- School
- Courses you will be teaching
- General characteristics of your cooperating teacher (whatever you are willing to share)
- What stands out about your first day. If you started your placement early, share what stands out so far.
- What are the biggest challenges you anticipate? Explain.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Reflection Assignment: First Day
Please share some details about your placement and your first day.
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I had a good day pretty much. I am placed in magnet wing of Central High School ,Brideport. The courses I will be teaching are Calculus- Trigonometry- 1 class , Algebra 2 - two classes and geometry – two classes. I will be teaching mostly Juniors and Seniors. My cooperating teacher is very understanding and resourceful. She is very frank in her feedback too. Today I gave my introduction to all the classes and asked them to fill up a student information sheet- to know more about them and what are concepts in math , they are weak and they need my help.I don’t believe, 70% of them honestly wrote their needs, what they are struggling with so far in math (including fractions )and asked for help. All day I was trying to help them review their board test in all 3 subjects.I got to know most of my students and teachers around. I had long cafeteria duty.It was tiresome.It was not just standing and monitoring.In this school the teachers drag the trash can to every student to collect food trash after they are done eating .They do it to model – cleaniness and sanity.I did’nt mind doing it myself.I inferred from this job that most of the free food is being wasted. Most students were appreciative for the teachers help both inside and outside class.Its only that they don’t have control over themselves with respect to peers and behavior.I made students play “I have, who has “ game in algebra 2 - linear equations and geometry – quadrilaterals and triangles.Tommorrow I will be doing the same game in trig Identities.By this I came to know the biggest thing, that stands out is , they are not so thorough with what has covered so far.The biggest challenge will be going over same thing, again and again before starting any new topic.But the Bridgeport Board suggests teachers to go in a fast pace to cover lot of syllabus , but the students are not ready yet.Most of them are motivated and need help but they usually don’t turn up for after school help.And teachers have very little time to teach and revise a topic before moving on to new topic.I am planning to stay back for after school from tomorrow.I will teaching Trig to seniors tomorrow. Overall, a positive experience on first day.
ReplyDeleteI’m at Daniel Hand HS in Madison. I will be teaching two Elementary Statistics classes in a class made up mostly of seniors. I will be teaching one Precalculus class to juniors. I’m observing for two days (and helping the students during independent and group work) and will begin teaching Stats on Wed and Precalc on Mon. Overall it was a positive first day. The Stats class is moving at a slower pace than I would have thought given that the students are seniors, but it’s considered a Level 3 class. Some kids appear disinterested, while others appear bored from the “simple” material. Currently, we are covering the creation of frequency tables from raw data and then representing the information in the tables pictorially in the form of histograms, stem-and-leaf plots and other charts and graphs. Neither of my cooperating teachers uses the concepts of Do Now or Initiation and there is only a vague hint of Closure. However, they’re both very supportive of my interest in implementing those concepts when I teach. The Precalc class is a more cooperative class as one might anticipate since it’s a higher level class. We’re covering Trig Functions using the Unit Circle and Right Triangle approaches. We will quickly move on to Trig Identities and graphing of Trig functions. In addition to observing classes, I helped with hallway monitor duties.
ReplyDeleteI am at Irving A Robbins Middle School in Farmington. I will be observing for two days before I could start teaching. I am assigned for two special ed classes (only 5 and 6 students in each class), two Algebra classes and one geometry class. I also have to attend the very first home room class which is an independent reading period. Those kids there are from other team and I won't teach them Math either. My co-ordinating teacher told me I could probably teach only one Algebra class and helped out in the other Algebra class and geometry class. In the special ed class, it's more like tutoring than teaching. So it's a little bit disappointing. Hopefully, she will give me at least one more class to teach. The classroom management is absolutely not an issue. The kids are really well-behaved and simply following what the Math teacher tells them to. I also helped out Math tutoring after school. It's a long day.
ReplyDeleteHi, I'm at New Milford High School. Today is my second day of observing the classes. One period of Geometry in the Morning and 2 periods of Intermediate Algebra 2 (lower level) in the afternoon. My cooperating teacher also has 2 Honors Algebra 2 courses I will assist with in the middle of the day, but I will not be responsible for teaching those. My cooperating Teacher is great, easy to talk with and open to new ideas. (and good looking, good thing I'm not tiger woods). She graduated from this High School 10 years ago and has been working here for 5 years. Friday the Int. Algebra 2 class had an exam. I corrected the exam over the weekend for one of the periods. The teacher left it up to me to determine partial credit. It took quite a bit of time to grade the exams, agonizing over partial credit, no laughing Randy. I recorded the grades in the online gradebook today during prep period. Tommorow I will be teaching the Interm. Algebra 2 in the afternoon, continuing with factoring quadratic equations. I am going to have 2 Do Nows or as they call them Warm Ups. I will get them introduced to this concept before the evaluator comes on Monday. The first Do Now is "a get to know me" exercise. The student writes down for me three interesting things about themselves. I will write three or four things on the board and one will be false, and see if they can guess which is false. The main Do Now is a review of the notes from today's class on factoring quadratic equations, there is fill in the blank from the definition. There is "is this a quadratic equation or not?", Fill in the blank, how many roots does a quadratic equation have? Simple stuff, but to get them remembering the notes from yesterday. I will use colored chalk to write out the steps as Randy does. I think this may help this group.
