Looking down the Road of Experience

Looking down the Road of Experience

 

     Throughout this whole experience, I was nervous just thinking about the immense amount of work that needed to be done in such a short period of time. As time passed on and narrowed in on my opportunity to teach with my group, I observed the other groups and I gained knowledge on what I could do to my own lesson to show growth and development throughout the rest of the experience. This experience caused me to leave my comfort zone of completing assignments and writing lesson plans alone to enter a learning zone in which I would have to face others opinions and ideas to combine into one lesson plan. There were a few bumps in the road with minor misunderstandings when it came to designing the lesson plans, but once we were on the floor and teaching in front of the students, we went right into "teacher mode." 

     As weeks past by, I watched how the other groups handled the aspects of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment and how they could be implemented in the real world teaching environment. I noticed how each group used a type of "Exit Ticket" during the Direct Instruction as a summative assessment and so I felt like it wouldn't be necessary to change the routine and give the students something similar that way it would appear to be familiar for them. During the inquiry instruction and cooperative learning lesson, we steered away from using an Exit ticket and made the summative assessment a type of assessment that would engage the students into something exciting that would be meaningful and something that they would remember. 

     Before actually teaching for field work, I had a basic understanding of what a direct, inquiry, and cooperative learning lesson would be like and now at the end of field work, I have a firm understanding of what a direct, inquiry, and cooperative learning lesson should look like and be like in the elementary classroom. By working collaboratively with a group of 5 other teacher candidates, I learned that there are a lot of different ideas that can be contributed into achieving the same goal. It was difficult at times with just choosing one idea to go along with and branch off of, but for the most part once we selected an idea, we all went along with it and expanded it with our individual creativity. While we were designing our lesson plans, we were thinking off the top of our heads based on our previous observations from groups before us and now that I look back at our lesson plans, we used a variety of Instructional Methods that are located in the Instructional Approaches article. 

     Although we incorporated all three types of assessments into all three of our lesson plans, the primary assessments that had a strong impact throughout the all three lessons were the formative and summative assessment. The formative assessment was present during both of the learning sessions in which the students were working and establishing an understanding of what was asked and explained throughout the lesson. The summative assessment was present and designed for all three lessons which the students had done independently.

Will post summative assessment for direct here.

   During the direct instruction, I was able to view some of the students strengths and challenges by the way that the students worked and promoted their answers in the summative assessment. The use of an Exit Ticket was not only encouraged by the responses of the students from previous field work sessions, but it was inspired by the TeachingChannel which defined an Exit Ticket to be a valuable resource that provides a quick look for the teacher at how well the students are doing, who understands the material, who needs extra reinforcement, who needs a reteach, etc. One of the strengths that I noticed from the Exit Tickets were that the students understood the concept of what an active citizen was. Some of the challenges that could be seen within the Exit Tickets were primarily grammar and spelling mistakes (which were expected) and perhaps a few misunderstandings of the difference between the president and the governor. To evaluate this problem, a very quick re-teach session could be administered by stating the difference between the two during the next lesson or some examples that are student-friendly that could perhaps set up visual examples of the difference between the two terms. 

Will post summative from inquiry

      During the inquiry instruction, we decided to keep things simple and evaluate the students based on their hypothesis' and  conclusions with supporting evidence located on their voting tickets. Some strengths that I observed throughout the inquiry instruction was that most of the students understood the inquiry process and most of the students established reasonable conclusions with supporting evidence which refers back to their note charts. Some of the challenges that some of the students faced were that specifically relating to spelling errors which was not counted for during this instruction. 

Will post formative from cooperative

     During the cooperative learning lesson, the students were evaluated based on a rubric that revolved around their campaign posters. Most of the students were able to accomplish and reach the scores on the rubric which was remarkable to witness. 

