New teachers will be evaluated by TEAM (click link to see home page along with a short video). This evaluation involves identify areas of weakness by choosing a CCT indicator in each of the domains and working to improve.
For this thread, choose an area in which you feel you need the most improvement. Identify the indicator from the CCT, explain how this is your area of weakness and explain possible ways to improve.
Because we have spring break, this post is not due until Sunday, April 17 at midnight.
I'd like to do a better job planing the class. The corresponding CCT section follows:
ReplyDelete3.2 Developing and organizing coherent and relevant units, lessons and learning tasks that build on
students’ prior knowledge, skills and interests and engage students in the work of the discipline;
Given that I've never taught a class in my life I know I'm way behind the ball in this area. I read a chapter of a book and work towards understanding the material myself. This is good, but it doesn't really get me to a point where I can consistently explain it to a student in a manner that helps him/her grasp the subject. I'm also finding that material is not taught straight from a book. At least where I am now, there is a definite selectivity and positioning of material.
I'm also a real believer in purposeful action. So when I walk into the class I'd like to know what I'm trying to do. The goal should be extremely clear to me (and to the students). Every action during the class should support the objective.
How can I do better? I'm a believer in apprenticeships. In business I feel I've learned the most from seeing highly skilled people do their jobs. When they are open to talking about how they made decisions, how they assess problems, how they set goals ... I feel I learned a great deal. In some cases what they conveyed was something I had read. Unfortunately just reading for me has not been the best way to learn a topic. I need to see it done.
Essentially, I'd like to do more observations with an opportunity to teach under guidance. All of which sounds very expensive and rather unlikely given today's economy.
So section 3.2 says it all to me. Where are the students? What do we want to teach? How do we break it down and organize it into the most effective delivery method possible?
Great execution without a solid plan seems to me likely to fall short of the mark.
I don't think the planning process is magic. But it is still new to me.
I want to improve on my classroom management. My greatest need is to foster appropriate standards of behavior that support a learning environment for all students. This is domain 2.4
ReplyDeleteI have one class in particular with 3 very strong personalities. I didn’t start out strong by laying down the law and now I have had to back peddle to get control of the classroom. I have had to have one student removed from the room for exceptionally poor behavior. This did result in a positive change for the student when he returned the next day and for the class as a whole.
I need to clearly and consistently hold students to the standards I expect and quickly act when there is a violation of those standards. Having been through this, I would start much stronger at the outset and reward/punish immediately so it was clear where the line of acceptable behavior was to the students. Their testing of the line would immediately show them the boundaries.
I am fortunate that my student teaching experience is more than many will experience. I am acting as a long term substitute during this period. I have been teaching a full schedule since mid March and also have had the benefit of a cooperating teacher to help me along the way. I was asked to come and substitute on a moment’s notice so I had to get to know the students and begin prepare full lesson plans from the first moment. It was like going to full speed from a standing start. All things considered I think I am doing pretty well. But, as I was busy planning for upcoming events I began to lose sight of follow up details.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned in earlier blogs I was not very good with paperwork when it came to unexpected events. Most notably when students were absent and then requested any handouts they may have missed I had to search and retrieve. When I mentioned my dilemma to the cooperating teacher she offered some simple suggestions to help me get out from under. Well, I didn’t follow them fully and the confusion returned. Generally I was just making piles of papers that inter mingled all the students and all the classes together. This was compounded when I would “temporarily” set other papers down on the stack, then something would catch on a paper clip and papers began to wander away. My excuse is that the teacher for whom I am subbing may return at any time and I was trying not to disturb anything on or around the desk. Well, when it is your classroom, it is your classroom. This week is a good time to take control of the papers and end the confusion I brought upon myself.
When looking through the CCT this area is covered under II3C, planning and organization. I do ok with the planning, it is the follow up that needs improvement. This is not the first time I have had this challenge so this is my area that needs improvement.