ReplyDeleteThe day goes by so fast. A lot of stuff crammed into a short amount of time. Still trying to get used to the time periods and when periods start and stop. Will have to watch the clock when teaching tommorow. The challenges will be to motivate the last two periods. Their behavior is not an issue, a little noisey at times, but they did not do well on the Exam from Friday, they are not getting the material. The teacher offers extra help after school, one student came today and she worked with her one on one. I guess I will be starting that later this week. Good luck everyone. Take Care - Marty.
Yesterday I started my student teaching at Hillside Middle School in Naugatuck. My cooperating teacher is an extremely intelligent man with tremendous energy and enthusiasm for his teaching. At the same time, he is dedicated to ensuring my success. I'm working with seventh grade students primarily, but hope to teach his Algebra class as well. I planned out the entire unit for the first two weeks, so I have all the handouts and lesson plans ready. Needless to say, I've been revising them every night! My evaluator was going to observe today, so I went from observation to teaching within one day. As it turns out, he isn't coming for almost two weeks. However, I still taught my first 4 classes today. One thing I learned fast was that I overplanned activities for the class and there was not enough time to complete them all. Working with my cooperating teacher, we pared it down for later classes and focused on the most important parts of the lesson. A big challenge for me is time management. Using the clock on the wall, I was monitoring the timing of my activities. When I got partway into the lesson, the teacher told me the clock wasn't working properly and that I had 6 minutes to go! What a surprise. I'm getting a timer for the future!
ReplyDeleteHi, I taught 2 classes of Algebra 2 today. I started the morning a bit out of sorts. I was late getting to school, with the rain I was caught behind buses and parents dropping off the kids and had to get around them to my new parking space on the back of the building. I got there 3 minutes before the bell. My cooperating teacher was worried about me. She told me a short cut to bypass the main entrance so I wont be late in the future. In the first class, Geometry, I started with the two Do Nows. The kids seemed to like it. I told them we would do it every day as a review and warm up. I then reviewed the homework and then the teacher took over the lesson. After that period my cooperating teacher told me to give more wait time after asking questions, and to stand to the side when writing on the board. She said I didnt look nervous which made me feel good. I wasnt really nervous, just a bit shaken at being so late.
ReplyDeleteIn the afternoon, I taught the algebra 2 courses on my own, solving quadratic equations by factoring, again starting with the Do Now. It went pretty well. Afterward I asked my cooperating teacher if I was too boring and spent too much time going over each step and adding and subtracting to combine terms. She said no, these two lower level classes need all the steps and they need to see them on every problem like Randy said. She said we would work on the boring factor.
After that we role played teacher. She told me to work on my teacher voice and modulate it. I was loud enough but she wanted me to change my tone. "Hooww do weeee doooo this?" Draw words out, raise and lower my voice. She said "I know it sounds corny but the kids need it to keep their attention." She did an example, and then I did an example on the board and we looked at things that the students might have trouble understanding.
I'm still getting used to the time management issues. We reviewed my lesson plan at lunch and adjusted time alotments. In the actual lesson, I had to drop one example and skip to the last one I wanted to show them before giving out the homework and closure. I wanted to have guided practice followed by independent practice, she suggested giving them the problem, let them start for a minute, to walk around and make sure they actually copied the example and then solve it with them. The good thing is I have a picture seating chart so I called on most students to answer questions on how to do the next step rather than me telling them no we do this and this and.. boring.
Very exciting day.
All day Geometry tommorow, isoseles trapezoids and kites. Algebra 2 the Quadratic formula, I'm going to use colored chalk for a, b & c. to show were they come from and where they go in the formula.
Hope all had a rewarding day. On to lesson plans for the evening. Luckily no class Thursday, Teacher Professional Development day classes.
Marty
The first day in school.
