Reflecting on Winter Quarter

                I have been at the University of Washington for 5 years now. I knew from the beginning of my college career that I wanted to be a teacher. I was finally able to start that goal last spring and each quarter I have grown as a learner, a teacher, a classmate and an individual. The past few months have been pretty overwhelmingly with classes, lesson plans, work, school, and a never ending amount of homework. This quarter is finally come to a close, and it is time to reflect on what I have learned and how I have grown as a teacher. I think this quarter I have seen my confidence rise when it comes to my place in the classroom and especially in teaching lessons in my main placement. When I first came back to working at my main placement I was extremely nervous because I had only taught one lesson in my dyad and getting in front of students and my master teacher terrified me. I taught a science lesson for my first lesson in my main placement and let me tell you, I was nervous but I felt prepared because I knew the lesson and what the students needed to know. After I taught the lesson, I was hot, sweaty and overwhelmed but since teaching that lesson I have grown so much when it comes to teaching lessons. I now teach lessons almost every day when I am in my placement and have tried to take on teaching different subjects. I have noticed that every time I teach a lesson from a specific subject that it gets better. I have been able to take constructive feedback from my master teacher and field instructor and use that feedback as I prepare other lessons.  For example, in my first observation my field instructor gave me a goal to use more think time for students when questions are asked and to use some kind of self-assessment for students. 

                I just had my third observation and took my field instructors feedback into account as I planned this math lesson.  I made sure to always ask questions and allow my students time to think in order to get more participation from different students. Once I started using think time/wait time for my students I got so many more hands up instead of the same students every time. I have also realized the importance of student self-assessment and voice in their learning. I taught a lesson on square numbers and had my students self-assess their learning at the end of the day by asking questions about what they learned and if they would be able to teach it to someone else. My field instructor also told me that a great way for students to self assess is to allow them to assess one another by asking each other what they learned and to explain what they learned. I am very much enjoying getting feedback during my lessons because it allows me to constantly reflect on what I could do differently or how I could change the lesson in the future.

                My course work this year has really helped me to grow as a teacher because I have learned many methods to help me in the classroom. Specifically, I learned how to use talk moves in the classroom and I have been using re-voicing, rephrasing, repeating, and other talk moves during my lessons. I want students to interact with one another and to be able to explain their thinking and their reasoning for answers and thoughts about subjects. I have really enjoyed using talk moves in the classroom and I know it is a skill that will be important to use in the classroom to help my students learn from one another and for me to learn from my students.

                When I first started at my placement, I was a little disappointed because I was placed at a school that had an extremely high socio-economic status and did not have a diverse population, but I have come to learn that all students need to be taught no matter what gender, socio-economic status, or race they are. Students are students and deserve the same equal chance for education and be able to learn from a teacher who wants to be there and who has passion for what they are doing. I have come to be so passionate for my students and have tried to get to know each and every one of my students the best that I can and I continue to learn from them. It has been very eye opening to be able to work with students I have never worked with; it is amazing how much they have developed over the year of being with them from the beginning. 

Collaboration

This quarter has come and gone very fast. It has been super overwhelming but the classes we have taken have been extremely useful. Today was such a productive and eyeopening experiences deconstructing a lesson from our main placement classroom. Instead of having us do this assignment, Alison allowed us to work with one another to collaborate and dissect the lesson that we brought. I really enjoyed this assignment because collaboration is such a large part of teaching and listening to other ideas and thoughts is so enriching. Both my partner and I had taught the lesson we were working with but we taught it differently and because we were able to look at this lesson more closely i was able to learn a couple of great ideas that would be so helpful when teaching my students about multiplication and division. One example of something I took a way from this lesson that my partner did when she taught it is, when gauging for students prior knowledge, the teacher should ask the student what their favorite fact is from the multiple they are learning. This way all students can have access to what they are learning. I also learned where choral counting and quick images can be inserted into the beginning of a lesson or in the middle of a lesson to help students further their understanding and conceptualize different strategies to help them learn the specific mathematical concept they are learning. This was such a great activity to do collaboratively and definitely should be used in other classes for us to be able to really engage with the curriculum we are using and engage with one another.

