS Reflection)

With the schedule change last week, this week was crammed pack with lesson and a variety of topics.   Students also started their WACs (Writing Across the Curriculum). Students did not want to complete their WACs, they felt it was stupid but it is something that is state mandated and we have to have the students complete them.

Week 7 (PDS Reflection)

 This week all 7th grade teachers had to rearrange their schedules for the end of the week. On Wednesday the 7th grade class went on to Pittsburgh to see the Pirates play a baseball game, on the way home the buses got caught behind a bad traffic accident on the interstate and the students did not return to Grafton until after midnight so the principle told the students they did not have to come to school tomorrow if they return with a note from their guardian on Friday. On Thursday we had a total of fifteen 7th graders, those students that went on the trip told their friends that did not go that they did not have to come to school on Thursday so there were only a handful of students that came to school. All teachers had to scrap their plans for Thursday since there was such a lack of students.

Week 6 (PDS Reflection)

  I graded the students' tests, most students did very well on them! :) On Tuesday we went over absolute value, the students felt that the concept was easy to understand but the students could no identify what to do when they see an integer with an absolute value sign. This week we started on integers and solving equations which are two topics that we will continue to use throughout my time at the middle school.

Week 5 (PDS Reflection)

  This week I gave the students their first test. I constructed the test myself so I am excited to see how the students did on it. This week was an easy "teaching" week. Tuesday the students completed their MAP testing, Wednesday as a class we all reviewed for the test, then Thursday the students worked on their first test. Monday was a rough day though, we went over unit conversion and some students had difficulty with this topic.

Week 4 (PDS Reflection)

 This week was pretty exciting, students were given two days (Tuesday and Thursday) in class to work on a lab, they were to turn them in at the end of the day on Thursday and here it is Saturday as I am sitting here grading there are ten or more students that have not turned in labs to me. On Thursday I also had a student get so mad at me that they would not talk, look, or respond in anyway to me. I got down eye level with them to try and get their attention but they looked like they were going to punch me so I got my mentor teacher, Mrs. Duncan, to take him out and talk to him. In the end the student said that I should have known they were struggling with the assignment and came over to help them. I was worried on Friday that this student would still have a problem with me but it was the exact opposite, they came in early and said Ms. R, I just couldn't understand this yesterday but when I looked over it I remembered it all. I was glad to see that there were no hard feelings remaining from Thursday's incident.

Week 3 (PDS Reflection)

   I am so thankful for the shorten workweek! You could tell it was Friday from the way the students were acting, in one class I had confiscated a note and a hollow mechanical pencil that was used to spit paper wads at other students. During the students quiz I had to continue to quite them down, until I threatened to take the quizzes away and start giving zeros. I had no issues with any students throughout the week but man, did today make up for it all!

Week 2 (PDS Reflection)

  This week we started with lots of review, I only introduced one new topic to the students. The students didn't remember topics from their names but when we started going over how to topics the students told me that they now remembered how to do it, they just forgot what it was named. I still have the same opinion of my classes.

Week 1 (PDS Reflection)

    During my first week at Taylor County Middle School (TCMS) I only had the students on Thursday and Friday. I am starting off the year running, my mentor teacher, Mrs. Tracy Duncan, has given me three of her five classes. I will be teaching the math 7 course and she will teach the pre-algebra class. My 2nd period seems quite, 3rd period seems to need to detailed instructions, and 6th period is very talkative. First week was good but students haven't started showing their true colors.

Inquiry Celebration

               While at the inquiry celebration I sat in and listened to two presentation sessions. Both the presentations dealt with secondary education, most in math but one in social studies. During the first presentations I learned about review games, assessing and preparing students, and the effects of homework. The most interesting thing I learned is that homework doesn’t show that it helps or hinders students. The presenter’s data revealed that completing homework affects each student differently.

               During the second set of presentations there were only two presentations. These are the presentations that with social study pre-service teachers. These two topics were on differentiated instruction and coaching and teaching. The presentation on differentiated instruction was really really good. The presenter was very passionate about her topic and included lots of personal, heat-touching stories during her time in the classroom while working on her inquiry.

               Overall the presentations were interesting and insightful; I will keep them in mind while planning for my next year.

2 More Characteristics of the Novice Teacher

4. We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students.

Definition: A facilitator is someone who can deliver lessons so that all of their students are able to understand and learn from it. If a facilitator cannot do this then they will find something or someone else that can do this for them. 

