The semester is moving very quickly and I am excited to be getting closer to student teaching in August! This month in my clinical placement was yet another learning experience for me as I taught all five of my edTPA lesson plans. My segment's goal was to have the students be able identify and retell key details in a nonfiction book. The first day, my lesson was centered around simply finding the main idea and the students had to write the main idea of their chosen book on their white board. Day two of my segment was for identifying key details and their task was to fill out an organizer that looked like a stool to show them that the legs are the key details and the seat is the main idea. In this lesson, I realized my students are not yet developed enough to write that much for one assignment. I had to use this to adjust my instruction for the next three lessons. This connects to standard five of the NCTCS because I reflected on my lesson and adjusted my future assessment methods knowing that they get disengaged when they write more than one full sentence at a time. My third and fourth lessons were identifying main idea and key details within a nonfiction book and to tell the whole class about it was their assessment which I have recorded so I can remember how each student performed on the task. My fifth lesson was an integrated lesson of main idea and key details and making dirt pudding. First, the students listened to me read a book using epic books about spring and then we worked together to identify what we think a good title for the book would be the main idea and key details that support it. By using Epic books, I am integrating technology into my lesson which is connected to standard four of the NCTCS which is facilitating knowledge to students by integrating technology into your instruction. They are all so fascinated with the SMARTboard so any chance I can use it, I do. Next, I passed out a short passage to the students with some questions about the passage to complete which was about spring. Then, I passed out a list of ingredients with the title missing. I told them we had to follow the ingredients to figure out what it was called just like we did with the book about spring. I let them throw out ideas of what we should name the stuff we made and they all agreed it was dirt pudding. It was a fun and yummy lesson to do and it reinforced using details to support the main idea. I facilitated the learning to the students by doing something they think is fun. One student even said to me "you did this activity to help us understand" which I thought was pretty cool coming from a kindergartner! This relates to standard four of the NCTCS which says the teacher facilitate knowledge to their students by using a variety of instructional methods. One of our students moved to another school but then we received a new student. Immediately, I wanted to make her feel comfortable being at a new school, with a new teacher, and new classmates. On my second day meeting her, she gave me a hug and brought me things on the playground. Establishing a relationship is important for creating a safe classroom environment which connects to standard two of the NCTCS. In my clinical this month, one of our students had a major behavior breakout where he was spitting on the other students while they were doing their work and the teacher tried to lead him back to his seat and he started spitting, biting, and kicking her. He was suspended for three days and will return 3/26. This influenced my outside research because I want to help limit his outbreaks so he does not fall behind in schoolwork. To begin with, when he returns on Monday I will not act any differently toward him because as a teacher I need to help all of my students succeed regardless of what they have done and everyday is a new day. The school has organized a new management system for him. It is a strip of pictures that show his schedule for the day and throughout the day he gets paid after he does a certain amount of things on the schedule for that day. When he returns on Monday, I hope this begins to work for him. This reflects standard one of the NCTCS because my CE is using methods to help this certain student succeed in kindergarten. In social studies methods, we discussed a thing called "One School, One Book." It's this really cool thing where a school chooses a book to be the school theme for the year. For example, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" the school would decorate like a candy factory and have theme days and other fun things. This prompted some more of my outside research and the One School, One Book website has a "utilizing title one" tab on the website and the school I am placed at is title one. This research connects to standard one of the NCTCS because I am gathering resources for student teaching at a title one school in the fall and knowing the school you teach at demonstrates leadership. In my future classroom, I will always reflect on my own practice to improve my lessons according to my students needs. Creating a safe classroom environment is number one on my list for my future classroom because one you create this environment, it allows the students to come out of their comfort zones, which is the best way to learn. In my future classroom, I will implement multiple hands-on lessons for the students to interact with the material being taught and this is possible to do so through true integration. This was a short school month with spring break and teacher workdays but I still learned so much. I can't wait to see what April brings for me as a future teacher.