Confusion

<p>On Wednesday in my main placement I taught a math lesson on formulas for area and perimeter. It was the first time where I struggled with how to help my students progress towards the learning targets because at the end of the lesson I had a few students raise their hands saying they were confused. I didn't understand how they possibly could be confused because I had explained to them the concepts every way I could think of but they were just not getting it. I didn't know what else to do but then I remembered that during our math methods course we talked about how important it is for students to revoice each  others thinking and repeat their classmates thinking is for specific problems questions or formulas.
     I decided to try having students explain the formulas instead of me explaining them. Once I had the students explain the formulas other students started to feel confident and wanted to participate and answer questions and problems on the board. This lesson really helped me to think about the next days lesson would look like because I could assess what my students knew and what they needed to know for the unit assessment.

Talk Moves

I am so happy that I have been able to learn about different ways to elicit conversation between myself and my students and between my students and each other. Since learning about the different math talk questions and ways to phrase questions and when to use certain questions I have really tried to use them in my lessons. For example, I taught a math lesson a few weeks ago and I worked on having the students explain one another's thinking. When a student answered a question about patterns with one of their multiplication facts, I had another student explain their thinking and it was extremely powerful to listen to the students having conversation with another. I also used the revoicing technique during science, when one student was having a hard time explaining his thinking to his group mates. I asked the student if I could try to explain his idea to the group, I revoiced what he was trying to tell them and his group started to understand what he was saying and they felt it was a great idea. 

I think all of the talk moves are extremely powerful techniques that are becoming very useful in my teaching and helping me to elicit student thoughts and understanding during conversation. 

Another technique that has helped me to get more student input, is think time. Giving students an extra 30 seconds to think about the question or problem being asked makes the world of difference for participation. Now that i use think time during my discussions with the students I am getting so much more responses from people do not always share or like to share their reasoning or thoughts. 

School Context: Observing different classrooms

I really enjoyed visiting other classrooms this week because, each teacher I observed did similar but different things than my master teacher. In our class we try to do a class meeting once a week usually on Monday mornings, so student's can share how their weekend was. Student's do this by saying an emotion they had for their weekend and why it was that emotion. We do not go around the circle and say good morning but we make sure every student gets a chance to share how their weekend was.

In a 5th grade class I observed they also do a morning meeting but do it everyday as the start to their school day. Student’s know routine of morning meeting, they come to carpet and get into a circle at a specific time each day. They start off doing a morning greeting activity, this weeks was using paper balls with names, and each student picks a ball with another students name on it. They memorize the students name on the paper ball and put the ball pack. They then say good morning to the person whose name was on the ball they picked.After everyone greets one another, teacher then goes over classroom business (i.e. schedule for the day, any classroom concerns or questions).

After classroom business is through, teacher then has the students who are suppose to share for that day give their one word hints and other students need to ask questions to focus on feelings and thoughts. Students are only allowed to ask 5 questions in order to find out what the student is sharing, 2-3 students share each morning meeting. I really liked this morning meeting because it gave a change for every students to be acknowledged by saying good morning to them and it gives each student a time to share something about themselves. I also love that it is part of the daily routine every day. 

I also observed a 4th grade class and the teacher in that class had a lot of different techniques that she uses then my master teacher. One of them is that she does not have a behavior chart or system because she does not need one with the class she has. I noticed right away how quiet her class was during independent work and transitions. There was no need for a bell or for her to count down, she would just send them on their way and they knew exactly what to do. There was no daily schedule displayed for the students to see when they first came in, instead she displayed their tasks they needed to complete for the morning on the smartboard. All the students knew what to do when they came in and got right down to work. In my class, there is a daily schedule that we change everyday, we also have a behavioral card chart so that when students are off task or not doing what they are suppose to, they need to turn a card. We also use PAT minutes as a way of rewarding our class for on task behavior. I did not see any kind of star chart or PAT time in the 4th grade class. In my class we do need some kind of behavioral system for our students to keep them accountable for their behavior during the day because we do have a few students who need monitoring. 

