Weekly Reflection - February 1st

Seven questions to end your week:

This week was a much better week! Having a normal schedule and normal week made things run so much more smoothly. I would rate this week as a 5. This week, I was pleasantly surprised by my students being so excited about what they were learning about in science. We learned about sound, and the students absolutely loved getting to interact with different sound making items. This week, I worked a lot on my pacing. I looked over my lesson plans and I feel as if I have a much better grasp of how many assignments to plan for my students in each lesson, and how long the assignments will take them. Since I was learning that this week, many of the things I had planned in my lessons got taken out and adjusted. I feel this helped me plan much better for next week. My short-term efforts have been to understand how to pace my lessons and gain a better idea of how long my students need to complete assignments. This has been aligned to my long-term goal of becoming the best teacher I can for my students because I need to be able to plan appropriately timed lessons in order to ensure that I am helping my students learn as much as possible. This week, I could have spent less time getting my materials together. I found myself staying after school many days this week just printing and making copies. I need to work on having my materials ready for the entire week before the weekend is over. This week I felt as if I had much more courage when disciplining the students. I have begun to feel much more comfortable taking the lead in the classroom, and the students are beginning to understand that they have to listen to me and follow my direction. The first logical step for next week is to begin looking at the edTPA videos I have taken so far and find out what questions I feel like I cannot answer in my task two commentary. That way I can make sure to include these things in next weeks edTPA video.

This week, I analyzed my students data using the vertical way to solve subtraction problems in order to inform my reteach lesson for task four. This helped me to see the errors in procedural fluency that I was able to address during WIN time with my math intervention group.

One piece of advice I would share with other student teachers is just to rely on God to find strength and peace, and remember that He is the one that led you to be a teacher. Always remember why you are here and why you want to be an educator.

NC Teacher Candidate Standards

1a: Teachers lead in their classrooms.

I have taken responsibility for my students' learning this week by constantly analyzing their everyday work and adjusting my lessons accordingly. This week, I analyzed data from Wednesday's math lesson and realized the entire class needed more help on parallel lines. Therefore, I have pushed my lessons back one day to accommodate their needs.

2c: Teachers treat students as individuals.

This week, I have implemented one of my behavior plans for a student that struggles to provide work that is his best. This has helped me treat him as an individual and maintain high expectations for him.

3d. Teachers make instruction relevant to students.

This week, I have made learning relevant to my students during science. Sound is something that my students experience every day, but they had no idea how sound occurred. Teaching them about something that they had curiosities about made the teaching relevant to them.

4c. Teachers use a variety of instructional methods.

This week in math, we have learned about shapes. The students had the opportunity to look at shapes, draw shapes, create shapes with raw spaghetti noodles, and use pattern blocks. This helped provide a variety of instructional methods to help all students learn.

5a. Teachers analyze student learning.

This week I was able to analyze multiple assignments that students turned in in order to help inform my decisions for math instruction.

Other:

This week I have been working more on my class website for my portfolio.

My clinical educator and I do not need any extra support at this moment.