This artifact is an image of the notes that I took at a recent Professional Learning Community (PLC) meeting. I focused on important dates that were coming up for the first grade team as well as the agenda for the next PLC meeting. I also noted the celebrations and concerns that we discussed during the meeting. I selected this specific artifact as a way to show proficiency of this indicator because it shows how I collaborate within my school community during PLC meetings. This demonstrates that I have met this FEAP because it is an example of how I foster communication with members of the first grade team. These notes also are an example of how I continuously try to improve by interacting with first grade team members to learn and understand the ins and outs of PLC meetings. This artifact is an image of materials from SCATTER professional development workshops. On the left is my SCATTER Success Summits binder which contains notes and handouts from workshops including positive phrasing, professional support systems, and team-building. On the right is a folder from a workshop that I attended at Busch Gardens with SCATTER members. This workshop involved collaborating with fellow SCATTERs to better our understanding of animal adaptations and how we could teach our students about this topic using resources from activities that we took part in at the workshop as well as supplemental planning resources that were provided to us in our workshop folders. I selected this specific artifact as a way to show proficiency of this indicator because my participation in professional development workshops as a member of SCATTER demonstrates how I have met this FEAP. I collaborate with other interns and educators in the larger community to support student learning and continuous improvement. I am constantly learning about new techniques and resources that I can use when planning lessons for my students and I am always encouraged as a SCATTER to be “the best getting better.”
0 Comments
Overall, this lesson went fairly well. Some aspects were implemented differently than planned. For example, I originally planned on completing both An Elephant’s World and A Wolf’s World during my lesson, but I ended up completing only part of An Elephant’s World instead. Since science is after lunch and before RTI, it is difficult to find enough time to complete full science lessons. We did, however, make it through choral reading our text and one square of the graphic organizer about the basic needs of elephants, so my students were prepared to jump back in and complete the graphic organizer the next day.
If I was going to teach this lesson again to the same group of students, one thing that I would do differently would be plan just to do An Elephant’s World the first day, rather than two texts. I definitely think I would have been less rushed if I would have planned ahead just to do the first book. One thing that I would do the same is have students choral read the text along with me before completing the graphic organizers. I liked being able to emphasize the facts that were most important during the choral reading. I also had the chance to incorporate small discussions such as Turn and Talks as well. This also gave me a chance to ensure that all of my students were reading the text to prepare them for completing their graphic organizers. According to my CT’s notes, the majority of my students were on-task during this time, which led to success when filling out the space for “Food & Nutrients.” One thing that surprised me in my lesson is that we only had the chance to fill out and discuss the “Food & Nutrients” box on our graphic organizers. I expected to be able to get through the entire graphic organizer with my students, but with the limited amount of time that we had there was no way that we could have made it through three more sections. We did, however, finish the rest of the graphic organizer the next day. I had students use the text and recall prior knowledge from the day before so we could fill out the empty spaces on their graphic organizers as a whole class. By looking at student work and hearing student answers during a recap discussion at the end of my lesson, I can see that students learned what was intended. My students could write down what the elephant calves eat as well as what older elephants eat on their graphic organizers. They could also communicate with me what the elephant calves and older elephants eat during the recap discussion at the end of my lesson. I can tell that my instructional materials were effective because my students could easily complete the section of the graphic organizer that was assigned and they could also discuss the contents of this graphic organizer section at the end of the lesson. I can tell that my choral reading activity was effective because after the choral reading as well as during the choral reading my students could recall information about the elephant’s basic needs as well as discuss information about the elephant’s basic needs. There were a few individuals who had difficulty focusing during this lesson. I account for this performance because I did not verbally remind these students to refocus as often as I could have reminded them. I was more focused on working with the majority of my students that were highly engaged instead of trying to bring these students into that majority group by getting them engaged as well. The next day when we went over this section of our graphic organizers and continued on to the other sections, I guided these students to understanding all of the basic needs of the elephant, including “Food & Nutrients” that we learned about during this lesson. Based on what happened in this lesson, my next steps were to continue with the graphic organizers the next day in order to help my students fully understand the elephant’s basic needs. The next thing that I planned on teaching to my class was the basic needs of humans, so I planned on relating the basic needs of humans back to this lesson on the basic needs of elephants. I will use information from this evaluation in future lesson planning in order to better my teaching methods and create a more highly engaged environment of learners. I plan on spending more time on Turn and Talks, as was suggested by my CT, and circulating the room during Turn and Talk conversations to ensure students are on-task while also hearing all students’ thinking without having to have all students share with the class. Reflection: This was honestly one of the worst lessons that I have had observed this semester. Instead of planning extremely well for my lesson throughout the week, I created a plan that was just mediocre. I was so concerned with the other things happening throughout the week, like