I also really loved how the 4th grade class had student tasks displayed on the smartboard, so the students knew exactly what they had to do, in our class students have a Must do and May do list during reading/writing time but it would be nice to have something up when they first come in, so they can sit quietly and be reading or working on a challenge math. 

It has been a great experience observing other teachers and I am definitely going to be using a lot of what I have learned in these classes in my own classroom. 

Feedback is so useful and helpful!

I had my first observation last week, I chose to teach a science lesson because it was the next lesson in the unit and I had already taught the previous lesson from the unit. I was extremely nervous to teach this lesson because it involved careful classroom management because there were many components of the lessons and it could get pretty chaotic. I felt the lesson went really well and I was really happy with it, after the lesson my field instructor sat down to give me feedback and tell me what she observed.

Some of her feedback included when asking a question of the students make sure to give wait time so students can process the question and it will allow more students to be able to answer. I decided to make wait time my next goal for the next lesson that I would teach. I taught a math lesson this past week and every time I asked a question I said lets give everyone a chance to think about it, so take some time to think and then raise your hand. This method seemed to work great because I had the same students who would immediately raise their hand after a question is asked but giving other students the time to think, I had more students raise their hand to answer the questions. That feedback from my field instructor was extremely valuable and my cooperating teacher made sure to mention it as something i did very well in my math lesson.

My cooperating teacher is also giving me brief feedback after my lessons and one thing she pointed out was one question that i asked to the students which was "does everyone understand the directions and what they are suppose to do?" This question got no response from the students and after I sent them back to their seats a lot of students had questions and did not understand the assignment. She told me that I should rephrase the question by saying "can someone tell me what the directions are?" "Are there any questions about the what the task or problem is?" "Will someone please repeat the directions and what you are suppose to do?" This feedback was extremely valuable because I was able to make it another goal for myself for the next lesson i taught which is exactly what I did.

I am very happy that we are receiving constructive feedback during our lessons because it gives us so much more insight to how to teach a lesson and how to improve each lesson we teach. I feel so much more confident then I did when I first taught a lesson and I feel that each lesson gets better and better. Having the constructive feedback allows me to reflect on my lesson and how I could do it differently the next time or what I would change. I am extremely grateful for this learning process!

Quick Image

This week I tried my hand at leading a quick image with my 3rd graders. I was going to teach 9's multiplication but because we ended up having a snow week, the week before I didn't feel confident teaching it, so I asked to do a quick image instead.My cooperating teacher said, that was fine and that it is hard to teach something when you have not seen any of the other lessons taught before. I felt much better after talking to her because I have noticed that it is extremely hard to teach twice a week and plan a week ahead of time because we don't get to see what happens in the classroom prior to the days we are there. But I know that it is only for a short while and I am very happy to be getting the experience I am teaching the lessons when I can.  I chose to use the quick images that had groups of 2's and 5's because the students had just learned their 2's and 5's multiplication and division. My students really enjoyed the quick image activity and had fun doing them, I followed the steps in order to do a quick image with the class, and I made sure to have a few students explain their thinking, they all talked about grouping the dots and then either adding or multiplying which is exactly how we want them to think about the images.

I am hoping to be able to do another quick image next week when I teach the students a math lesson on multiplying 4's, I will probably use a quick image having the number 9 as part of the multiplier because my students just learned their 9's multiplication, so it will be a great assessment to see if they know their 9's. I am also excited do the quick image activity because they are learning about quick arrays which is basically the quick image itself. The quick image is a fun activity and I can't wait to keep doing them with my math lessons because they work so well.