      For future lessons when working with this specific group of students, I would highly recommend keeping things simple and not overwhelmingly complex. This group of students really adapted to the style and format of having a general exit ticket that only consists of 3-4 questions. It's an ordinary way to keep things in tact while providing the teacher with a sense of closure and understanding as to what the teacher should do next without having to go into a full blown out 20 question assessment. The instructional methods that I would suggest for future usage by this group would be explicit teaching, demonstrations, concept mapping, inquiry, role playing, simulations, learning centers, assigned questions, cooperative learning groups, and times for discussion. This group of 2nd graders worked wonderfully with one another and would benefit from more activities that encouraged them to work collaboratively. 

It is always important to remember to engage all of the learners and provide an equal opportunity learn for all children no matter what.

     For each of the lesson plans, we developed a set of accommodations and modifications to include all of the learners into our experience. To adapt future experiences, the learners who are struggling or experiencing difficulty will receive extra reinforcement and could possibly work with a peer for reassurance and steering into the general direction. Those who are advanced can do the same learning lesson, but embellish their own learning finished products. All students deserve a chance for success and this experience opened my eyes to notice that not all of the students are at the same level in the classroom, so as a future educator, I must be ready to teach at all levels of mastery. 

     When thinking about future inquiry situations and how to foster problem solving skills or critical thinking skills, through observations, I was able to view how each student was able to complete the task and provide their own opinions on the matter at hand. Lessons that revolved around self-evaluation and self-questioning strategies would be an effective way to constantly reinforce the matters of problem solving and critical thinking skills. Giving the students problems and scenarios that would relate to real world experiences would also be a beneficial concept to refer to when working on problem solving and critical thinking skills. 

     Collaboration should always be an approach that can constantly be reused over and over again. Students learn from each other. By interacting with one another, the students are teaching each other and sharing their own knowledge with each other to further expand their knowledge on the subject at hand. After keeping all of these informative tactics and inspirational methods in mind, when it came to actually implementing these lesson plans and bringing them to life in the classroom, I was very excited and impressed by the turn out. After this experience, I feel confident to teach Social Studies now because I know that I can successfully teach concepts without referring directly to the reading of the textbook and relying primarily on the students to be able to read. I can now make Social Studies exciting and hands on for all of the students to collaborate and develop an understanding or a passion for learning Social Studies.

       

Experience full of Discovery and Realization

Experience full of Discovery and Realization

 

    To the left are quotes that will forever be engraved into my mind for many years to come. As a teacher, I will always be learning because I will always be a student while my future students are teaching me. It may seem confusing, but it's a teacher's reality. Everyone normally sees visually that the teacher is responsible for physically teaching the students through a variety of lesson plans, but in fact, the students are teaching the teachers about what they need to do in certain situations, how they can improve their teaching skills and tactics, as well as informing the teachers on what they will need to do to meet the students personal needs and to help them succeed. I learned a lot from field work these past couple of weeks and I learned things that I will remember for a lifetime of teaching. 

     One of the things that I learned from this experience is that one lesson is not strictly made up of one specific method. Yes, a lesson can be revolve around one instructional strategy, but not one instructional method. Looking back through the Approaches of Instruction article, I realized that without even noticing while we were designing and teaching the lessons, we used more than 7 different approaches of instructional methods out of all three of our lessons. I also thought about the first three groups that taught and how they used a lot of the instructional methods as well. It was interesting to see that we could use so many instructional methods all at once without even intentionally planning to do so.

    Something else that I discovered throughout this field work experience was that every lesson will end up including Bloom's Taxonomy one way or another. Bloom's Taxonomy has become such a wide spread practice that even if the teacher does not emphasize the steps directly, the students themselves will touch some point of the six step pyramid. I also learned that throughout my experience of teaching, Bloom's Taxonomy will always be used in the classroom even in the digital state of mind. Watching the video below helped for me to understand Bloom's Taxonomy and relate it back to my lessons and field work experience. 