 Rational: Because there is such a diverse way that students learn, teachers cannot teach a lesson one way and expect everyone in the class to learn it. Each student in the classroom has different knowledge, experience, and background. If a teacher is only effectively teaching to half of their classroom, what is the second half supposed to do? A novice teacher can put aside their pride and re-teach the lesson in a different way if needed. A novice teacher will plan on a variety of activities for one lesson so more students can understand their lesson. 

·                                    -      I am actually questioning something in my PDS that deals with this. There is one teacher who has to have a second teacher in all of their classes. I understand that one or two of their classes might have students with IEPs that state this but I know that some classes there are two teachers this is not the case. I have set in on some of their classes and they let the students pretty much get away with murder. I feel if the teacher had any classroom management skills they would not need this second teacher in most of their classes. I do not understand why GHS continues to employ this person when they are really employing two teachers to do the job that only should take one.

9. We believe that the novice teacher should be aware, of and have respect for human diversity.

Definition: Human diversity is the difference among people; this can be in many different forms. Some examples are background, race, and/or gender.

Rational:  Teachers should know students and their backgrounds. This way a teacher can get to know how their student’s best learn from their background situation. This also can help when planning the types of assignments, topics, and even the amount of homework given.

Practicum Plan Reflection 1

   I set two basic goals for myself this semester. When figuring out goals that I wanted to reach was hard for me, I am at a different placement, different age levels, different math subjects, and a different mentor teacher. If I would have stayed at the middle school I would have not problem coming up with three or four learning goals. The two I came up with are also pretty generic, 1. make better lesson plans (more detailed, descriptive, examples, ect.) 2. Computer organization (using edline and other computer program Gafton High uses for grading, attendance, and such).
     The first learning goal I am completing but I find it hard to do since no one is checking our lesson plans. I feel that the programs wants lessons to be extremely detailed and mine are not but at the same time I have never had anyone check or tell me I was completing them incorrectly so lots of time I find myself questioning why I spend anytime on them at all.
      The second learning goal I have had stop doing. Not purposely but it is something my mentor teacher has done all year and days I'm not there so she just does it automatically with out having me do it. I did check attendance daily for about two weeks so I can do it and know how but don't do it regularly now. I have not done anything with their online grading system, edline. My mentor teacher has never been submitting grades into the computer while I was there so the situation has not came up but I definitely want to do and learn how to so I need to ask her about it one day here soon.

2 Characteristics of the Novice Teacher

For this first blog about the characteristics of the novice teacher that I agree with most. 

1. We believe that the novice teacher should be an effect communicator.

   - This characteristic is one of the most important characteristic to me. A teacher might know all about a subject and it's topics but if they cannot communicate this knowledge to their students it won't matter and the students will have a hard time learning. I have had many teachers that are like this, they know so much information about the material we were learning but they cannot communicate it to me. I am not sure if it was due to them thinking it was simple and they could not explain it on a level I understood or if they just have bad communication skills.
    The article I read was about the difference in skills between the students and the teacher. The article opened my eyes to other ways then just delivering the content area subjects to the student, the article discussed a lot about the lack of communication with computers. It went on to tell about the different skills levels different people have on the computer and how some students might know more then the teacher actually knows about the computer. The article also involves the opinion that all teachers should be able to access and use the computer for a variety of useful ways.


2. We believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of content. 
    - In my new PDS I am seeing how important this is in the high level classes. My mentor teacher at the high school possesses this characteristic and is so helpful in the classroom. Most of the students that I see at the high school have more trouble with basic math skills then learning new information like trigonometry function identities. Students know these identities but then can not complete questions that involve using these functions because they can't use things like the distributive property or FOIL.
    The article I read on this topic was about a middle school teacher talking about geometry. The article talks about the teacher asking the students to complete a problem that had the students find the area of a given shape. The teacher was glad to see that most of the students had the correct answer, when she went to the board and explained and showed each step she used to complete the problem one student had the correct answer but did their differently. The teacher could not figure out what the student had done. Since she couldn't explain it she didn't want the students to use the way they had, not because it was wrong but because they didn't understand why. Having in-depth knowledge of your content is important, from the story above, having this is mathematics is very important because the situation above is not the only situation in math that this happens. 
    

