Blog Post 12

Session 12:  How can curriculum mapping assist you?  Do you have one?  Does your school/district curriculum map?  Where would/will you start in creating a useful curriculum map for your classroom? 

I do have a curriculum map that was made for Cambridge Curriculum. The problem with the map is that it is made for a course that is supposed to be taught in four semesters and we are required to teach it in two semesters. This leaves us with a time crunch at the end of the semester and that makes it very difficult (or impossible) to teach the material to mastery. When I ask my administration if I should teach to mastery or follow the time guidelines I of course get told to do both which I have not figured out how to do. I suppose this must be a skill that I need to get from teaching for a while. If I had to make my own curriculum map I would start with all the units that would need to be covered and make sure that they made sense. Then, I would look at the amount and depth of content and allocate certain time frames for each unit. Finally, I would arrange the units in an order that would be easiest to teach beginning with units that contained a great deal of fundamental knowledge and working my way through to the most complex ideas at the end. 

Blog Post 11

Session 11:  Do you differentiate instruction? Why? Why not?  What is the importance of differentiating instruction?  What impact does it have on student learning?

I honestly don’t do a great deal of differentiation other than what is outlined in my student’s IEPs. I have alternate versions of tests that provide word banks or eliminating some options on multiple choice questions. I also allow student to do alternate assignments where some of my more artistic students to make posters and label them instead of doing a written test. If I do groups I usually put students of similar ability levels together and I help out the lower ability students or the special needs students. This has led to a better understanding of the material. I will be trying different differentiation in the next semester. 

Blog Post 10

Session 10: General Education Teachers: When working with special education teachers, what are your challenges?  Strengths?  What could be done to increase your skills in this area?

I love my special education teachers and I am personally considering becoming one after I receive my certification. I like the way that what they suggest is usually just good teaching and I have wonderful paraprofessionals to come and help me out with my classes which are half special needs students during a couple of my class periods. The biggest challenge I have working with the special education teachers is having my materials provided to them in advance since I sometimes plan only a day at a time. I am going to begin trying to plan at least a week in advance and provide them with all of my materials ahead of time and letting them know when I am testing so the paraprofessionals can be ready to pull out small groups for testing. I think that my biggest strength when it comes to this area is that I take suggestions from the special education teachers to heart and try to implement their ideas in order to help my students grow. 

Blog Post 9

Session 9:  When using technology with your students, what are your challenges?  Strengths? What could be done to increase your usage of technology in the classroom?

When it comes to technology in my room my main challenge is my smartboard. I need to submit another work order to IT to have it addressed as it only works half the time and is really glitchy when it does work. For instance, I can write on it but then the pressure sensors won’t work and I can’t press it to use a website on the board. The good news is that I finally invested in a reliable powerpoint clicker. It works wonderfully and I installed two floor lamps in the back of my classroom because the projector isn’t bright enough to be seen with the lights on. I have set up my google classroom for next semester and have used socrative.com to do reviews and allow the students to use their cell phones in a productive manner. 

Blog Post 8

Session 8:  How prepared do you feel in effectively teaching your students in reading?  Is this one of your strengths?  A weakness?

I don’t feel especially effective in teaching my students reading and I do think this is one of my weaknesses. I have started a word wall for my classroom and have been conscious of going over the words and making sure students understand the pronunciation and definition of the vocabulary words I that unit. Other than that I haven’t really focused on reading and some other ideas would be nice to have to try and implement in the future.

Have you started to plan to the Common Core Standards?  If you have, how is that going?  If you haven’t, why not?  What support do you need?

This is a tricky question for me since I teach the Cambridge Curriculum. I was told that Cambridge was aligned with the Arizona State Standards for College and Career Readiness which is the state’s common core program but other than having to use it for classes I haven’t referenced it much. As far as support I wish I could sit down with someone next semester and annotate the Common Core Standards on my Cambridge syllabus and that would make it easier to complete lesson plans for the TIR program since I am not required to do so for my school.

