LEARNING EXPERIENCES
The countdown to the end of the semester is on! It is CRAZY to me how flippin fast this semester and year have flown by. Things are slowly by surly falling into place. I have officially finished all of my videos and teaching for my clinicals. This was my first time truly teaching to a group of students and not just to my peers. I was super nervous at first, but once the lesson began it all seems to flow pretty smoothly. For my ssed307 class I taught a lesson about landforms, bodies of water, and geographic tools. Students got to experiment with a GPS, globe and compass rose and then play with salt dough and get to form a landform of their choice. While this was a messy activity I think the students really enjoyed getting their hands dirty and engaging themselves. For my educ306 class I taught a small guided reading group a lesson about text features. I had the upper AIG students for this group. Students read an informational text and practiced identifying text features like a map, glossary, subheading, and diagram/label. This group of students were so well behaved and worked so hard with this lesson. The class as a whole at Boiling Springs were so good to me and made my first teaching experience stress free. I learned a lot through these experiences of how to break down the academic language to accommodate different learning styles and just make it on a first-grade level overall.
I finished my time at Washington Elementary School as well this week. While I did not get as close to these students as I did at Boiling Springs, it still was hard to say goodbye. Both class I was in got me a small gift to say thank you. My kindergarten class got me a $20 gift card to Walmart, and my 1stgrade class got me a $15 gift card to Starbucks, my two favorite places! I can say without a doubt that I have learned so much through these two schools that I definitely would not have learned just from meeting for class. I really liked this authentic experience.
FUTURE CLASSROOM
As I reflect on my time in the classrooms I took away some great tips and tricks that I want to take with me into my future classroom and even to student teaching next year. One big thing that I got to observe in my 1stgrade class at BSES was them doing calendar time in the mornings. Mrs. Hamrick not only went over the date and how to properly say today’s date, but her calendar integrated math very heavily. Each date number was a different color and shape. She would call on a student to tell her what the date number was, the color and shape the paper card would be. For each month there was a pattern of color and shapes for every day. So, for example if the student answered that it was going to be the 25thand a blue rectangle. Mrs. Hamrick would then follow up with questions like how many side does a rectangle have? How many edges? How many parallel lines? What is the color pattern for this month? I loved this idea of how you could turn your calendar time into a math review. The students also did a skip counting routine where they would clap their hands, snap their finger, slap their legs, or roll their arms counting by 5s, 10s, 2s, 3s, 100s, and then counting to 10 in Spanish. I would love to do something like this in my future classroom.
NCTCS
Based upon my observations and my teaching in my clinical classroom I can relate these to the North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards:
1a. Teachers lead in their classroom
3b. Teachers know the content appropriate to their teaching specialty
4c. Teachers use a variety of instruction methods
My clinical teacher Mrs. Hamrick is definitely a leader in her classroom and her school by setting her standards high for her first graders. By knowing the content in which she is supposed to teach she then she is able to take that content and use a variety of methods to get it across to the students. This is probably the biggest take away from observing her is seeing her unique ideas to make learning more interactive and fun.
OUTSIDE SOURCE
As I think about tools and tips to use for my future classroom I feel that I am constantly online looking up resources. One site that I found very helpful was tips to be a thriving first year teacher. This blog talks about ten tips of how to survive and thrive because that is always the goal is to be a successful teacher.
The next site I found is a great devotional specifically for teachers. Whenever I am having a bad day I always like to turn to my Bible or devotional. So, when I found this website just for teachers I had to share it. You can literally pick whichever struggle you are having in your classroom and there is a devotion for it like: energy, “oh, no! you got HIM in your class?”, Halloween, or Financial Security.Struggles that we are going to encounter as a teacher and need help and guidance to how to handle them.