Post-Observation Learning

Week of Reflection: Friday, January 25, 2019

This has been an exciting and busy week! The students had off Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday ended up being a 3 hour delay for students. I was observed on Thursday and Friday was the PBIS Behavior Reward for students. Even though it was a short week, I think I was more tired at the end of this week, than I was at the end of a full week. However, that tiredness could have also stemmed from the bronchitis that I have developed. Yay me! Overall, I would rate this week as a 4. It was a great week, but there is always room for improvement.

A pleasant accomplishment that happened this week was my first observation. It went very well. I was able to learn a lot after teaching and talking with my CE and I have a lot of new things that I want to try and implement into my lessons to make everything more effective.

After teaching this week, I learned that my students are getting burnt out on discussions. It came to my realization that we do a lot of class discussions in my classroom. While those are not always a bad thing, I think we do them too often and my students are getting bored with them. This was a great learning experience and I have changed my lessons so that students are doing more creative learning experiences in small group settings.

This past week I have been thinking about different ways to do class discussions and different ways to get my students doing more creative learning. This short term efforts align to my long term goal of being proficient in all areas of the NCTCS. A part of these standards includes making learning relevant to students and this is one way that I can do this.

This past week I felt that I had become too focused on preparing for my observation that I ended up not spending enough time preparing for the following week. I felt that my lessons for the following week didn’t get as much attention as they deserved due to me focusing more on my observation and stressing about it coming up.

After my observation, I realized that I went with a class discussion because I felt that it was a safe approach. My class does a lot of discussion-based learning and although I did it in a different setting this time, I felt that my class could have learned a lot more doing a different type of activity. My apprehensions led to my class not being able to learn as much as they could have.

The next step for preparing for the next week is to get my lessons finalized and to prepare and get everything ready for teaching edTPA!

During my class discussions, I realized that not all of my students participate. This could be for various reasons. Some of my students may be shy and not want to talk, some may not know what to day, etc. After realizing this, I have decided to take a few different approaches when it comes to discussions. I am going to try and use a system where I have colored sticks with each student’s name on it. I will pull one out and that student will answer. That way, the same students are not answering each time.

One piece of advice that I have for other student teachers is to make positive monthly phone calls home to parents. I have started doing this this month and I have already noticed that it is making a positive impact in my teaching because I am looking for positive things that each student is doing instead of always trying to look for the negative things to call them out on. I always try to look for positives, but sometimes you do lose sight of that. I make my first set of phone calls this week, so I will let everyone know how they go!

Standard 1:

This past week, I looked at the patterns of student learning during discussions and used those to change my lessons that involved class discussions.

Standard 2:

I have been working on finalizing my positive monthly phone call list to get ready to call my parents at the end of this upcoming week. This gives me an opportunity to collaborate with the parents/families of my students and speak about their learning and things they are doing well. This gives me the opportunity to talk with parents/families to better their student.

Standard 3:

This past week I have made plans to implement global awareness. I am going to begin a unit on the body systems. In third grade, students just need to know that bones and muscles make up our skeletal system and that skin is the largest organ of the body and it protects. I’m going to talk about what happens when someone breaks a bone and what happens to them. Then, I will discuss healthcare in other countries.

Standard 4:

Students worked together in groups to compare/contrast Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Students were able to complete this task in any way that they wanted. It was interesting to see which students got together to work and what they chose to complete this task.

Standard 5:

I did a lot of reflecting on my teaching this past week and decided to make a few changes to ensure that student learning is at its maximum when we are discussing a topic.

I have begun to gather some video for my portfolio.

As of right now, my clinical educator and myself are good!