Blog Post 7

Session 7:  Go to educationworld.com and read one article on some aspect of Classroom Management (type Classroom Management into the search box in the upper left hand corner).  Post a reflection to the Epsilen blog based on your practice as it relates to what you learn from the article.  How effectively is your well classroom management system working at this point in the year?  What are your struggles?  What are your successes?  Reflect with honest hearts and minds! 

The article that I read was Five Essentials for Basic Classroom Management. The article focuses on basic strategies like getting to know your student’s parents, you’ll never win if you go head to head with a student, good lesson planning, knowing your students, and finding your management style. I have attempted all of these with varying success. I have contacted several parents in regards to their student’s success and behavior. Most of the time the parents promise to speak to their children about their behavior and grades and things improve for a few days and then go back to their previous behavior. Good lesson planning focuses on planning bell to bell and engaging activities to keep the students busy. This is another way to say that busy hands are happy hands and that if students are busy enough they won’t have the time or energy to misbehave. I attempt to do this but I think I’ll do a much better job after I solidify my procedures in the next semester. Hammering home my procedures and being consistent next semester will hopefully help me find my voice and help me find my management style.  The last is that the teacher will never win if they go head on with a student. I had actually never thought of this but the article pointed out that while the teacher has everything to lose when getting into a power struggle with a student. The student usually has a reputation to maintain with the other students similar to what one normally think of occurring in prison. When certain students are challenged in front of their peers they will suffer any consequence and it may be better to not make a scene and keep any exchange private so as to avoid ruining their reputation with the other students.

My classroom management really does need a great deal of work but I have learned so many strategies this semester I hope it will improve. I am going to make sure that I set down the procedures clearly, model them, and have the students practice them and then be consistent for the rest of the year and hopefully it will solve most of my classroom management problems.

Blog 4

Session 4:  Regular Education - “What are you doing to meet the needs of your special education students?   If you do not have special education students, how are you meeting the needs of your low students?  Have you met with your school’s pre-referral group about these students?”

My special needs students get extra support from paraprofessionals during every other class period. I allow them to do different assignments sometimes depending on their abilities. I also do modified assessments, simplifying questions or not requiring answers as in depth as my regular students. I try to chunk information and stop and check to make sure they are on task and understanding the classroom instruction. I had several students draw diagrams of the digestive system and label them during class and used this as their assessment. This was very helpful to these students as I feel they understood the material much better than if they had taken a written test since many of my students struggle with reading and have low lexiles. 

Blog Post 6

Session 6: “Reflect on your use of assessment in the classroom.  On a scale of 1 – 10, ten being highest, how would you rate yourself.  What are your plans for becoming a “10” if you are not there already? How are you using assessment in the classroom to guide your instruction?  Describe how assessment results are used to differentiate instruction within your class.”

I think that I rate myself at a 4 on the scale of 1-10 on my use of assessment in the classroom. I do use assessments such as exit tickets and quizzes to monitor the progress of my students and try to use purposeful grouping in the lab. My plan to become a 10 consists of using websites such as Socrative.com, Kahoot!, and Google Classroom to help me make more informal assessments and to gather data prior to the tests and quizzes. Using these tools should make it easier for me to track what students are doing well and which are not. 

Blog Post 5

Blog post 5:  “Reflect on your time in the classroom to this point.  How are you feeling emotionally, physically?  Do you feel that you are getting through to your most difficult students? What strategies are working?  What strategies are not?   What are your next steps with student engagement within your classroom?”

At this point in the school year I am starting to feel better both emotionally and physically. I hit a low point about a month ago because I felt like I didn’t know which way I was going with everything especially lesson planning. I have managed to get through to a few of my really tough students and contacting parents has really helped me a great deal. Yesterday I got to see one of the parents that I worked with to get her son back on track and got to tell her that he is now doing great. That was a huge victory for me. The small group things that I have tried haven’t worked at all up to now but I plan on trying next semester after hammering home procedures. I have worked my way up to shoulder buddies and it is working nicely. I also have some new engagement strategies that I want to do next semester such as flyswatter. This is where you put the answers to questions on the board and two students compete to swat the answer with a flyswatter.