I feel as a new teacher that I need to work on the area in Domain 2: Classroom Environment, Student Engagement and Commitment to Learning and in particular 2.4 Fostering appropriate standards of behavior that support a productive learning environment for all
ReplyDeletestudents; and from the CCT. IN the three weeks that I have been student teaching, I feel that I am having the hardest time with classroom behavior and fostering a productive learning environment. I am finding that I am having a harder time teaching the geometry classes than I am teaching the pre-calculus classes. I am not sure if it is a maturity thing (12th graders vs. 9th graders) a personality thing or something else. My cooperating teaching has not sat in on my lessons over the last week but she said from the prior week’s lessons that she thinks I don’t exude 100% confidence and that is why the students are giving me a hard time in class. I have tried to engage the students and to chunk the lessons into manageable pieces and when I did this some of the students refused to do the work. Maybe I should have continued with this tactic for 1 whole week instead of just trying it for 2 days. After listening to Don Perras today as well as discussing my situation with my classmates and Jaf/Randy, I have decided to teach the way that I am comfortable with – by chunking the lessons and asking for feedback – and not to worry about the attitudes of the students. I will definitely have to be tougher on the students in terms of cell phone usage in class and in terms of time spent in the bathroom. I am also going to try to get more interaction in the class by having the students work on problems in the class and having students work on the problems on the board.
I really did enjoy teaching until Wednesday came and now I am definitely not looking forward to this class. I refuse to have this class ruin my time student teaching and I refuse to let them win at whatever game they are playing. I am going to concentrate on my lessons and assessing their learning and let the cooperating teacher work on their behavior issues after I leave. This does not mean that I will let them walk all over me – I intend to be stricter about many items and learn over the break all of the procedures and rules that I may not know now. I don’t intend to leave this student teaching class without trying my best to reach them. I don’t intend to be their favorite teacher when my four weeks with them are over but I do intend to teach them what they need to learn over this time.
All credit to her, my cooperating teacher had established clear classroom norms & expectations so I just slipped right into those patterns.
ReplyDeleteWhat I consider to be my greatest area of weakness right now is differentiation in instruction (4.5), especially with the higher achieving students. Indicator 4.5 reads "Using differentiated instruction and supplemental interventions to support students with learning
difficulties, disabilities and/or particular gifts and talents."
I feel like I am often teaching to the middle-lower achievers and am overlooking the students who "get it" quickly. I spend more time with those who need it, often to the detriment of those who don't. I believe this is because I want everyone to achieve success in the math class, I don't want anyone to fall behind, so I try to keep them all together at the same pace. I have to say the first weeks were successful at this, because as a group, everyone did will on the mid chapter test. But if this continues, those students will get bored. Isn't this the comment we hear or even speak so often with heterogenous classrooms, that we teach to the middle and make accommodations for those with an IEP, but neglect (for lack of a better work) the highest achievers?
What I have tried to do is to provide a couple of problems for classwork so that the higher achievers will have more to do while I work with those who may only get through one problem. This seems to work, but again, they will finish the 3 problems, so they read while they wait. They don't cause problems or disrupt the class, but when I see the books, I always, always think I'm not doing enough for them.
I have done activities that regroup the students homogenously within the class and then they just cruise along with enrichment and challenge problems. I also have additional activities planned for next week when they get the material faster than other students (which they will). I am working with my cooperating teacher on this challenge and hope in the last week I see more improvement and fewer books!
One particular area of weakness that has become clear for me to work on is in the area of classroom management. In the CCT Domain 2 (Classroom Environment) and specifically indicator 2.4 (Fostering appropriate standards of behavior), I have come to find myself much too passive in the classroom. I know (via feedback from my cooperating teacher) I am not noticing many of the less disruptive misbehaviors occurring in my classroom (notes being passed or wandering attention of some students). I need to develop the “scanning eye” to be aware of such activity and take appropriate action.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I certainly know, for one class in particular, that more disruptive misbehaviors (getting out of seats, talking, blurting out answers, etc.) are not being addressed by me head on with effective classroom management action. I find myself exhibiting a much too permissive management style and asking for compliance from the most disruptive offenders. Such “mild interventions” on my part are only VERY temporarily effective and really are not resulting in a productive learning environment for all the students in the classroom. I am clearly feeding into the power that the disruptive offenders are seeking
I know myself to be a very easy-going type with a very long fuse for anger. This can be a benefit as a nurturing, friendly teacher. But I am also one who would rather avoid confrontations with others. I see these combinations of my personality traits resulting in too much passivity when dealing with misbehavior. I need to channel the nurturing/friendliness into calm guidance and reinforcement of expected behaviors. I can’t let the misbehaviors go or escalate without firm but positive remediation action on my part. Dr. Perras has provided a number of reaction/intervention tools and I need to employ them more rigorously in the classroom. It is, after all, my classroom and I should be directing and guiding all behaviors and activity taking place in it to optimize learning. I need to work on taking more firm control.
