Facilitating Learning 21st Century Blog 3

       Hello Everyone!  Welcome to my blog and Happy Halloween!!!  I can't believe this semester is almost over!  This semester has flown by faster than I thought it would.  I am trying to take in all of the information and feedback as I can this semester.  I want to make sure I am fully prepared and ready to tackle student teaching in the spring.
       In class this month I was able to complete my edTPA learning segment and the three task.  I was able to teach my learning segment to the class I am placed in this semester.  I really appreciate being able to learn more about edTPA and take part in a practice run this semester.  I am learning as much as I can about edTPA by gathering all the feedback possible, so I am prepared for the real edTPA experience during student teaching.  I decided to do another edTPA learning segment this semester in order to have more practice and feedback before spring semester.
        I am really enjoying the kindergarten class I have been placed in this semester.  The students are fabulous and are always eager to learn.  My CE has been wonderful with helping me in any way she can.  She is also very flexible and open minded to any changes I want to try in the classroom.  I have been able to teach more this month than in September.  I have learned a lot about myself, my lessons, and the students, the more I teach.  I need to manage my time better during lessons so the students have time to get to all of the activities planned.  I also have learned for kindergarten the lessons need to be very entertaining, hands on, active, and exciting for the students.  If the students are bored they will not be engaged or learning.  My focus has been to try and incorporate aspects they are interested in along with what they have to learn, this has seemed to help the students to be more engaged.  I have been able to help my CE assess the students as well.  I have seen the importance of taking time to assess the students individual and regularly.  The students learn concepts at different rates and their levels of understanding change constantly.  This helps the teacher to be informed on where the students are, what they need help on, where they need to move forward in, and what they are capable of.  I have also asked my CE if I can take on more responsibility in the classroom.  I will now be teaching every Wednesday, all day, until January.  I want to get the feel for what it will be like to teach all day and I want the students to see me as a teacher and be comfortable with me teaching them.  
        By taking on the responsibility of the classroom and my students learning I am portraying the NCTCS standard one, Teachers demonstrate leadership.  I have been working on creating relationships with each child in my classroom and treating them as individuals.  I am demonstrating the NCTCS standard two, Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students.  I also have been taking part in parent teacher conferences and communicating with parents about how we can best help their child together.  This is also apart of the NCTCS standard two.  I educate myself on the content being taught and on the needs of the students.  I am portraying standard three, teachers know the content they teach.  I group the students based on their abilities, I differentiate instruction and assignments to fit the needs of the individual learners.  I am demonstrating standard four, teachers facilitate learning for their students.  I reflected on what worked and did not work for my lessons during my learning segment and the lessons I have taught thus far.  I am portraying standard five, teachers reflect on their practice.  
          In kindergarten a big part of what the students learn in the beginning and throughout is their social and emotional interactions and development.  Students in kindergarten learn so much and grow tremendously in their social and emotional development.  These skills are not only important for the students to be successful in school but also in life.  The outside research I dove into this month was based on how to measure the social and emotional development of students.  I found an article from edutopia discussing how we can measure social and emotional learning.  I really think this is an aspect teachers and schools should take into consideration.  The students should be assessed in this aspect just like they are assessed for reading and math skills.  Teachers need to know how students are developing socially and emotionally.  The teachers could discover students who may need more help in these areas and they could discover students who could be role models for their peers.  I encourage you to take time to look over this article and consider if you would incorporate a way to measure the students social and emotional learning in your future classroom.  https://www.edutopia.org/blogs/how-do-we-measure-sel-maurice-elias?utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=facebook
            In my future classroom I will continue to follow the NCTCS standards.  I will also find a way to assess and keep track of my future students social and emotional learning.  I want my students to not only be successful in school but to also be prepared to be successful in life.  The students will face many obstacles in their lives that they need to be prepared to handle.  I want to provide my students with the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to reach their dreams and thrive.  I will always assess my students as much as possible and change my teaching to fit their needs.  All students are capable of learning they may just learn in different ways.  It will be my job to determine how each of my students learn best.  I will always empower and strengthen my students to be all they can be and more.
Resource:
https://www.edutopia.org/blogs/how-do-we-measure-sel-maurice-elias?utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=facebook
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/effectiveness-model/ncees/standards/prof-teach-standards.pdf

Facilitating Learning 21st Century Blog 2

Hello Everyone!  I cannot believe we are already in the month of October!  I love the month of October because this is my birthday month.  I enjoy celebrating all month long!  In class, I have really tried to focus on my edTPA task one and two.  I am still practicing and researching the best way to word my answers to the questions on the edTPA commentaries.  I hope to have a better handle on these tasks by the end of the semester.  I believe this is possible with the practice we are given with edTPA this semester.  I have continued to enjoy my time in my clinical placement.  I have been able to create relationships with all the students in my class.  I have begun to hear “Ms. Mitchell” many times throughout the day.  I enjoy being able to teach, help, and guide the students each day I am in the classroom.  I was able to teach my literacy learning segment since my last blog.  I found that I need to really pay attention to the time and pace of my lessons.  I found I was not able to have the students to complete all the learning task planned during the lesson because I would run out of time.  I also need to plan simpler activities for my kindergarten students.  The activities I had planned were a little too advanced for the students to complete at this point in the year.  There are also lessons were students are highly engaged and lessons where students are not.  I feel like the lesson where the students were very engaged aligned the best with their interest.  For this particular lesson, I was able to find a story about a lizard who gets lose in a kindergarten classroom.  The story I used is called, “Mary Had a Little Lizard” by Kayla Harren.  This is a picture book and the students loved this learning experience.  The students were able to help me use the pictures to tell the story.  One of our students who misbehaves most of the time was the most engaged during this lesson.  I will continue to align my lessons with the students' interest.  I will also determine which learning task worked best for the students.   

I was able to portray the NCTCS standard one, “Teachers Demonstrate Leadership,” by leading the students through the lessons.  I was able to portray standard two, “Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students,” by creating a relationship with each student.  Also, by letting each student speak and feel like they have a voice.  I showed standard three, “Teachers know the content they teach,” by aligning my lessons to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.  I was able to depict standard four, “Teachers facilitate learning for their students,” by incorporating technology into the lessons.  The story “Mary Had a Little Lizard,” was shown on power point slides.  This way all the students could see the pages and feel like they were right there in the different settings.  I was also able to take part in standard five, “Teachers reflect on their practice,” by reviewing the student's assessments and determining if they understood the information or not.  This is a part of our edTPA task three. 

In my outside research this week, I came upon an awesome article on professional development.  As future teachers we are to continue our learning and become lifelong learners.  I have noticed many of the professional development opportunities are normally lectures and sometimes hands on activities.  This article discusses ways professional development opportunities could be differentiated for teachers.  The articles four suggestions were to gauge teachers’ readiness, utilize teachers’ interest, get teachers involved, and provide opportunities for continual assessment.  I think if schools considered trying some of these in their professional development times, teachers would benefit tremendously and absorb so much more material.  If you have a chance take a look at this article.  <https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-dont-we-differentiate-pd-pauline-zdonek?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow>  

In my future classroom, I will always strive to follow the NCTCS standards so that my students are set up for success.  I will create relationships with my students in my future classroom so that they trust me and believe in my teaching.  I will also be able to know more about each students' interest when I am able to create a relationship with them.  I will develop lesson plans, learning task, and individual assignments based on the students' interest and learning needs.  I will also review the assessment data for my future students to determine if the students need the lesson retaught or if I can move forward to another standard.