ReplyDeleteI am student teaching a Gordon Swift Middle school in Watertown. I will be teaching 5 classes, two Algebra classes with two different preps, to higher level Algebra classes and one lower level basic math. Well, I spent the first day of school mostly observing the cooperating teacher and the students. I attended 5 periods and I met about 100 students in one day! That was definitely very exciting although I really did not know any student by name at the end of the day. My cooperating teacher suggested that I should observe the routines of the class, which I did very carefully. The most striking thing to me was that my cooperating teacher did not have formal lesson plans. However, after 41 years of teaching he had all the plans in his head. He was direct and simple on his teaching and as far as I could tell pretty effective. There were no major misbehaviors in all periods and the cooperating teacher brought the class in order in the few cases that minor misbehaviors occurred. The cooperating teacher would teach the new objective with examples and the students would solve problems from handed-out worksheets. This way the students would keep in task for the bigger part of the period. During that time the teacher would accept questions and help the students. The students on certain occasions would work with partners or individually. In certain instances they were allowed to correct each other’s quizzes. Although, I did not do teaching the first day, I got involved in preparing the next day’s lesson handouts. I also participated in a team meeting where the student progress or the lack of it was discussed for certain students. Finally at the end of the day I had to do “bus duty”. So I got a very good idea about routines inside and outside the classroom. I was supposed to observe for couple of days but my cooperating teacher got sick. The second day a substitute teacher appeared but he let me do all the teaching. So now I am in full swing of teaching 5 periods every day! It will continue like this for the rest of the week… I am very busy and time flies! The kids seem to have accepted me oK. I hope it stay that way for the rest of the teaching assignment. I feel I am in control of the class at least (80-90)% of the time. No embarrassing moments as yet. May be I get a grace period. Biggest challenge for me is time management and the load for 5 preps. I hope my cooperating teacher gets well and be back soon…
Well I wrote a lengthy blurb of my first day of teaching on Tuesday. Some how it didn’t post and was lost when I was entering the scanned words.
ReplyDeleteMy evaluator is coming Monday April 5th and there are no classes on Thursday or Friday this week so I jumped into teaching 2 classes of the Intermediate Algebra 2 on Tuesday.
After today I feel better about the whole situation. Overall yesterday, I was overwhelmed. I had a major issue with time management, not just during the lessons, but overall getting used to the schedule of classes and where I was supposed to be. Yesterday with the rain, I was late and arrive 3 minutes before the bell. I felt a bit flustered. After today I feel a lot better overall. I’m getting used to it.
Yesterday at the end of the day we debriefed. My cooperating teacher gave me 2 things to work on, don’t block the board, and give a longer wait time on questions and to see if there are any further questions on the homework. We practiced being teacher and student and changing the tone of our voice, like “ hooow do you doooo that?”
“And whaaat do weeee get?” Be more dramatic. Today she said did you see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I said yes, she said don’t be like that teacher. I said I don’t intend to.
Today, in the morning Geometry class, they had a quiz first thing, then I gave them the Do Now when they turned in their quiz. It gave students something to do while others were still working on the quiz. I then went into the lesson on Trapezoids and Kites. This was my first time with this group for a full lesson. I had done a Do Now and homework review with them on Tuesday. It seemed more comfortable today then yesterday with the other 2 classes. I only felt a bit uncomfortable at one point when I was asking the students to list properties of a kite that they thought were true from looking at my diagram. My cooperating teacher said I was fine.
This afternoon I taught the Quadraaaticc Formula! (Dramatic voice). I had 2 back to back classes. I used colored chalk for a, b & c. It was long and boring. I used the a, b , and c in color in the formula in working it out for each of 2 examples. Just took to long. My cooperating teacher suggested I drop that in the second class. I did and it went smoother. I felt more comfortable. I still had the original formula with the letters in color on the board, but I didn’t use color in the guided practice. The second class is a little bit bigger and a bit rowdier and they seemed to follow it.
I had to mention take out your notebooks and copy this down. I walked around the room and had to remind a few students to write it down. I did a guided practice and a semi-guided practice. I wrote the problem down and had them do my first two steps.
1. Is it equal to zero.
2. Is it in form ax2 + bx + c =0
3. Use Quadratic Formula
a) find a = , b = , and c=
b) plug into formula
I walked around the room and some were already plugging away and some had the solution. Others weren’t writing and I reminded them to write the problem down and then I went back to the board and worked it out.
My pit fall in the first class was calling on students to give me the next step. I wanted to get them involved and I wanted to learn their names fast. I used the picture seating chart from the Online Gradebook. It made calling on students easier. Surprisingly I think I know about half their names already, and I’m not usually good with names in large groups. In the second class, I did part of the work and called on students for part and it worked smoother.
Part 2 3-31-10
ReplyDeleteI used the Do now exercise yesterday and today and it worked great. I stood by the door and handed it to them today as they walked in and they said thank you and most got started. The boys congregated by the window to see if it was still raining. Overall they got on task. This was my goal to get this to work by Monday for the evaluator. I walked around and took attendance and check to see it they had done their homework. We reviewed Homework after the Do Now. Then I went back to the do know. Today I gave them three quadratic equations to solve. Yesterday we learned how to solve them by factoring. I gave them one they couldn’t solve. Several students raised their hands and said is number 3 right? It cant be solved. I said “Oh your right, I did that on purpose”. I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Now today we are going to learn a different method to solve the quadratic equations. My cooperating teacher said the second class of Quadratic Formula that I taught was better, I was more relaxed and I changed my voice more. She said I had better control of the time.
Checking for homework is not so bad, they place it on their desk while working on the Do Now. I put an X next to their picture on a copy of the seating Chart, and an A for Absent and then go and click their pictures on the computer to mark them absent. The Homework I need to go later and enter into a chart. Will work with the cooperating teacher on this. She doesn’t check homework every day. She calls on them during homework review and if they don’t have the answer they most likely did not do the homework and they admit it. Although I don’t want to be the Homework Bad Guy, they should be doing the homework. They did so poorly on the Quiz that I graded from last Friday, more than half failed.