I am very fortunate that all of the classes that I teach were very responsive to any of the new routines that I put in place from the beginning of my student teaching and I attribute that largely to great classroom management of both of my cooperating teachers. They were the ones that set the tone I presume before I even got there which made my job a lot easier. I am not so worried about the classroom management; I feel that I can definitely handle that part just fine. My biggest concern and what I feel my greatest area of weakness right now is differentiation in classroom instruction. CCT indicator 4.5 reads; "Using differentiated instruction and supplemental interventions to support students with learning difficulties, disabilities and/or particular gifts and talents." I try to plan for it when I make my lesson plans but it seems to be easier to differentiate instruction for students with learning disabilities than for the high achieving students. I don’t know if it is because of my prior experience as a tutor but I can quickly come up with many ways to approach a particular concept to help the students with disabilities but I don’t feel the same way about challenging the brighter students. I know this sound very general but I do have a 7th grade class in mind where I am teaching the geometry unit. This class has 4 students with IEP”s, about 4-5 students that are very bright and studious and the remaining 12 students are on grade level. I look for extensions related to the lesson objective; I try to pose questions that would challenge them but at the end I worry that I just gave them an extra work. One other way that I tried to challenge these students is to partner them with weaker students because I felt that if they can explain the concept to others than they have a better understanding of it. I spoke with my cooperating teachers about that and in all honesty they had similar concerns. They assured me that with more experience and also when you get to know the students better (what works better for them, what motivates them) it gets a little easier. One recommendation that they gave was to utilize the technology in finding and offering more challenging work for these students. I am going to try that.
ReplyDeleteI believe my greatest weakness from the CCT would be Domain 2.2, classroom engagement. It was mentioned as a key factor both times I was observed. This is a problem because when I have my own classroom I want to be able to engage all my students in every lesson. Granted, that’s wishful thinking, I want to be able to get the majority of them engaged in the lesson. If I’m not able to do this then my negative classroom behavior might snowball and involve the whole class, which would just make my lesson a waste of time. I find myself constantly trying to reengage my classes and it takes away from my lessons. On top of that I have no proven strategy that gets them reengaged. The only thing I do is pretty much beg for their attention back.
ReplyDeleteTalking to my evaluator and cooperating teacher they came up with a few suggestions for me. The most important one would to be not to ignore inappropriate behavior. At times during my lessons I would ignore a student that was misbehaving in hopes that he was just doing it for attention. However, it would just let the other students know that this behavior is acceptable and they won’t be punished if they continue to do it. They told me to acknowledge the behavior and state that its not acceptable and give them the punishment if it were to continue. My cooperating teacher continued on and said that I should be promoting positive behavior to. The school participates in CARES CASH which the students earn ‘money’ for good behavior and they can use it to purchase time in the gym with friends, lunch with friends, pottery wheel, and many other fun things. So she suggested that I give out CASH when the students are displaying appropriate behavior. Another thing that I used as suggest by my cooperating teacher is to discretely take the misbehaving student in the hall and talk to them about why their behavior is unacceptable instead of just telling them to stop doing it. Then ask them to write you an apology note. I did that with two of the students and their behavior with me has dramatically improved.
Finally, what I plan on doing are more lessons that involve student participation. I want to get the students out of their seats and working with the StarBoard or other manipulatives that I have access to. I did do one lesson with the StarBoard and I had no engagement problems. All the students were participating and I was able to access them during the class to adjust my lesson plan to suit their needs. I also plan on doing more team work. Having the students work with partners with new concepts. I want to do less lecturing and more ‘throwing them into it’ activities so they don’t board.
CCT indicator 4.6 states: Monitoring student learning and adjusting teaching during instruction in response to student
ReplyDeleteperformance and engagement in learning tasks.
I feel that I am able to successfully monitor and adjust to student performance and have done so on several occasions during my lessons. The area where I need to improve relates to monitoring and adjusting in response to student engagement. In other words, it is not always apparent to me when the material might be too easy for the majority of the students or if the lesson is not as engaging as it needs to be.
I can tell when the class is engaged and challenged but need to improve on picking up signals for when they are not engaged. Then I need to be able to adjust the lesson accordingly. I imagine that having some backup plans or activities would be one way to adjust on the fly. Perhaps some strategic questioning techniques could also provide some direction as to whether the material is being presented in a way that is not at the appropriate level and/or is not engaging.