US Courts (Educ 400 Group Lesson)

(Originally Written on April 28, 2011)
The District Courts can give a ruling to a case.
The Court of Appeals has nationwide legislation, deals with cases of specialties, an example would be medical cases.
The Supreme Court is the most powerful of the other court systems.

A case starts out in District Court, if a party is unsatisfied with their results they write to the Court of Appeals. Then again if they feel their case was not judged correctly they will then take their case to the Supreme Court but first filling paperwork to do so.

Reflect on Blogging

 (Originally Written on April 6, 2011)
    Overall my blogging has been about the experiences and situations I talked about in my first blog but I don't think blogging is a fun and interesting as I thought it was. I feel that blogging would be more useful if we did it each time we went to our PDS, and also if we were paired with someone in the same content area and/or PDS and also that our mentor teachers subscribe to our blog. Not that I don't enjoy reading my partners blogs or comments but I feel that it would be easier to talk, respond, and relate to someone in the same specialization or PDS.
   Talking with my blog partner is important to me, the comments left are nice to know someone read it and can relate to what I am doing in my PDS. Communicating with my seminar facilitator is extremely important so I know what I need to do and I can learn new and interesting things from them. And communicating with the faculty is also very important, especially my mentor teacher. Communicating with the faculty lets me know school policies and rules, upcoming events, and their expectations of me. Communicating and getting to know the faculty at your PDS also makes you feel more comfortable, welcome, and belonging there.
   Overall, did you feel that the blogging helped you in becoming a teacher? Anything you would change about blogging?

Learning Goals

( Originally Written on March 4, 2011)

A learning goal of mine that I feel I am making progress toward is classroom control. My mentor teacher is wonderful and lets me do whatever I need to want to do. Since being in her classroom I have taught multiple lessons and helped her work through the classroom, in doing so I have learned more about the students and how to keep them on task and under control.

The time that the class gets pretty wild is after she teaches the lesson and the students are set loose to complete their homework. The students are allowed to work in groups and most of the time they are socializing more than working on their assignment. Since I am walking around answering question I can hear what the students are discussing and if it has nothing to do with the lesson I will ask them what question they are working on and to complete the next problem with me. This way I don’t just tell them to get back on task but I make them do a problem. Even if it’s only one problem, it’s on problem more then they planned on doing.

The tasks I have wanted to accomplish since the beginning of year have remained the same but I want to teach more lessoning to the class. Now that I feel more comfortable and know that I have the support of my mentor teacher I want to put myself out there and see what I need to improve on.

My process on my plan is going good. I am on track and not behind.

Digital Stories (due: 2/4/11)

(Oringinally Written on Feb. 1, 2011)   

     An experience in my PDS that I am considering to include in my digital story is how some students are more comfortable asking me questions rather then their teacher. Another experience that I might include is how students act when a sub is running the classrooms. 

     An interesting story has exciting experiences in it and also has humorous parts. Interesting stories about my PDS might be about me getting lost the first day or the experiences I have had dealing with a sub. Another experience could be some things that the students did.

     I feel that using different digital multimedia will make the story more interesting and easier to pay attention to. If you are looking at a plain PowerPoint or piece of paper you're more likely to lose focus but if it is brightly colored or has a design on it the better the chances of you looking at it.

Blog 2, Due Nov 19th

      What experience I've had so far in my PDS is that each student needs to guided in different ways, some need you to be very detailed in describing what is going on and others just want to make sure that they are on the right track, wanting to finish themselves. I've only build relationships with a few students, my usual day is helping the entire class with any questions they have. It seems that the same students ask questions so I know what techniques works best with those students. Most of the students at my PDS are engaged in class, they answer questions and pose ones that they have. I was surprised by this, in the classrooms I volunteer in the students just sat and listen to the lecture, I like that these students are involved in the lecture. I've also build a good relationship with my host teacher, she is really helpful and a great teacher.

Have you had the same experience at your PDS? (The students need different levels of help and support?)

Blogging Possibilities

(Originally Written Oct. 8, 2010)
This blog will support my experiences because they will be able the experiences I have in my PDS. I imagine writing about funny things that have happened at the school, and situations I was in and didn't know how to respond to. I can also see me writing questions on here that I don't know the answers to or need help dealing with about the school or students. There will also probably be days that nothing exciting or interesting happens so it will just be about the activities that the students completed. I will also blog about events that are out of the ordinary.