Today, after class I had one student who asked me for help. My cooperating teacher was helping some other students. He said he had missed several classes and didn’t know how to factor. I went over it with him and he said he was starting to understand it. I told him to come see me Monday if he had trouble with tonight’s homework on the Quadratic Formula. I also told him we should review factoring again. But I felt good after this.
Also, the kids were calling me Mr. S. already.
This is probably turning into 2 or 3 posts. Forgive me, Randy you have created a Monster. I am opening up about this, which is normally against my nature, but I feel comfortable with all of you and we are all in this same new rocky boat.
Good luck to all. Just keep smiling, no matter what. It will make them wonder what your thinking.
Marty
By the way I now see the post that I did yesterday, it is there now, strange.....
ReplyDeleteIt wasnt there last night or earlier tonight.
This internet thing...
Marty
It's my third day here in IAR Middle School. I have not even started any teaching yet because today is the test day and the first two days are the observation days which my co-ordinating teachers advised me not to start right away. So, tomorrow, I will start teaching my very first class (Algebra) and this is also the class which my evaluator comes to observe. So wish me the best of luck.
ReplyDeleteMy co-ordinating teacher still insists that I could only teach one class. She asked me for the lesson plan for tomorrow observation to take a look. She disagreed with a lot of things that I put down. First, she didn't like the objective and insisted that I had to add an objective by using either "understand" or "develop". I explained to her that we had been advised not to use those terms because we could not assess it. She expressed her strong opinion about that and she even said she would like to talk to the evaluator about that. I am not sure if she really would get that far tomorrow. Also, while I prefer to use the projector to do the transparency, she "convinced" me to use the MS Journal and she will stay in the classroom to help me out with that. She did put a lot of thoughts into my lesson plan and I do try my best to work with her. It is just not easy. I am still looking forward to more teaching opportunities in the coming week.
The day is rapid fire now but imagine when you are teaching the entire day! This is why planning and having a system for the kids to follow is so important.
ReplyDeleteRegarding homework review, I hope you don't get sucked into standing up front and working out multiple problems. This may work in your higher level classes because these students are much easier to re-engage. For your lower level classes, you are giving many students down time. I suggested before that you write out the solutions on a transparency or a handout and structure a system in which they check answers and help each other. Then you can help on an individual basis.
CK, I'll email you about the objective. You can have the teacher contact me. Develop can be measured but that is very tricky. For example, if the students will develop a strategy for finding area of a triangle, then ANY strategy that generate meets the objective.
Marty, you worked out two examples? I love the color coding, but I suggest you do one example quickly and let them get their hands dirty asap.
It's a humbling experience.
Hi, Randy yes, it was semi- guided practice.
ReplyDeleteI showed them how to do one, then started them out, walked around top see how they were doing on their own and then called on them to help me finish the problem on the board. My cooperating teacher thought it was too much to show them one, and have them do one completely on their own. When I was walking around, some were working on it and some had completed and some hadnt even started.
Monday is my evaluation. No class Friday. We are going to continue with a second day of Objective: solving quadratic equations using the Quadratic Formula. My cooperating teacher suggested giving them two sided work sheets with two columns each side. Each column would have one quadratic equation to solve. Under that typed out the Quadratic Equation. Then areas for them to fill in a= , b = , and c=.
Below that I will type the quadratic formula with blanks to fill in like this:
- ( ) +/-Sq Rt of ( )squared - 4 ( ) ( ) all over 2 ( ) . This of course will be typed with proper symbols, I just didnt do this here.
This way scaffolding the students after a long 4 day weekend.
My Do Now will be to copy the Quadratic Formula and the steps to solve using it from their notes. I want them to get it back into their memory before we start solving them in class. I will give them one to solve on the Do Now as well. I will also ask them why we need the Quadratic Formula, to solve questions that we cant solve by factoring.
I also plan to have the Formula and Notes pre-printed in LARGE letters on the paper posted on the board, I will try the color again on that if I can get it to work out. I did have some issues with size of font on Wednesday in the Geometry class, it was hard to read some of the numbers from the back of the class. The font was large, just not quite large enough.
When I have reviewed homework, I have called on students for the answers. After going through, I would show the work on the board for the ones the students had questions on, or it someone gave me the wrong answer. There was one case in factoring, where they had the wrong sign and wrong factors of 6, they had 2 and 3 and it should have been 6 and 1. I showed that one on the board. I did walk around and check homework during the do now.
I am thinking of skipping checking the homework on Monday with the Evaluator there. I will just take attendance. Then call on students to review the answers. They are pretty honest if they didnt do the homework and they will tell you.
We had teacher professional development day. In the morning I worked on lesson plans for Monday. In the afternoon, we had Texas Instruments give a demonstration on the new Ti nspire. It is impressive. They said buying it directly from them it will be about the same cost as the TI-84. They said it is more expensive and Staples etc. The new one has a CAS version that does Algebra. The standard TI nspire has a removable face plate that changes back to a TI-84 Silver. This extra face plate comes standard with this one.