      The video below is an animation of how Bloom's Taxonomy can relate to the digital world. This video is relevant because I have come to realize and learn that the students are heavily engaged into activities or lessons in which they will be creating something or working specifically with technology. I discovered that with today's generation and future generations to come, technology is going to only grow gradually into their lifestyles and learning styles. As the teacher, I need to be ready for that. 

      I learned a lot about myself as a teacher through this experience and I even picked up a few pointers and ideas from my colleagues. I'm grateful for such a wonderful opportunity and I am glad that I had this chance to really test out my teaching skills in front of others and prove that I have what it takes to be a successful "Techie" teacher.

 

Inspecting and Testing the means for Assessment

Inspecting and Testing the means for Assessment

You can find the 2nd Grade assessments that was used during Field Work below:

Pre-test and Post-test

     Personally, I have not always been a fan of assessments because I have always felt that a person's success can not always be proven through the use of a test or evaluation. I always believed that the success of someone should relate to their work and their efforts as well as other means of assessments that were even disguised, so that they weren't referred to as tests or exams. The concepts of an assessment and instruction complement each other and benefit from one another. An assessment helps to tell the teacher what the students need to work and improve on as well as if they had mastered the material and content while the instruction helps the teachers to prepare the students for the upcoming assessments. It's a never ending cycle in the educational world. This is something that I have learned to keep in mind when going through the process of designing an assessment task, activity, or test for the students. 

     

When planning the proper assessment strategy or method to be used in an instruction, time is always a necessity. Planning is often very time consuming and can sometimes take up to several hours just to make sure that the created assessment strategy will be effective with the students that it is being given to. Every teachers' aim should be to make sure that no student gets left behind and that all students are given the equal opportunity for success. The assessments that are created should be designed to specifically benefit all of the students needs without leaving anyone at a distinct disadvantage.  

     Something that I found to be very useful throughout the process of designing a significant assessment resource is the concept of having three types of assessment to go along with whatever instruction or lesson that is being implemented at that designated time. I didn't realize how important it was to explore the qualities of having a formative assessment in between the pre-assessment and summative assessment. Growing up, I always believed that there would only be a pre-assessment later to be followed by a summative assessment that would specifically inform the teacher on the students' progress. As a student, I always loved recieving feedback from my teacher, but I never realized that it was a type of formative assessment because I always recieved written feedback on the papers that were graded. 

The three types of assessments come together to create one big assessment that in the long run will have a beneficial aspect to instruction for the teacher as well as the learner. This pyramid shows an overview of the assessments for what they truly are and how the fold together to form one assessment understanding.

     Organizing an assessment strategy or method is a crucial piece to an effective lesson plan or unit plan. An assessment shows the teacher just how much the student knows or how much knowledge the student has gained by working through the lesson plan or unit plan. Each type of assessment is important to establish and keep in mind when designing a lesson or unit plan and teaching overall. The Pre-Assessments help to identify what the students know before the actual instruction which is always good to have in mind when you are first introducing a lesson so that you know where you are starting from or if the students are prepared to learn the information in the lesson by meeting the prerequisites. The Formative Assessment allows the teacher to record and observe the students progress during the instruction which informs the teacher of how the students are reacting and retaining the information that is being taught. The Summative Assessment is the students final evaluation to see if the students really understood the information and have successfully met and completed the learning objective. All three of these assessments are highly important for the teacher as well as the student throughout any instruction.  

When creating the questions on the pre-test and the post-test, I kept thinking to myself that I didn't want any of the students to feel flustered just like the boy in the picture above. Tests can sometimes build anxiety and discourage children when they come to a question that they do not understand or believe that they can't answer it correctly. I wanted to create student-friendly questions as well as provide student-friendly answers so that perhaps the moment of frustration could be avoided. I knew that in the pre-assessment, some of the students might feel stressed out because they may not know an answer to a question and throughout the whole time that the test was administered, the teacher candidates reminded the students that this test was not graded and that spelling did not count. I felt that this was very important and reassuring to those who honestly did not know the material or were not confident with their answers.

