Blog Weekly Post 10

Last week I began to become frustrated with my research. I am not sure what steps to take with the progression of my students. I find the book difficult to understand and to relate what I read to my students learning. I am not used to reading something from a book and implementing into the classroom. I feel like I am not confident in my research and that it will take a much longer time span of implementation before you begin to recognize real results. My teacher and I discussed today how we are starting to think our students are not developmentally ready to implement these learning’s with our students. I am beginning to feel like the students are getting very comfortable with me and are not afraid to disrupt or misbehave. I can tell a major difference between when I teach and when my teacher teaches. I do not know if my students feel I will not discipline or if they do not realize that I am not the main authority. They are not terrible and I am maintaining control, but I am noticing that they are getting a bit chattier.

Chapter 4 Reflection

Blog Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Interpretation Just like Chapter four says, analyzing and interpreting my data feels like moving into a dark, foggy forest of unknowns. I am not really sure what my data is telling me or what I am looking for in my data. I am not even certain that the data I am collecting is the data that is best to collect for my study. Interpret means the way you look and analyze something. I have found that I have made many interpretations already in my study. I make interpretations about my students that are participating in my study and judgments based on their capabilities. I use interpretations during my teaching all the time. I assess my students through interpretation and what they know and need to know next. I liked in each section: analysis, synthesis, deconstruction, and contextualization all give you questions that you should be asking or could be reviewing with your own data. I think that this can help guide me in my thinking and my data findings. I think that many of these topics are great to use once you have your data, so that you can analyze the data that you have. I have only collected one week’s worth of data and I find it difficult to analyze much with just this information.

Blog Weekly Post 9

After forty one days in school you would not think that the students would still be able to surprise me. I usually feel like I know my students and their understanding fairly well and then suddenly I realize that a certain student knows nothing about what I have taught them. I try to mentally assess my students every day. I am constantly asking questions and calling on certain students to see if they know the answer. I have come to realize that assessing Kindergarten students is very difficult. Even with three teachers in the room, it is hard to get one on one time with a single student. I do not always think that whole class assignments are a great was to assess my students either. I think that sometimes they do not understand the directions or do not realize what I am asking of them. They need more direct instruction geared directly towards them. I still have two students that do not know their colors. The rest of my students were assessed on colors before we came back to school and passed except for these two. We did not directly work with them on their colors because that is something that we talk about and use daily in our classroom. I assumed that they could pick them up so quickly like everything else. This week I realized that they still are confusing their colors. I was so concerned that I even gave the one student a color blindness test. I have been better at trying to pull students individually when I have time to work with them one on one on a specific skill that they are lacking. This week my teacher was at a conference for two days. I just started my six weeks of full time teaching so I was nervous on how things would go. I felt like things went really well! My students behaved well and really worked hard for me. I think that they were so used to me teaching mostly anyway that it did not interrupt their schedule so they were able to handle the change better. It is exciting to feel a part of the classroom and have the students respect you as a teacher. But, I give Laura lots of credit because it is exhausting. This week was my first week of full time teaching. I have been finding planning to be difficult. There are so many things that need covered in such a small amount of time. I want to make sure that ALL of my students have a good understanding of a concept before I move on to something else but then I also do not want to bore other students with staying on the same idea for too long. I think that it is much harder to plan in Kindergarten because you do not have a book telling you what to do next or giving you any ideas on how to teach something. I also think that the students learn more because you really work hard on your planning and make sure that it is really worthwhile to your students learning.

Weekly Blog Post 8

Sometimes I feel like it is hard to assess my students constantly. Last week during one of my lessons I realized I did not know how low one of my students was in math. During this lesson I had instructed them to complete an activity on their own and it included numbers. I thought that this student knew his number one through ten. As I was monitoring the class I began to notice that he has no idea what each number was called. He could count one to ten but if you held up the number three he was not able to tell you that number. We are constantly using numbers in everyday activity. I was so surprised that I had overlooked how low his math skills were and I thought he knew the majority of his numbers. I decided I would pull him aside to assess his numbers one on one and I came to find he cannot tell the difference between a three and a ten. I do not know how I did not realize before this that he was so low. When you are not working individually with students, it is really difficult to keep up with their progression. I also find it hard to understand how he is still so low when we work with numbers on a regular basis. This worries me because I am so afraid that I am leaving some students behind in my instruction. I know that I will have students that are below level, on level, and above level at any time it just worries me with how low they might be and I seem to be overlooking them. I have been having some trouble with my students blurting out while I am trying to teach. I have come up with a contract that I think will contain the blurting with my higher level students. These students are well aware of the classroom expectations and they still have difficulty staying quiet during instructional time. I created a contract that the student, their parent, and I signed stating that after five warnings about blurting they must change their light which ultimately means five minutes off recess or no star card for the day. These students are good students and know what is expected of them in the classroom. I am going to try to see if I can change their behavior with this contract. I am starting to feel like I need to differentiate my lessons more. All of my lessons so far have been on level and I do not feel like I have challenged my higher level learners enough. I have some very intelligent students that need more difficult work. I am going to start including a higher level piece into every lesson that I create. I want my students to be working to their full potential.