They also talked about the new operating system that can be downloaded for the TI-84 Silver. Saras had mentioned that. I have a few sheets they gave us on use of the new operating system. You can write fractions like fractions and get answers as fractions, not decimals. I will scan and email to everyone.
Randy, do you think my objective above is good and the scaffolding of the worksheets as described above? Let me know. MLStejskal@aol.com Thanks.
First day, part II:
ReplyDeleteThe "do now" required them to read through a set of class expectations with points and rewards, much like Randy shared with us. One of the rewards is that music which they selected will be played in class when doing classwork, and I brought this to their attention EARLY in the do-now, to raise their level of acceptance of this whole thing. Once the idea of music got their attention, I then had several questions on the do-now which asked them about things in the expectations/rewards, so that they would have to go find those answers, forcing them to read it. Part of the do-now was a student survey, so I could try to get to know them. I asked a variety of questions including what their favorite music is and "what thoughts come to mind when you hear the word 'math'?". I walked around and chatted with the students about their surveys, ie interests etc, while they were doing the "do now". After the do-now was complete, which took more like 10 minutes, but I was okay with that for the first day, we reviewed the it ... I used a Nerf football to call on students. After going over the do-now, I then had prepared a 2 minute, one-slide powerpoint to introduce myself. The only words on it were "a little about Mr. Surrette", and the rest was animated... pictures slowly came in from the sides in chronological order as they happened in my life basically, so it started with a picture of Providence, the street I grew up on (the ghetto), a Marine Corps emblem, my college logos, hobbies, etc... it culminated with pictures of my two kids. I told them about myself while the slide ran. Everything I did was an informed decision. I knew these kids and I knew the situation in the school. The kids are frustrated and there is an "us and them" mentality in many of their minds where the teachers are not looked upon favorably. I didn't want them to see me with the same frustration, so I tried to relate to them and get them to see me as someone other than just another teacher. The pics of my kids I think helped... lots of "awwwwwws" from the class! I finished the day with a pre-assessment which would count only if they did well. The day went very well, all were well-behaved and I had some very interesting feedback on the student surveys.
First day, part I:
ReplyDeleteI'm teaching at East Hartford High School. I am teaching two low-level algebra courses, one mid-level, and one honors level. All algebra, all freshman, except for students who repeated. I am in a bit of a unique situation in that I have been working at the school since early January. I have worked daily with about 12 of the students and sporadically with many of the others. I have a good rapport with all of them, which helps in a major way.
I was afraid going into day one that I was planning to go about it all wrong. I had put together a strategy based on all that we had been told since October, and what had been emphasized over the past month regarding behavior management. Then, last Saturday, I was totally thrown by the discussion in methods in which the overwhelming sentiment was not to change anything in the classroom drastically. But, it was mentioned in that discussion that it depended upon the circumstances. I felt my plan was appropriate, so I went with it.
Here is the class routine that existed before my arrival. Desks in traditional columns/rows. No "do now". No bells, whistles, music, competitions, balls, etc. Students came in, milled about, sat down sometime around the bell, teacher reviewed HW with them OR gave a lesson. Bell rang, class left. Many of the 9th grade students at the school are failing. Given all that we were taught in ARC, I felt that the norms for the class weren't working to this point, so there is no reason to believe they would work with me. So if things were to go poorly, I would have deserved the blame for not doing something about such a predictable outcome. Conversely, if I did everything that we had been taught, and it didn't go well, at least I could defend that approach.
I started teaching on Monday morning, and it went exceedingly well. I have had each day planned out thoroughly so that I could focus my attention in class on forming good classroom habits in myself. Prior to class, I arranged the desks in groups of four, and I had assigned seating with name tags and folders on each desk. Strong students were grouped heterogeneously. I had identified the student who posed the biggest behavior challenges in the class with the coop teacher, so when that student entered, I handed them the timer and a bell and asked them to help out. They were always happy to do so. More on that with my next reflection. I had also color coded all the periods, and the color-coded folders sitting on their desks had the "do now" right on top waiting for them when they arrived.
One more thing...
ReplyDeleteOn the first day, as I'm walking around the class trying to get the kids on task, I was offering verbal recognition and praise to the kids that were on task, rather than pointing to the ones that were not... and the whole time, I kept picturing Randy walking around our class in methods, modeling this very approach.
I didn't fully appreciate Randy's efforts until this week. That mental image of him walking around class verbally reinforcing behavior was very clear to me because he did it so often and persistently. And it was very effective in class! The atmosphere was so much better than it would have been if I just walked around barking at people for being off-task or behaving inappropriately. Offering 4-7 times more praise than correction does not come naturally for most people, myself included, so this was a learned behavior, one that I'm still training myself to do.
So thanks Randy, great job!
Bill said...
ReplyDeleteOne more thing...
