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.