Starting to make progress

So on thursday I mentioned how difficult it was for me to talk to some of the students and connect with them because I felt like it wasn't my place or I didn't know what to say. Unfortunately that observation period I didn't get much opportunity to connect with any of the students as the type of classes I was observing the student's attention needed to be focused on their work and it didn't feel right to distract them from it.

However I went to CF on Monday and observed the period 4 class of Kim (this will be the class I'm going to be teaching) and I felt like I made a lot more progress. They were reading "To kill a mockingbird" and Kim let me sit in with a group. There was a student who Kim admitted was a bit of a troublemaker who didn't like doing his work. I asked him if I could read on with him while the class read aloud together. He said yes and we read together. When I noticed he was getting distracted I made a few gestures to get him back to reading which worked and we didn't have many problems. When we were done and the group had to do their dialectical journals I helped him, and the rest or the group, out with figuring out where everything needed to go. I was shocked that he actually asked me for help with figuring out what to write for the reflection portion. I asked him what he thought it meant, he told me, and then I asked him why he thought that and we were able to come up with a pretty decent reflection for his journal. Lastly I was able to work with the group on their exit slips and when they asked me to help them (the question was something like name 3 things about a particular character in the book) I asked them questions to remind them of things we just read and pushed them to go deeper with the things they were writing about said character. I'm aware that this was only one day and only for a small amount of time but I feel like I made a lot of progress with communicating with the students.

How to differentiate instruction?

So after having that very inspirational discussion with the panel of students I initially felt more inspired to be a teacher than I did before. Who wouldn't want to work with such bright students that have a real passion for learning like they do? I have to wonder though what the students who weren't the leaders of their class would say? I think it's important to understand that there are so many different types of students out there and what worries me is how do I teach them all the way they need to be taught?

One thing I noticed is that all four kids seemed to want four very different things from their teachers and from their assignments. One kid was adamant about getting packets while another was strongly against them. One student liked group work another hated it. So I wonder what does that mean for me as a teacher? How do I appeal to all my students when they all want different things? Do I give packets sometimes and something else another time? Do I give different options for my assignments?

All this tends to overwhelm me. As a teacher candidate my biggest worry is how I'll accommodate all my learners. How can I keep a lesson or activity engaging to everyone while also making sure they all learn?

Extra set of eyes.

So I was thinking all week about what an extra set of eyes did for us as we observed. I'm not sure that was the right question though. I'm thinking it's more along the lines of what did we see as we guided a new pair of eyes? I learned that I'm not as bad at navigating the school, I'm still pretty bad mind you but not as bad as I thought. I think it also livened up the observation a bit. I think once the newness of it wore off a routine started forming. For me I noticed I stopped noticing as much on the walls, and how the classroom was set up and started paying more attention to the teacher and the students. While I don't think this was a bad thing I definitely got the chance to step back and guide my observer a bit which helped me noticing some of the things I stopped looking for.

 This got me thinking about how I always used to think you had to know a lot about what you're teaching in order to teach it. While I still think that's true I also think you learn a lot while teaching. I think there's something to how you focus on something so much when you're teaching and attack it at ever side to gain understanding so that you can share it with your students that makes learning happen so organically. While I wish I could say I learned so much while showing my student around I can say I saw things a lot differently.

Promising Practices

So I'll preface this post by saying this particular experience I had at promising practices is not the one I'll be writing my letter about. Not sure it matters to clarify that but hey there it is.

So during promising practices I learned about something called literacy walks. Basically these are education events where the teacher sets up a variety of stations a student has to walk to and complete a task (usually a fun one) that has something to do with the book or overall theme of the walk. Once they complete one task they move on to the next. The culminating task usually has something to do with the over all point of the book. In this case it was a 3rd grade class reading a book about building things so they built a bridge. This exercise is meant in some way to be just that: exercise. It's supposed to get the students active for a small amount of time and get them out of their seats. While this was designed for an elementary school class I wonder what it would be like with a high school class. 

I'm thinking maybe say American History the student could walk through the path of the original settlers and go through each colony and learn something about each of the original 13 colonies. It could be a great preface to a unit on American History.

Or maybe a preliminary unit on poetry where students walk to different stations learning about different types of poetry and maybe at the end making their own. 

I think this has a lot of promise and I love the idea of adding a kinetic aspect to learning. I think the more parts of the brain and body the student uses to learn the more the student will retain. In this day and age I think it's great to motivate our students to move around more too. 

Do you think you could use this exercise in your class? I'm curious how it might be used in a math class.