standardized testing and my research course, that I was unfocused when it came to planning my lesson for my observation. If I was going to teach this lesson to the same group of students, I would do a few things differently. I would create a more detailed plan for myself in order to better my students’ learning experience. I would write down exact questions to ask my students at the start of my lesson, during my lesson, and after my lesson. I would try to probe their thinking more by asking my small group how things such as “trying on everything,” “not taking a nap,” “asking to read five books,” and Olivia “painting on the wall” wore Olivia’s mother out. For example, did Olivia doing these things make messes that her mother had to clean up? Did her doing these things cause them to be late getting to the museum or the beach? One thing that I would keep the same if I was teaching this lesson again would be the differentiated graphic organizers for below level, on level, and above level students. This differentiation gave help to my BL and OL students who struggled with reading comprehension and finding specific text evidence to use as support while giving my AL students the challenge of finding text evidence on their own without any sentence starters or page numbers to guide them. One thing that surprised me in my lesson was the success of the graphic organizers with my OL and AL students that were on their own. When I read over student work after my lesson concluded, I was extremely proud of the responses that I read. I saw text evidence being used as well as specific examples of how Olivia wore her mother out. This surprised me because while working with my small group I was curious as to how the rest of my class was doing. I could see that they were working hard, but I was unsure of whether or not they were understanding the task at hand. By reviewing student work after my lesson, I can see that these students understood the task and this helped me to see that these students were on the right track for the next day’s performance task. One particular instance that comes to mind when reflecting on this lesson is when my small group and I were choral rereading the text together. Something that I have been working on throughout the year has been classroom management, but I still have not fully grasped how to manage multiple ESE students in my classroom. During this rereading, I could hardly hear four of my students because the ESE student in my group was reading with a loud voice. After trying to address this issue, the student still struggled to keep their voice down during the majority of the rereading. This was an especially sticky situation for me because my CT and I try not to clip this student down on our chart often. While I wanted to ask this student to move their clip down after they did not follow directions multiple times, I also had to try and think of what would be most beneficial for this student at the time being. Technically, they were reading the text with us so the student was on-task, they just were not following the rules for choral readings; however, if I had this student move their clip down due to not following directions they would either clip down and begin to follow directions or they would get upset about having to move their clip down and cause a scene during my lesson. Looking back at my video, this may not have been the best decision to let this student continue to disturb my small group’s reading of the text; therefore, if I were to teach this lesson again I definitely would make a different decision if faced with a similar situation. Analysis:
By looking at my video as well as student work, I can see that my teaching methods were effective in helping students successfully pinpoint four ways in which Olivia wore her mother out. I can see that my activities were effective in that students understood the objective of the lesson and by the end of the lesson all students were able to meet this objective. The instructional materials were effective because they were differentiated to cater to the needs of all learners in my classroom. Some students had page numbers and sentence starters to use when finding the four ways in the text, while other students just had blank squares with lines because they were at the level of being able to find text evidence without being provided with assistance. One accommodation that affected my small group lesson was that one of my students is an ELL who is still in the process of learning English. When it comes to reading and writing things down in English, this students still needs assistance. For this lesson, this student followed along with us during the choral rereading, but while filling out the graphic organizer as a group I had her just copy down what I wrote so she would have the organizer ready to use for the next day’s performance task activity. One individual who did especially well during this lesson was one of my AL students. Most of my students focused on the ways Olivia wore her out, which was the day’s objective, but this student went beyond just naming the ways. When reading their paper, I noticed that they not only wrote down ways in which Olivia wore her mother out, they also explained how exactly these things wore Olivia’s mother out. I account for this performance because throughout the year my CT and I have been challenging this student during reading and writing activities to add specific details and to extend sentences. By looking at this graphic organizer, I can see that the encouragement and support during reading and writing have benefitted this student’s reading and writing performance in the classroom. Based on what happened in this lesson, my next steps are to focus on my classroom management skills in my small groups as well as with my whole class to better improve learning experiences for my students. Next week, my class will be focusing on narratives in writing and character traits as well as central message in reading. I will use what I learned from this lesson’s evaluation to help me improve in my teaching methods during this next week of lessons. I will focus on how I can continue to differentiate tasks in reading and writing while also focusing on how I can include more specific directions in my lessons to better help my students understand and meet objectives. Recently, I had the opportunity to be a proctor during some testing at my school. I proctored alongside my CT during my homeroom's test, then I went to another room and was a proctor alongside the ESE teacher during the testing time for the ESE students in my room. This experience was interesting and I learned about the process that teachers have to go through on a testing day as well as prior to testing days.