Weekly Blog Post 7

I have been having issues with my students blurting this week during whole group instruction. Many of the students that tend to blurt often are my intelligent ones that know better but have trouble keeping quiet during instruction. I feel like these students are very bright and want to make sure that I know they know the answer to the questions that I am asking. Many times I am asking questions to my lower level students to keep them on task or to see if they understand my material. I know that my higher level learners comprehend my teaching and so I do not call on them as often. It has become increasingly more annoying to deal with blurters during my lessons lately. I also think that these students know the answers and have trouble holding in their answers while waiting for other students to come up with an answer. I know that many times they think they are helping their classmates by “giving” them an answer but I want my other students to become better independent thinkers. I have talked to this students many times and we have discussed them changing their lights because of their disruptions during class. I have decided to come up with a system to stop the blurting. I think I am going to make a contract with the students and their parents to stop the blurting during instruction. Any time one of these students blurt they must go color a pair of lips or something at their table. Once they have reached a certain numbers of blurts they will have to go change their lights. I know that some of my students are not capable to hold in their blurts because they do not fully understand being quiet. My higher level learners know what is expected of them and they are not complying. I will also plan on rewarding these students when they are able to complete this task and not blurt. When I reflect back on my lessons I feel like I sometimes forget that I am teaching Kindergarteners. I think I look at them on one level and expect that they can all think to their highest capabilities and I tend to give directions based off of my higher students’ levels. I find it difficult to be constantly planning for my different students academic levels. I think that the majority of my students are able to understand and follow my directions with little or no reinforcement, but then I have students who are completely unable to complete anything. I know that this is because these students are unable to complete many tasks at all. Some are still having difficulty putting their name on their papers while others are writing full sentences by themselves. The gap in intellectual capabilities is enormous. I need to find a way to keep them engaged and learning. I feel like they are not learning anything because they are constantly behind. Even when we give them one on one attention with an assignment I feel like we are basically doing the assignment for them because they put little effort into it.

Blog Weekly Post 7 - Monday

After my lesson today my teacher began to take over to start her lesson. As we transitioned into her teaching I noticed how well she spots off task children. In Kindergarten, every other second it seems like a child is off task or paying no attention. My teacher is really good at keeping all the students’ attention the whole time she teaches. I have noticed that I am so concerned about teaching my lesson and what I need to do next that I have trouble managing my students’ behavior. I feel like I am constantly correcting or trying to manage a certain student or twos attention and I feel like I am taking away from my other students. I also feel like when I go to correct a student’s behavior I must stop my lesson to do so and I am losing my on task students attention. Is this a skill that comes with time when teaching? Am I not paying enough attention to off task behavior during my lesson? I know that no class is going to be perfect but is there a way to grab every student’s attention. I then start to question my ability to grab my student’s attention. Am I planning exciting enough lessons that my students want to learn and participate in.

Weekly blog post 6

I have come to realize that the plans you make for your teaching can change so quickly. I plan my lessons the week before I teach them. During the middle of the week I find myself changing or tweaking my lessons. Sometimes I feel like my students do not understand the information as much as I would like and feel like I should not move on to the next steps until they fully understand the first steps. I have also gotten to the middle of the week and thought I was holding them back from their learning and I needed to speed things up. I have been having trouble with assessing my students. I feel like I need to take more time with my students individually on their learning to assess what they know. I try to call on my students individually to see if they comprehend the information but I think that sometimes their answers are not always one hundred percent accurate. Sometimes other students will whisper answers to them and other times I think my students might know the answer but are too afraid to say it aloud. My teacher keeps a clip board with cards of each student’s name and will write down things that they can and cannot do. I like this method but I feel like there are always students we miss, especially our higher level learners. I am going to try to write something about each child once a week. I noticed that my students have been getting bored with our morning message. They have been getting more chatty and restless during our morning routine. I have decided to change our routine a little by creating some more activities. I have tried to keep them active and interesting. I think that the end of last week’s morning routine went better than the beginning of the weeks before I changed it. I am feeling very comfortable with my students and my classroom. I am picking up on so many great ideas and strategies that I feel like I will use in the future!