Looking Back...

From reviewing my goals at the beginning of this semester, I feel that I made a lot of progress in teaching in my clinical placement. I feel that throughout my time during my placement, I was able to use the knowledge and experiences from my past clinicals and what we were learning in classes to use in my clinicals. I felt I got to practice some of the things that I will be doing in student teaching, like assessments, planning a curriculum, and working with parents and staff. I felt that this semester I kept looking back on what I did in past clinicals, past lesson implementations, and working with children before and how I could incorporate what I knew to establish new knowledge and ideas. I think that throughout this clinical placement, I really got to learn more about what I already knew, like Guided Reading, Close Reading, and Math Workshops, but I felt that I also got to learn about new ideas and strategies like teaching Mind Missions for Social Studies, teaching science in different ways, and using what I learned in my classes for my clinical placement lessons. I really enjoyed being able to teach a Science lesson and a Social Studies lesson in this placement, and I felt that it prepared me to see how I would collect materials, organize my lesson, and teach vocabulary and content. Also, I felt that doing these lessons led to discussion and support for improvement from my CT, which I felt was so beneficial for my future teaching. Having science and social studies classes this semester helped me learn how to incorporate the subjects into classes and I am glad I got to use information that I was learning in my classes in my placement this semester. My CT was very helpful and supportive when I taught lessons, asked her questions about teaching and planning, and classroom management. Being with a seasoned teacher for this semester was a lot of fun because I got to talk with her about what I was learning, what I knew and what I was confused about, she gave me a lot of good information and tools that I can use for the future.

My second goal was to organize and prepare myself for the future and for student teaching. I felt that this semester was very beneficial for my preparation for student teaching. I am working in the district I will be at for student teaching, I got to practice a lot of things I didn’t do in past semesters, and I have made a lot of progress in teaching and learning content. I think that I really prepared myself by always looking for more resources, always trying new things and becoming more familiar with new ideas. One thing I felt was beneficial was being able to tutor kids after school with my CT. She let me tutor third graders in math and reading. I got practice in focusing on student’s needs to benefit what they are learning in class and knowing how to challenge students but allowing them to have fun in the process. I really think that in my first or second year I will try to set up tutoring for kids like my CT has.

I also felt that I made a lot of progress in showing my professionalism through my work and my abilities and strengths in my teaching and clinicals. I made it a goal all semester to work hard within my clinicals and exceed in my work through my lessons and my motivation as a teacher in clinicals. I felt that staying after to help tutor, meeting with the literacy coach and going to professional development meetings each month allowed me to show my professionalism, build professional relationships and become more connected within the school. I really enjoyed going to the professional development meetings, talking with staff and working with my CT before and after school, and meeting the literacy coach for the district. Doing these activities for me taught me a lot about the district I will be in for students teaching, gave me the opportunity to work with other teachers and staff, and learn about job opportunities that I could have a future in, like being a literacy coach. I was so excited the first day of clinicals when I met the literacy coach and she suggested to me that anytime I could meet with her because I am getting a reading endorsement so I can possibly work in a position like that. My CT and I have talked with the literacy coach many times and I enjoy and find it very interesting to listen and have a discussion with her because I realize that I understand the work and the teaching techniques she is suggesting using in the classroom. I enjoy having an educated conversation with her because it helps me learn what I could be doing in this position in the future. I also learned this semester that being able to know more people throughout the school and know more about the district helped me feel more comfortable throughout my clinical placement and I felt that it helped me practice building professional relationships.

In moving forward this semester, I feel I will continue to try to incorporate what I have learned in the past to try and help me for student teaching, because I feel I learned a lot of new and helpful knowledge that will benefit me in student teaching. Also, I want to try to continue studying science and social studies content and how I can teach it in my classroom, because this information was so new to us this semester, I felt that I learned a lot but still want to practice this knowledge and build on what I learned this semester.

Overall, I really loved this clinical placement. I loved the grade level and would now love to teach second or third grade, but still love kindergarten and first grade too! I felt that working with these students challenged me to know my content and helped me to see how I could challenge myself as a teacher and support these students at this level. I really liked that I got the chance to do tutoring and that I got to go to the professional development meetings every month. I also felt that each lesson I did I became stronger in my teaching skills, in using classroom management tools, and in knowing how to assess children throughout and after my lesson. Lastly, I felt that this semester’s classes incorporated what I was learning and doing in my clinicals very well and I felt that I got to use a lot of what I was learning in classes and that it made me more confident and prepared for the future.