  

    When it came to the pre-test, my group was the last to post our questions and honestly I was the primary contributor to creating the questions. I posted the questions into the pre-test. My group members and myself discussed the types of questions and the content focused within the questions. I did not think that the pre-assessment was a necessity at first, but once I read about the importance of the pre-assessment, I realized that I was wrong and my opinion changed. I have now learned that it takes time to develop relevant, significant questions that can be used in a pre-test. For the post-test, I edited and added questions into the test with the aid of my fellow colleagues on how things should be changed for the post-test. Two questions remained were selected from the pre-test while three questions were new for the post-test which would really reveal how much the students have learned throughout our teaching over the past couple of weeks. As a group, we all had our say in the pre-test and post-test questions. Surprisingly, there were no questions that were difficult to construct for the pre-test and the post-test, but it was difficult to create different questions than those that were created already. The topic of Choosing Our Country's Leaders was difficult to create a variety of questions for because we tried to focus majorly on the vocabulary aspects of the chapter, but there were only three vocabulary words to deal with. It was challenging, but not impossible. Overall, the questions were easy to create because it wasn't a hard topic, but it was difficult to create a variety of different questions that were not similar to those that were already written. 

The results of the pre-test were used when establishing the prerequisites of the lesson plan as well as by figuring out what needed to be the designated focus of the lesson and which words or concepts needed more attention than the others.

        The results of the pre-test showed me just how much the students knew and which concepts needed to be taught explicitly. It wasn't only beneficial for me to see, but it was beneficial for all of the teacher candidates to see because it helped to shape their lessons and provide all of us with a sense of a starting point. It is obvious and expected that not all of the students would be able to answer all of the questions with 100% accuracy, but it does help the teacher to gain knowledge of the students' prior knowledge before actually engaging into the lessons. By observing the answers that the students had given on the pre-test in the Choosing Our Country's Leaders section, I noticed that most of the students had prior knowledge about the president and about what a citizen is. The main focus would be to reinforce the concepts about voting and the capital while using the familiarization of the concepts behind citizenship and presidency. The results of the pre-test also helped when relating to the edTPA commentary prompts because it revealed to me what I needed to do to my lesson plan in order to bring assurance to the table and provide clear explanations to the students. I also needed to find ways to incorporate real world connections into my lesson plan that would give the students the opportunity to make their own connections with what was being taught. For example, while explaining the concept of voting, in the plan we used an example of ice cream rather than relating directly to the literal meaning of voting for a leader. Using the idea of voting for the best selection of ice cream gave the students an opportunity to make a connection with something that they are familiar with. The pre-test would also provide information about what the students know about the central focus for the learning segment by telling me what the students already know. Everything benefits each other when it comes to following the edTPA commentaries and designing lesson plans and unit plans.

Field Work Grand Finale

Field Work Grand Finale

Just thinking about this week, I honestly felt so stressed out. Now I know how teachers must feel when they know that they have an upcoming observation in their classroom. I've been so nervous thinking about how everything will play out. I keep finding myself looking at the negatives about what could possibly go wrong during the lesson instead of focusing primarily on the positives. I'm hoping that everything will go as planned, but there will always be those couple of mistakes that happen here and there, it's practically unavoidable. I just have to believe that nothing will go wrong.

     As a member of Group #4, I can honestly say that getting through this week has lifted some weight that desperately needed to get off our shoulders. Personally, I was very anxious when I felt that I needed to teach not only in front of the whole class while they were critiquing my teaching, but I was also being videotaped. I was very nervous, in fact, almost scared that I would embarrass myself because as the last group to teach, I felt as if I were obligated to be the best example of what each instruction should look like.

