Grace Furlong's Student Teaching

4/23-4/26 What Happened It does not feel like this week was my last full week! It was a busy, busy week! I was still teaching most subjects, which was nice so I could see be interacting with my students much of the time. Many events occurred this week such as plays, arbor day celebrations, a talk from Central middle school's principal, new math centers, and the delivery of duck eggs and caterpillars.  The students finally got the chance to perform their plays that they have been working on for so long! The first round of performances were a little rough. We used this as an opportunity to watch the videos of their performances and have the students come up with constructive criticism to help one another improve. As we were discussing how reflecting on the video will help them see how they can improve, a student raised her hand and said, "Isn't this kind of like what Miss Furlong does after she video tapes herself teaching?" It was cool to see that she was ab...

4/16-4/20 Classroom Confidential I plan to use community in the classroom by making connections to the class' community to the different subjects they are learning whenever possible. To help students better understand their community, I can see myself having my students do a similar project to what Schmidt described. She states that having students complete a brochure helps them turn their knowledge and learning into a useful product. While students create the brochure, they are learning about their community and also working on promoting others to visit or live there. Also, the brochure can be distributed throughout the community as well. There are many compelling reasons to integrate community in the classroom. Some reasons include students are learning hands-on, they are able to connect learning to the world, and the possibilities are endless with how community projects can form. Making learning for students meaningful is so crucial and community integration help...

4/9-4/13 Classroom Confidential- Chapter 12 Personally, I work towards being a lifelong learner by reading/researching, participating in professional development opportunities, learning from students,  and collaborating with professionals. I specifically liked the idea tag team. I think it would be great to work with another teacher by combining are classes here and there. I think that I would learn great strategies from the other teacher while being able to offer my ideas as well. It allows me to still be exposed to other strategies and learn new methods even when I have my own classroom.   What Happened Round 2 of PARCC was this week. The students had a PARCC test each morning. It was pretty neat to see how much the class was persevering and not complaining about all the tests. The school has done a great job of encouraging the kids to do their best and show what they have learned thus far.  This week was up and down with the weather and it w...

4/2-4/6 Classroom Confidential The big deal about social justice is that there may have been cases like Plessy vs. Fergeson, but there are still areas where social action needs to be taken. Many kids are hearing the social issues that occurring in society. As teachers, it is our job to address and discuss them instead of leaving students to ponder them alone. We often try to create real world experiences for our students related to the curriculum. It is important that we do this will social issues as well. I thought the book gave some great ideas for incorporating this in the classroom through projects, primary sources, and images. I think that it is important for a Christian teacher to include ideas like the ones mentioned in Chapter 10 to help students be able to discuss and try to understand the social issues in today's society. It also helps them understand how they can become apart of social justice and as their teachers ...