- Review the course goals you wrote about in your first post at the beginning of the semester.
- What progress have you made on them?
- What does this do to inform your practice next semester in student teaching?
- What goals do you still have moving forward?
- Include overall reflections on what you have learned in this clinical course and on-site this semester.
For those of you who have been following my blog about my
clinical experience this semester, it is now coming to an end. Upon reflecting
on the goals I had set for myself for the semester, I am satisfied with my
accomplishments of them. The first goal I had set was to boost my confidence.
In previous semesters I had struggled with this; I needed to have confidence in
myself when I was teaching lessons and not be afraid of messing up. This
semester I really noticed an improvement in my confidence level. I realize that
it is okay to mess up and that I can’t be perfect in teaching. Even though I
improved my confidence level, I still need to work on boosting it.
Another
goal I had set for myself was to work on my classroom management. This is
something that I, as well as my CT, noticed improve as the semester went on;
even within implementation of lessons. I feel as though it really helped seeing
the numerous classroom management strategies being implemented constantly
throughout the day really helped me become comfortable using them as well as
getting the students attention. In the past, I struggled a little with
addressing the classroom rules and expectations during my lessons and this is
something that I really improved on this semester. It is so important to
reinforce the rules and expectations throughout the lesson to help it run
smoothly and also make it an effective lesson. At the beginning of the
semester, I asked my CT about her expectations for me during my clinical
experience and she was very resourceful in this.
The
last goal I set for myself this semester was to really get to know the students
in my classroom. I feel as though this is something that still really needs
improvement. I feel as though I did not get to know the students well enough
this semester and it definitely disappoints me. It is so very important to
understand the students individual strengths and weaknesses so that I can meet
their individual needs when implementing lessons to ensure that they are being
provided with the optimal learning experience to promote their growth. The past
couple weeks I have gotten a little bit of a better understanding of some students,
so I was able to provide them with additional support in certain areas.
Next
semester for student teaching I would still like to work on meeting these goals
I had set for myself. In addition, I would also like to work on my time
management on planning as well as implementation of lesson. The thought of
staying on track still makes me fairly nervous while teaching. I need to use a
calm down strategy that my 3rd grade students are learning about
right now. “Stop. Name your feeling. Calm down.” This can be done by taking
belly breaths or just talking to yourself to calm down and ease my nerves.
Here is a link to the “Calm it Down” song lyrics from Second Step that Oakland elementary
uses.
Margaret,
ReplyDeleteIt is great to hear that you have accomplished your goals over the semester. I think that this semester has really helped all of us become more confident teachers because we were able to practice teaching more lessons and work on skills that we have not learned before. I too feel that I gained more knowledge in classroom management and how to organize my time for teaching and transitioning students in learning in the classroom and that my CT was a big help and support in giving my guidance and suggestions to move forward in the right direction. I feel like a lot of what Kira teaches us about classroom management has helped us to identify what we need to include and consider when planning lessons for a classroom of students.
Lastly, I think getting to know your students takes time but also takes being around them more than just once a week. I think when we get to student teach and see children every day, you will be able to get to know their background more and utilize that to help you be a more supportive teacher for them. Do you have pans for how you want to introduce yourself to your students during student teaching? How do you plan to get to know them quickly? Maybe going in earlier to meet them and observe the class, and then on your first day you can greet the class by showing them an autobiography of yourself, and asking them to fill out a short autobiography to help you get to know a little bit about them. This way, you might be a step ahead of getting to know your students and you can use the information they give you to build on getting to know them better.
I like your “Calm Down” strategy that you mentioned because I too get nervous thinking about planning for teaching and just daily life I get stressed and this semester I too learned a good strategy for relaxation, which is called “progressive muscle relaxation” which is a form of guided meditation in which you tense and relax each of the muscles in your body one at a tie so that when you done your whole body should be relaxed. I have a couple good links to some of the guides that someone showed me that have helped me learn this calming strategy.
“Tara Brach Recorded Meditation” – http://www.tarabrach.com/audioharma.html
A wide variety of helpful meditations- http://www.mindfulselfcompassion.org/meditations_download.php
Margaret,
ReplyDeleteI like how the first goal you set for yourself was to become more confident in your own teaching because this is something I think a lot of us struggle with. I am really glad to see that you feel your confidence has increased throughout the semester! I have also noticed your boost of confidence in class, which is really great. I agree with you in that it is okay to mess up! I feel that one of the most important parts of teaching is being able to deal with mistakes and pick up from there to finish a lesson and I am so glad that you have become more comfortable with this. I believe this is something I have also become more comfortable with throughout this semester. Your second goal of working on classroom management is something I feel like all teachers are constantly working on. I think it’s really nice when you can have a classroom where there is a good balance between fun and respect and it is nice you got to work on this during your clinical placement. I am really curious what kind of classroom management strategies your cooperating teacher used that seemed to work because my cooperating teacher used a clipping system, which is something I don’t know I agree with. It disappoints me you feel like you didn’t get to know your students as well as you would have liked but we did have a limited amount of time there and only going once a week can hinder the relationships you are forming with your students. I think that in student teaching you will be pleasantly surprised with how well you will get to know your students because you will be there every day. I like that when you talked about student teaching the first thing you said was you still plan to work on these same goals. I feel like no matter what we can all be bettering our teaching in some way. Whether we improve on the goals we set for ourselves or not, I think it’s always something we should think about. I am really glad your clinical experience went so well Margaret and good luck in student teaching!