What I Learned: Teachers go through much more work than I previously thought just to prepare for their students to take a test, not including the actual test taking itself. There's so much to do, whether it's writing names on things or making sure materials are ready for test day. Students need break time after a test has concluded. Their brains become overloaded, and even the day after testing has finished some students can still be riding the overloaded brain testing wave. Students are young and they need time to recharge their brains before moving on to intense and jam-packed lessons again. Testing is a tough process to go through, but it's not impossible! During this lesson, I had the opportunity to teach social studies. I do not have much experience teaching this content area, so getting the chance to teach social studies and be observed was fantastic. Overall, this lesson went okay, but there are definitely areas in which I need to improve.
If I was going to teach this lesson to the same group of students, I would do a few things differently. I would focus on speeding up processes and avoiding down time, for example, during cut and paste activities or during the foldable activity which is shown in my observation video. These aspects could have been sped up to ensure a smoother lesson as well as a more effective one. I noticed that the more down time there was, the more students became off-task. Some things I would do the same, such as having students move to the carpet to complete a goods and services sorting activity as an informal teacher-led assessment and questioning students throughout my lesson to ensure that they were understanding the content. One thing that surprised me in my lesson was how quickly my students picked up on the topics of goods and services. My students were phenomenal during the sorting activity, and they could answer chorally to state whether or not a card that I was holding up was a good or a service. One connection that I can make from this lesson to previous coursework is the fact that social studies is an extremely important subject to teach. My students learned about goods and services, which are things that they encounter every day and will continue to encounter throughout their lives. By teaching them social studies topics early on, I can help educate my students about their community and state, their country, and even their world. From hearing my students’ responses during my observation video, I can see that my students learned what was intended. My students could tell me specific examples goods and services out loud, they could sort goods and services into the correct categories on an anchor chart, and they could briefly define the difference between a good and a service. My teaching methods and activities were effective in that my students met the objective by the end of the lesson. The instructional materials were effective in that they helped my students meet these objectives. A handful of my students did especially well today. These students were active participants throughout my entire lesson and they all were constantly either wanting to answer questions about goods and services or they were giving examples of goods and services. I account for this performance because of the fun and engaging activities that were incorporated into this lesson. These activities helped these students become interested in learning about goods and services and they helped keep these students on task throughout the entirety of my lesson. Based on what happened in this lesson, my next steps are to focus on improving in my time management skills during my lessons, especially in social studies. I would like to have as little down time as possible, so in the future I will be planning activities more strategically according to how much time I have allotted for my lesson. I will use information from this evaluation to better my teaching methods when it comes to not only time management but also classroom management and engagement. I can use what I have seen in my observation video as well as the feedback that I have received from my CT to help me improve in these areas in the future. I had the opportunity to teach two guided reading groups for my second supervisor observation this semester. Some aspects of my lesson were implemented differently than I had originally planned. For example, I was planning on having my students fill out their own charts of the long /i/ words that they found in their Decodable Readers, but I decided that it would be best if I just wrote the words that my students found on the small whiteboard since it would take up less time. The time that my students would have spent writing was instead spent discussing the long /i/ words and why they fit into specific categories such as “-igh, -ie, -i_e, and oddball.”
If I was going to teach this lesson again to the same two small groups of students, I would do almost everything the same. One thing that I would do differently is focus on better engaging my first group of students. My second group is small and is engaged easily, but my first group is three times as large and struggles to stay on task. I would incorporate more activities that involve partner work, writing, or discussions. One thing that surprised me during my first guided reading group was that even with the incorporation of turn and talks, my students still struggled to focus on the task at hand. I think that besides activities, I also need to look into how I can make more real-world connections to help my students become more interested in the texts that they are reading and what they are learning. By looking at the assessments that my students filled out in both groups I can see that my students learned what was intended. They could pick out key details from the text as well as tell me long /i/ words that they found in their Decodable Readers. An individual who did especially well in this lesson was in my second guided reading group. This student was on task throughout almost the entire lesson and did a great job challenging himself to find as many long /i/ words during the phonics part of the lesson. He was excited to learn new facts during our lesson and was eager to participate in almost all aspects of our group’s lesson. I account for this performance because of the teaching methods that I used. I tried to incorporate a wide array of activities throughout each guided reading group’s lesson in order to engage my learners and keep them on task. Based on what happened in this lesson, my next steps are to provide more engaging activities for my first guided reading group while providing similar activities for my second group. I will use information from this evaluation in future lesson planning to give me ideas on how I can improve my teaching and provide my students with more engaging activities to help them become more interested in reading as well as to help increase on-task behavior. Recently, I have begun sitting in on parent conferences with my collaborating teacher. She has been incorporating me into these conferences by discussing what we are doing in mathematics and writing and mentioning that I am the one who helps plan and who teaches these subjects. She also incorporates the data that I gather from running records to help share the importance of this type of assessment data.
This experience has given me insight into the parent conference experience and how I can use strategies similar to my CT's strategies in order to have effective parent conferences of my own in the future. |
AuthorBrianna Cahoo Archives
April 2017
Categories
All
|