On the first day, as I'm walking around the class trying to get the kids on task, I was offering verbal recognition and praise to the kids that were on task, rather than pointing to the ones that were not... and the whole time, I kept picturing Randy walking around our class in methods, modeling this very approach.
I didn't fully appreciate Randy's efforts until this week. That mental image of him walking around class verbally reinforcing behavior was very clear to me because he did it so often and persistently. And it was very effective in class! The atmosphere was so much better than it would have been if I just walked around barking at people for being off-task or behaving inappropriately. Offering 4-7 times more praise than correction does not come naturally for most people, myself included, so this was a learned behavior, one that I'm still training myself to do.
So thanks Randy, great job!
I’m at Chippens Hill Middle School. Lower level 6th grade math. I’ll have four classes of Academics with a unit on Measurement of Shapes and some pre-algebra work thrown in. And one class of Accelerated students that is doing pre-algebra with one variable equations right now.
ReplyDeleteMore than half of the 125 students I have have special needs. The biggest challenge I have is getting a handle on that. I’m not seeing a clear path on figuring out which students have which issues because the class rosters, seating charts and other information I have seen so far is not exactly complete at least on paper. So far I’ve seen the students listed by what level proficiency they have, with names highlighted to identify special needs but the lists are not complete and I need to match them up to the Special Education file my cooperating teacher has. This file has only the summary pages for all the 60 or so students in random order which doesn’t tell me much as I’d prefer to see more of the complete IEPs and 504 plans. I also found out that I have about 40 students on Literacy Plans and 20 or so are classified as gifted. It’s hard to figure out the best way to help the students succeed when you have incomplete information. So far I’ve graded two quizzes so I am already getting a sense for how they are doing.
I have a paraprofessional that comes to the two first period classes and a co-teacher that is supposed to be here for fifth period but she only came to our class once last week citing other work she had to do – prep for PPTs.
Also for the four academic classes, I am filling out behavior charts for about 12 students. Some of the charts were designed by Chippens but some of the others are STATE forms.
The one accelerated class has no children with special needs, my cooperating teacher had said previously, but that was the one class with 29 students that she didn’t have a seating chart for. I was collecting the homework and stamping planners of the students that didn’t have them on the second day when one little boy starting going off about the rules in a high pitched very whinny manner which right away I recognized as in the “autism spectrum”. I backed off immediately. There was two of us in the room and he was new to the class so my coorperating teacher spent some time explaining the class rules to him. The next day he came back to class with an index card to be taped to his desk reminding him of the rules for the class which his special teacher had worked on with him. I handled that situation okay I was told, the other students actually handled it very well I was surprised.
My cooperating teacher is the team leader of this section of 125 students. She knows the kids and their issues very well. Actually all the teachers I have meet in our section know the students with issues very well, completely down to the ones who have changed meds, the ones in treatment etc.
ReplyDeleteI now appreciate more what Randy has said about your talking speed and clarity in directions. And at least with six graders you have at least a chance to get them all to respond to simple requests like take everything off your desk except for your binder. I am amazed at low a level instructions need to be broken down and repeated and restated similarly to try to hit all the students at some levels. And I am in awe of how the High Level Proficiency students sit next to the Lowest Level Proficiency students bouncing off the walls and do not rebel at that at least openly.
I really like my cooperating teacher’s teaching style and her calmness always. I’ve picked on a lot of little things from her modeling that will make my life easier. She has a lot of hands on activities, like foldables with the algebra equations that the kids really like.
I’m disappointed that I’m seeing her lesson plans being put together for the next day while she’s teaching today so I’m seeing little pre-planning on her part. I am disappointed with her not having a clear vision or plan of what I will be responsible to teach. She is clearly grateful to have an extra adult in the room as the teaching situation is challenging. And clearly she is tapped out and spent on all levels and has not really planned for me to be there. I am her first student teacher.
I didn’t see closure in her lessons the first few days and they don’t have a good routine established with a Do Now while the homework is checked in the books and all planners are being stamped. She was somewhat not willing to try certain things initially but as I talked more of what was expected of me I can see that she is thinking more about what we’re being taught. She tried modeling a few things for me this week to help me out including closure, some class management techniques that are working to give stickers and homework passes for good student behavior or creative ideas, she even did a starter and exit pass for me to see.
In addition to at least 5 PPTs this week, the 30 emails a day she is getting, parent conference follow-ups and various planning meeting she’s had to attend, our classroom has only had a SMART BOARD for about 5 weeks now so she’s in the process of trying to figure out how to do certain lessons and how to start things on the Smart Board so that they will be set up for the next class and be referring to as you go.