For the end of the year, I decided to write cards for each student in my clinical class. I found a couple ideas on Pinterest for gift ideas for students and for my CT to show appreciation:

 Card to students: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/217932069438649312/ 

Gift for students:  http://www.pinterest.com/pin/449585975271476285/

Appreciation gift for CT:  http://www.pinterest.com/pin/410038741045852352/

Science Instruction in Clinical Setting

The science instruction in my second grade clinical classroom is done in large group, mostly at their desks. Science instruction happens in the afternoon, depending on the day either my teacher is teaching Science or Social Studies. I have only seen science instruction a few times, but from what I have seen I know that my teacher uses discussions to ask questions to students to find out what they know, uses guidance and reasoning to encourage thinking and responses, and uses discussion to encourage interest and hypothesis. The last time I saw my cooperating teacher teach science, she used real world connections, daily experiences, and real life examples to encourage thinking and discussion in the topic on nutrition and daily intake. Students used prior knowledge to discuss the different kinds of food you find in each food group and why the daily intake is different for each type of nutrition.

 A lot of times the teacher will also have students use their science notebooks to record information, graphs, and data from investigations to record this for later use. My teacher will show students what to do sometimes using her document camera, other times she will have them reflect on the lesson or activity in their notebook. I like the idea of using a notebook to record and document information and I will definitely want to try to use this in my future classroom. My teacher encourages children to discuss and respond in the large group by asking prediction questions, connecting to students real lives, and using visual examples on the Smart board. Some students are distracted at their desks during the long discussions, but my teacher encourages them to focus and be engaged by walking around the room and engaging with students and questioning their ideas or opinions. I think students like the large group discussion because they make connections to their world and can investigate and argue ideas and facts. My CT gets most of her lesson ideas by incorporating the social studies topics with science instruction. As a past teacher in Texas, my cooperating teacher did this kind of instruction and incorporated these two topics in instruction. The science instruction is more focused to explore ideas, make predictions, and brainstorm ideas, whereas in social sciences students are applying what there are learning from literature and real world to understand the concepts through application. 

The parts I like of my cooperating teacher’s practices is that she uses large group discussion and engagement throughout the activity, she provides children with a high amount of reasoning and information when using discussion in her lesson, and she provides exploration and engagement by making real world connections. I think she guides and supports children’s thinking and responses in discussion very well and when she engages students in discussion she provides good examples of real world connections and explanations that show she understands the topic and can guide students to explore the concept.

I have not science instruction in my clinicals before, nor have I had a science class in education until this semester, so from what I have learned in my science class this semester, my CT has very engaging and interesting discussions. I can easily make connections to my class readings on how to provide application to learning science and I can see how I would plan a science activity that could extend my CT’s discussion. When my CT taught the nutrition circle on the plate, students could have used different pictures of foods and their amounts to apply it to the plat and show visually how much food should really be consumed in each category.

 I think some things that I would do differently is having children sit at their desks the entire time. Children start to get distracted and are not as engaged in discussion after about twenty minutes and I think I would get children out of their desks and transition so they stay engaged in the lesson. I also think I would change how students share their ideas and responses in the lesson because my cooperating teacher usually have students raise hands and respond individually. I think I would sometimes have children talk within their small groups at their desk and then have a “reporter”, someone to report what was said in their group, so that students are still engaged in discussion and are working collaboratively in groups. But the science instruction I see in my clinicals helps me to see that in the future I can use some of the positive aspects of her lessons and discussions but also build on that by providing more engaging discussion and formative assessment tools that I believe would benefit children’s knowledge of the topic and participation in the discussion.

Here is a link I found on guidelines for forming groups, group work techniques, and ideas for forming groups:  https://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide/sections/groupwork.html

From UCD Dublin Teaching and Learning Resources I found very helpful teaching toolkit on large and small group discussion techniques. The toolkit has a very organized way of explaining each type of technique and the advantages to using each technique in a small/large group.

 http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/ucdtlt0021.pdf

Here is a link I found that has examples of formative assessment tools that can be used during the science discussion: http://wvde.state.wv.us/teach21/FormativeAssessment.html

This link has 22 easy formative assessment techniques for teachers, something I definitely want to keep for the future!     http://www.nwea.org/blog/2013/22-easy-formative-assessment-techniques-for-measuring-student-learning/