I would say that I need to work on 5.2 Using and/or designing a variety of formative and summative assessments. I am planning on incorporating more of the 'pop quiz' type of assessment into my algebra class this last week. I know I do struggle with the language of 'pop quiz' but as long as I call it something else I know I will be fine (and so will the students.)
ReplyDeleteThis week I will be creating a make-up test for my pre-algebra classes and a test for my algebra class. I am glad that we created one in Methods. I know that there doesn't have to be repetition of of the same type of problems, but rather one of each which will test the skills I hope the students have learned.
One thing that I found the hardest to do was to grade the tests. Even though I knew how much each problem was worth, there are so many different ways to look at the problems and the work and answers the kids gave. I found that if someone showed their work but made one small error which caused them to come up with an incorrect answer, I was able to give them some credit. While some students came up with the right answer, but didn't show any work - even though the directions clearly stated to show your work. I still had to mark them off for no work.
I really struggled with the grading of the tests. I felt awful when I had to mark so many points off. One way I found to alleviate the guilt was to grade the tests from the back page to the front. This way I didn't know whose test I was grading until I was almost finished with it. I know that consistency is very important when grading and that partial credit can always be given.
Another aspect to which is important when I am preparing and grading the tests is how to differentiate for my students with special needs. When I am creating the make-up test, I will need to keep in mind what concepts are really important for them to walk away knowing. It will not be the same for all students. I will create the test and then work with the special education teacher to ensure that the test is appropriate for our students.
After going over all the areas I need to be proficient in, it was really hard to pick only one weakness, or a better way of saying, a potential area of growth. I think it would be easier for me as a new teacher to pick one area of strength.
ReplyDeleteMy main area of growth will be domain number one. As a teacher who speaks English as a second language I will have to improve in using developmentally appropriate verbal, non-verbal and technological communications. Mainly appropriate verbal and technological communication; I believe I am an expert in the non verbal communication.
The ways to get better in this area will be to keep studying the right way of verbally and technologically communicating and keep correcting mistakes which will come up as a result of English as my second language. Reflections and blogging are certainly a great way for helping me getting better.
In regard to the other areas which I do not feel comfortable yet, I learned from my life experience that the key for successful growth lays in practicing on my weaknesses. So my way to get better is keep practicing (in our field it is called studying) and keep learning from mistakes (hope for small mistakes). It is all about building up my experience in this field. Like any other profession the growth will come with the experience.
Domain 4. Instruction for Active Learning: specifically 4.3 Leading students to construct meaning through the use of active learning strategies such as purposeful discourse7 and/or inquiry-based learning8; to me is a terrific art that I'd like to master. I'm wowed when I hear the seasoned teachers who are capable of having students reach conclusions through queries and investigative works. I think the point of math is not only to have students manipulate the information but more importantly that students should develop an inquisitive, critical, logical mindset. I want to say that there are many people who are lazy to think critically or are unable to think critically. I want to ask the questions, to tell the stories, to enjoy ther feeling great about their smarts because they had a unique interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of my areas of weakness that I think will cause the greatest difficulty to improve on. The other areas of difficulty I can see that adjusting one way or the other results in a direct change but somehow its not easy to share the thought process. Thanks to the net and media I can listen to the questioning techniques or discussions or read on various ways to capture the minds of the young. Focusing on discourse is something big because I notice that you have a short time to make a point with these students. This means the hook can't come at the end of an epistle.
ReplyDeleteLike Ofer says, facing the weakness through rehearsal and practice will ensure growth.
ReplyDeleteAlthough there are many that I could have chosen. I have chosen Domain 4 Instruction for Active learning, Specifically, 4.6 Monitoring student learning and adjusting teaching during instruction in response to student performance and engagement in learning tasks. I have a plan and do pop quiz and assessment but if the students do not get it, I find it difficult to come up with another way to help them understand it during the lesson. I may have to do more work up front and think of the barriers so that if they are stumped or do not understand, I can quickly come up with another way for them to see the information that I was trying to share with them. I should know that not everyone is going to get it the first time but deciding if I should repeat steps or try something totally new is a challenge in the short amount of time that we have. I also have to realize that not everyone will get it either the first of second way that I share the information and I just need to keep practicing and planning for every obstacle.
ReplyDelete