My very first day of observing was so bad I was petrified. I could not get over how much record keeping there was with recording homework, quizzes, attendance in each class, keeping up on who was absent for missed work, test re-takes and behavior charts. But I keep thinking if so many other ARC graduates have made it through then so can I. During the next few days, my cooperating teacher had me “wing it” for a few teaching spots for her repeating what she had done a period or so earlier while she stepped out of the room to handle various things. The winging it part is hard for me when I don’t know how the students were taught certain things and the correct answers I’m supposed to get since I’ve never worked them out the problems before. So I’m already stepping out of my comfort zone. On the plus side, I’m getting to know my kids and they help me out with the SMART BOARD and that makes such a huge difference. You can only have one student up at the SMART BOARD at a time. And also if you go too close to the SMART BOARD it can throw you into a like shut down feature that you have to click on various x’s on the screen like 25 times in order to get back to the SMART BOARD setting. So now I know I have to watch the students carefully when they are up at the Board so that takes much longer to do than just having a blackboard. There is no other writing surface I the classroom other than the SMART BOARD.
ReplyDeleteSo my biggest challenges are getting to know the special needs of my kids. And oh, when am I getting to know what she wants me to teach when I “take over”. I’m hoping she’ll have some thought on that after I get through my first evaluation this week.
I’m teaching at Torrington High School which is conveniently located in the town that I live in. My cooperating teacher has 3 honors precalculus classes, one college prep level algebra I class and an AP calculus AB class. The calculus class is spending the next month getting ready for the AP exam with no new instruction going on, so I’m not really going to be involved with that class. I’m sure, however, that the other two classes will keep me plenty busy.
ReplyDeleteMy cooperating teacher has a very calm demeanor. He has a great rapport with his students. He laughs with them a lot. I’ve observed a lot of good natured back and forth between him and the kids. From a teaching style, I think that he’d remind me of a math professor that I had in college if I could remember that far into the past. He might even say that he teaches that way in order to get his honors students prepared for what it will be like when they get to college. From what I’ve seen, his honors classes are doing very well. His lower level class, however, has a lot of highly unmotivated students and it appears that a large percentage of the class is doing poorly.
I began observing 3 weeks ago, so this week was my 4th in the class. A few of the things that have stood out are:
One, students really don’t retain things from one day to the next. My cooperating teacher does not use the Do Now to start his classes. I’ve started doing this with the lessons that I’ve given and you would think that students would be able to do things that they’ve just been taught and had homework on quickly and easily, but that does not always seem to be the case. It does feel like starting with the Do Now has been helpful.
Two, my cooperating teacher has incorporated a lot of anti-cheating strategies with tests and projects. When administering a test, he gives a different version of the test to consecutive rows of students. For a project on sinusoidal curves he gave out a different version of the tidal data used to estimate the sinusoidal functions to each of his 65 precalculus students, so they couldn’t copy from a friend.
Three, the high school recently had a policy change that required teachers to staff ISS. My cooperating teacher was taken out of a study hall and assigned to ISS. I’ve volunteered to join him there, but he has declined that offer. He often returns from ISS visibly affected. Another consequence of his moving to ISS duty is that he’s unable to eat lunch with his colleagues in the math department. There’s a lot of resentment from him and his colleagues assigned to ISS at the school administration’s reactive approach to solving problems that arise in the school. They feel that the solutions that have been implemented have not been very well thought out.
I think that my biggest challenge is going to be to finding ways to make things like trig identities, double/half angle formulas, etc. exciting and different. My cooperating teacher’s room does not have a great technology set up. There’s a black board, so you can’t use transparencies without pulling down a screen, which when unrolled has a smell that would make the entire class pass out. There’s an attempt to make a transparency/projector screen out of white paper on the side of the blackboard, but that apparently doesn’t work well because it’s right next to the windows that have a southern exposure and get a lot of sunlight. So far, everything I’ve observed has been done with chalk on the chalkboard.
One issue I believe permeates our profession is the type of relationship to establish with the students. I had a former asst principal who explained "people want to be liked" in reference to these relationships.
ReplyDeleteOne of my closest colleagues was fabulous when it came to teaching higher level students. He had amazing rapport with them because he loved to tell stories interact in a more mature manner. This worked because he didn't need to worry about classroom management. This was a problem with the lower level students who were not motivated and needed more structure.
It appears that Paul's cooperating teacher may have a similar approach. It's easy to dismiss students who are unmotivated as being their problem. We are the professionals and cannot simply shrug our shoulders with an "oh well" in response to these students.
My student teaching assignment is at Fairfield Warde High School. I will be teaching two Algebra I classes, two Algebra II classes and one Probability and Statistics class. My cooperating teacher is Seth Fry. At first I thought he would be a little hard to read, but he has turned out to be a very nice person, and very helpful. He is very supportive, and really wants to help me to do well. We both have young children, about the same ages, and seem to have similar philosophies about education, so that all that makes for a nice working relationship. The thing that surprised me the most, though, was how difficult it was to get kids to stay on task and how some of them really have no idea what to do when it comes to trying to solve a problem. It is really hard to know how to help these students, because in order to help them, you really have to spend a lot of time with them, and then it still seems like they are unable to do it on their own. I also felt overwhelmed, almost to the point of thinking that I just can't do this, when I realized just how many things I am going to have to juggle all at once. It sometimes seems impossible. By biggest challenge by far is going to be managing the prob and stats class. This is really not a traditional math class; it is more discussion/concept oriented. Also, it is not a high-level class, and the students are mostly seniors who already have been accepted into college, and just really don't care anymore. I will talk more about that in my next post---as I am trying to fill plastic Easter eggs with candy right now!!!--(that speaks to the part that's worrying me...thinking of how I am going to do all of this lesson planning and take care of my kids every day). I have to definitely focus on keeping the lesson plans simple so that I can manage them. But overall I do think this experience is going to be positive. I just need to get over my nervousness, relax a bit more, and have the courage to really try the ideas that we have learned in ARC.