     When I introduced the direct instruction, I felt absolute relief as if I didn't have to worry about anything and my inner teacher woke up. The Direct Instruction went practically according to plan except we were under time. I was surprised that we were under time, but I was happier that we weren't over time and that we were able to complete everything that we had planned for this lesson. As a member of Group #4, I felt that an explicit instruction was much appropriate and necessary for teaching the vocabulary in this lesson. The topic of Choosing Our Country's Leaders was a challenging topic to deal with when trying to think of activities for guided practice and for find engaging and exciting examples to go along with our definitions. I believe that most of the information that was covered in this lesson could have been brought out more in teaching, but with the time restrictions, it was hard to find simple and quick things to use in order to teach all of the words properly. 

      The day of the inquiry and cooperative instruction, I was very nervous considering that we had to cut our lesson about 15 minutes early. I was very paranoid prior to teaching this lesson because I was so fixated on not having enough time to squeeze both types of teaching into one lesson. During the inquiry session, the students played and followed along according to the interview. Everything worked perfectly in my eyes and I was very surprised. I spent all morning stressing out about it and there was nothing to worry about after all. The inquiry instruction consists of a dramatic play interview between the teacher candidates and the 2nd graders. During the cooperative learning lesson, although we had a limited amount of time and we had to rush through our lessons, the concept of this lesson and objective were still met by all of the students. (I will post up a picture of the voting booth when I upload it.) 

I enjoyed every minute teaching in front of the class. It really gave me a feeling of what it will be like in the future when I actually have my own classroom. I feel more prepared and relieved to know that I achieved my goal. This experience had a lot of twists and turns, but I'm glad that I was a part of it.

 

Gaining our Country's Independence

Gaining Our Country's Independence

The teachers presented the names of the original thirteen colonies through a way that the students would be able to enjoy while retaining some sort of memorization and recognition of the names. The teachers had used a song that states the colonies' names in order to the tune of Yankee Doodle. All of the students were engaged and most of the students were singing along. This was an approach that I found to be interesting and highly effective among this group of second graders, I loved the concept of using a song because it's a way to recite the information while engaging the students into an enjoyable experience.  

     This week's field work experience was impressive and eye-catching. The students learned a lot about how the original thirteen colonies gained their independence from England through the American Revolution and the verification of the Declaration of Independence. Throughout all three lessons, the students were engaged and ready to learn. 

The story telling section that revolved around Paul Revere's ride was an interesting twist to such a wonderful lesson. I didn't expect there to be any type of story telling and by observing the students' reaction to the story telling, they were interested and engaged into learning the content. There was no hard copy story needed for the story telling which was also lovely to see. I first handily observed through this experience that a teacher does not need a hard copy with visuals that support the story in order for the students to show an understanding of the content.

     On the first day, the information was taught through a direct instruction. I was very impressed to notice how much the students were paying attention and the students were quietly listening. It was very assuring to observe how maturely the students behaved throughout this lesson. The students were intently intrigued in learning about this information. I definitely liked how every teacher was involved in the delivery of the information. I also liked the incorporation of different resources, such as music and story telling. I also liked how prepared the teachers were, they seemed ready to answer all of the questions that the students had for them.  

I very much enjoyed the use of acrostic poem with the word, Independence. This was a compelling approach to view in the classroom for a full class cooperative learning lesson. I would have never thought of using an acrostic poem as a type of group project. It's something that I would use in my future practice as an Elementary Educator.

     The Inquiry and Cooperative Instruction were combined into one big lesson. During the Inquiry Instruction, the students were given a problem from a Voki that was used in a previous lesson by the first group of teacher candidates and the students were also given artifact bags that were also reused from the first group's lesson. I thought that this was a motivating and reassuring approach because the students were already familiar with the purpose of each of the materials. The students remembered the Voki and there were no major mistakes or concerns with using the artifact bags, in fact, the students were very engaged into the group work with the artifact bags. During the Cooperative Instruction, the students were instructed to work together to create a class acrostic poem of the word, Independence. The students were again, highly engaged into the class activity. Each group was responsible for a piece of the project and each group was able to present their portion of the writing piece. This week's experience was outstanding and definitely useful to watch.