Hey Margaret,
ReplyDeleteI’m glad to see that you were able to build your confidence in teaching! I must ask, did your students ever notice when you didn’t seem to be teaching perfectly? I often times make a mistake in my lesson and have been relieved when I noticed the students didn’t catch me slipping. It made me feel so much better after my lesson because in the moment I felt like the world was weighing down on me as a student teacher. Classroom management was another area I struggled with just as you had. It always seems a bit nerve-wrecking when you don’t use them and find your students acting silly while you’re trying to teach. On the other hand, you feel like you accomplish a little more when you do use management strategies and maintain control of the class while teaching at the same time. What kinds of management strategies does your CT use? My CT only used one, I thought incorporating some of Kira’s techniques in my classroom would be fun and refreshing for the students in my 2nd grade class. Using different ones in our courses was a breath of fresh air for us and we only had to use them for a semester. I thought my students were growing tired of the one they were forced to use all year long.
Christine
Margaret, I really loved that your first goal was to boost your confidence! You said, “I needed to have confidence in myself when I was teaching lessons and not be afraid of messing up.” That is something we are all working on as novice teachers and I really connected with your goal even though it wasn’t one of my own personal goals! I do, however remember telling my CT that I would like to feel more comfortable with presenting lessons and this is something that has improved slightly. I completely agree that we all need to work on having more confidence teaching lessons and that will only continue to develop even farther past what we have already acquired this semester! We have all gained a lot of confidence and teaching and I feel as though this is only the start of the great deal of confidence we will gain during student teaching and further years down the road. Something that helped my confidence when instructing lessons was feeling prepared. That is such a huge, yet simple component of the lesson. When you take the time to plan things out, your psyche is that much more naturally relaxed and confident with the children. Also, creating an outline of your lesson plan with the procedures either in short statements or with visuals on it is really helpful when you need to quickly reference your lesson plan to make sure you are following the lesson in the order you originally planned and worked so hard to do!
ReplyDeleteAnother goal that you mentioned was to improve your classroom management skills. You said, “It is so important to reinforce the rules and expectations throughout the lesson to help it run smoothly and also make it an effective lesson.” Classroom management is a goal I set forth for myself this semester, so I really enjoyed reading about how you found that your classroom management has improved! Kudos to you! I really liked the quote I mentioned above from your blog about enforcing rules and expectation within your lesson to help it run smoothly. I recall several times throughout this semester where I was instructing the students and I would have to pause and remind the students to be respectful to get them back on track. I was surprised how well they responded because at the beginning of the semester, there is no way I would feel comfortable approaching the student’s behavior in such a way. In addition, I would use attention getters that we have learned within Kira’s instruction that would really spark the student’s attention as well as make them smile considering how catchy and fun they are to engage in!
A third goal you mentioned was getting to know your students. You said, “It is so very important to understand the students individual strengths and weaknesses so that I can meet their individual needs when implementing lessons to ensure that they are being provided with the optimal learning experience to promote their growth.” I really appreciated the fact that you acknowledged this was not a goal you met this semester. Your connection with making sure you know your students so you can better assess and engage students is such a statement. I feel as though knowing a student’s academic strengths and weaknesses is something we are all still learning. I challenge you to think about what you can do next semester to be able to understand where the children are at academically so you can meet the diverse learner needs. Perhaps assessing the students in fun, creative ways in the beginning of the year would be an option? Students enjoy being engaged in fun, educational activities. When they complete these activities, you have the ability to assess them based off their completion and the connections they made. I found a website with several engaging checks for understanding or assessments that appear to be fun for students to complete, while still being really helpful for you to gauge their strengths and weaknesses. Here is the website: http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/10-ways-to-assess-learning-without-tests/. Obviously, the type of check for understanding or assessment you use depends on what you are assessing and there are tons of assessments out there for every subject level. I really liked the idea of having students get into groups to produce a play. You can test areas of social studies such as civics and government, more specifically, sociology with observing how students interact with one another and how well they cooperate. In doing so, this will help you understand the student’s temperament. Also, the play might help you assess spelling, grammar, fluency, comprehension and speech. You can even incorporate a play based around science or mathematics so you are hitting all strands of education! It all depends on your preference. To me, assessing students in a natural environment while they are enjoying what they are doing is important because it helps keep the reliability and validity of your assessments high rather than students getting flustered because they are taking a test or in an environment they aren’t comfortable in. Just some food for thought! I really enjoyed reading your blog entry!
ReplyDeleteMargaret,
ReplyDeleteOoowee, this was a popular post to comment on! :) I am late to the party here, but that is okay---I concur with your classmates above about what you write! You have made huge growth this semester! I'll be excited to talk with you about it today!
:)Kira