ReplyDeleteThe characteristics of a Prob and Stats course act like a two-edged sword with distinct advantages over other math courses but also a major disadvantage. I'll address this is an individual post on this course.
ReplyDeleteHi all. I am placed at Darien High School. I am teaching three classes and have two cooperating teachers because of the class schedule. I will be teaching an Algebra I & Algebra II course with my primary cooperating teacher. The Algebra II course is a lower level one. I will be teaching a Geometry course with my second cooperating teacher. My primary is a 2nd year teacher who changed careers last year after about 20 years in the business world as an actuary and then a benefits consultant. He lives near me and I have spoken to him about teaching in the past. He went through a traditional program at UB to get his teaching certificate two years ago. He has been very supportive and helpful. He has shared a lot of information, notes, etc. to help me with the material. The way the schedule worked, he was gearing up for chapter tests, so my first days included reviews in both classes. He engaged me with the students right away by asking me to help him with his class work and homework checks, and to help the students that had questions or I could see were not getting the correct steps/answers. This allowed me to start to get to know the students. I got printouts of the students with pictures and desk seating and got to know the students a bit. My second coop teacher is a 3rd year teacher that came right out of college at Fairfield. She is very supportive and accommodating as well. She too was in the middle of reviews for a chapter test. She also got me involved in working with the students by helping with homework review, and test review. One thing that stood out to me on the first day is that the Math department at DHS appears to be very strong. All of the teachers were welcoming and offered help. There is also another student teacher there who is a college senior, and an intern who is student teaching. Another thing that stood out was that it was fun to start to get to know the kids. Kids are kids, and they are all different. Both my coops let me make my own observations before briefing me on their experiences with them, and that was a good strategy. The biggest challenges will be working well with the lower level Algebra II class, and keeping up my pace with the rigor in the Alg I and Geo classes.
ReplyDeleteI will be teaching three sections of precalculus honors at Wilbur Cross high school in New Haven right next to John I’s classroom. The cooperating teacher also has two sections of “sheltered content” algebra 1 that I will be assisting, but not teaching. I have been observing once per week for the last three weeks and the students have learned about the unit circle and how to calculate the value of the trigonometric functions at the various radian angle values on the circle.
ReplyDeleteMy cooperating teacher has been great by giving me his best students to teach and only one prep to make. He is taking attendance in all classes. He has not assigned much homework in the classes I have observed, so I am concerned that regular homework may be an issue, but we shall see. In general, I meet with the cooperating teacher after each class to discuss what went well and what improvements could be made. The cooperating teacher does not do a Do Now or post objectives, but I plan on doing this and he is very supportive. There are no class rules posted or ones that the cooperating teacher could give me and yet the kids are well behaved in general so I do not plan on attempting to change this.
The first day of teaching was a block double period day and my cooperating teacher taught a hands on project lesson to the first precalculus class and then I taught the same lesson to the next two classes. The project has the students taking sine value measurements off of the unit circle at various radian degree measurements using pieces of uncooked spaghetti and transferring that to an x,y coordinate system plot of radian vs sine x over 2pi radians. Most of the kids really enjoyed the hands on project. My feedback from the cooperating teacher was that my objective seemed to be more that the students finish the project than that they learn the lesson behind the project and I should spend time discussing the purpose even if all students do not finish, very good advice. My experience with the double period was that the students lost focus the last fifteen minutes or so of the class because of the length so perhaps some yoga exercises halfway through class next time.
The biggest challenge I expect is how to keep all the students on task when some pick up the material very quickly and others struggle to pick it up at all. There are students that read books during the lesson and I have come to find out that most of these students know the material and I assume they are turned off by the slow speed of the class. Then there are the students that seem to be constantly perplexed even when the concept has been explained and demonstrated in multiple ways to them. I don’t want to move on until all students understand, but some times this is not practical as the other students are bored because they do not need the additional instruction or practice.
The first day went pretty well. When I previously met my cooperating teacher we went over that I would be handling 3 Algebra 1 classes and helping in on JAVA programming class. I’m teaching at Plainville High where both my kids went. My cooperating teacher, Jen is two years older than my daughter and was on the track team with her. I’m observing Monday thru Thursday while my Co-op finishes her unit. I’ll be taking over the unit on exponents. My co-op class format pretty much matches what we have gone over in ARC. Initiation, Lesson, closure, assessment. Teachers are busy people. The day goes fast and 55 minutes a class is a lot less time that you think. For me it’s going to be a challenge finding a balance of enough material to cover and insuring that I don’t plan covering too much or too little
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