Week 15

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 helps students connect to the world around them. I have seen this done before in several of my placements in ways such as using local maps and writing projects. 

What Happened

It started to kick in that I just have a few short weeks left with my students.  I have really established respect and rapport with my students and I am going to miss them dearly. Due to the year long internship, I was truly able to see them each grow academically and spiritually. I have learned so much from them and they have helped me become a better teacher. 

We continued the StoryWorks plays this week. We are nearing the final performances, which will be this coming Monday. The students have loved working on their plays. It has been really great to see them improve at working in their cooperative groups throughout the time we have been working on them. They learned about the genre of drama/ plays and the topic their play was on. However, they also learned some important social and life skills. There were a few groups that were struggling to work with one another and weren't exactly friends before they were paired together. It was neat to see them getting along better by the end. I am really looking forward to the performances and to watch the students work be showcased. 

In science, we started a new unit of Space and Earth. It has been challenging though because I am on a time frame to complete the chapter in 2 weeks. Space and Earth is such a vast topic to begin with. Also, the students don't have much background knowledge on the topic and have many questions. Therefore, it has been tough for me to try and jam it into the next 2 weeks before the next chapter with butterflies needs to begin. This just showed me how it can be challenging to fit all the curriculum in the year and be able pace it out just right. I had students complete a KWL chart so that they can possibly use some of their questions to research for informative writing. 

My student with an IEP who has autism was observed by a Psychologist who came in this week. She met with his parents, the special education team, my cooperating teacher, and the principal and assistant principal. She then came in and observed the student for about 10 minutes while my cooperating teacher was teaching. Her feedback should be coming back soon for some suggestions for the student's behavior and where to go next in the future. He was originally going to go to the middle school, but now they are considering sending him to Braun or Seals, with other students with disabilities. However, we have learned that it is important to prepare students for change. The school did a good job of this by having the student visit the middle school he was supposed to attend and meet some of the staff. However, now he may not be going there anymore, which is potentially going to be very hard for him to accept. This situation just taught me how important collaboration with parents and other professionals is so important to   meet the needs of students. Also, I saw how sometimes it can be challenging to always prepare students when last minute changes may occur. 

What I learned 

I learned this week that cooperative group learning isn't always as easy to manage and can be unpredictable. I also learned that it is more than worth it because it really teaches students how to work with others, especially those they may not want to work with. I also experienced the fact that sometimes the time we plan for activities does not always go as planned. I had planned for about 30 minutes for plays one day, and after informally assessing where the students were at, we ended up doing plays for about double the originally planned amount of time. I learned that sometimes it is more important to provide students with the necessary extra time they may need instead of what may have been originally planned.

I also learned this week about how it is important to have a general idea of scheduling for when units should be covered. However, depending on the students. Some units may take more time than planned and it can be challenging to fit everything in. I really would not like to have to rush through a certain unit because of time restraints. Therefore, I will collaborate with teachers and others with experience to get advice on how to avoid or what to do if that occurs. 

I learned that is it pretty awesome the team that surrounds and supports students. Between teachers, paraprofessionals, principals, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, social workers, and many others, there is a lot of people in their court. I learned how important it is to work together and how the combination of ideas best helps support students. 

Goals

I worked at getting rid of side conversations because they were really distracting other students and myself as I was teaching. This week I reminded students of the expectations to respect others and myself by not talking while a peer or myself is talking. If students did not follow the expectation, I had them owe a ticket (part of the management system). I also made sure to bring them back into the lesson by involving them in the discussion if they seemed to be distracting/talking. I will continue to work at minimizing side conversations to maximize learning. My goal for next week is to continue to work on this goal from last week.