Blog #5 Bringing It All Together

Prompt:
Review the course goals you wrote about in your first post at the beginning of the semester.

·         What progress have you made on them?

·         What does this do to inform your practice next semester in student teaching?

·         What goals do you still have moving forward?

·         Include overall reflections on what you have learned in this clinical course and on-site this semester.

As I am finishing up my experience in my first grade classroom, I find it important to reflect on all that I have learned this semester. I made some goals for myself in the beginning of the year before going into my clinical. These goals included:

1.       Learning to better integrate subjects

2.       Build professional relationships

3.       Improve on writing lesson plans

4.       Improve use of technology to assist me in teaching

As I review these goals, I am happy to realize that I feel that I have made some progress on all 4 goals!

Goal #1

I was worried coming in to this experience knowing that I had to teach science and social studies this semester because those subjects don’t always play a large role in the classroom. I knew from my past experiences that not all classrooms have time set aside in the day for either of these subjects. When I got into my classroom, I realize that the majority of the day was scheduled around literacy and math, like I had expected, with “possible” time set aside for these other subjects at the end of the day. I have been learning so much great content over the year on social studies and science and I have realized how important these subjects are to teach so that students can be better prepared for their future. I was able to realize that although social studies and science instruction was not happening directly, components of it were integrated throughout the day ( I discussed these components in other blogs!) I was able to integrate social studies and science through the use of read alouds, changing simple components of center activities, and writing lessons.

Goal #2

My second goal was to build professional relationships. Although I don’t feel that I got to reach out to other professionals in the building as much as I would have liked to, aside from my teacher, I do think I learned a lot about the professional relationships that were already present among the 1^st grade team of teachers. I came to realize that unlike in my last clinical setting, this set of team teachers did not work together as much. Everyone in the first grade team sort of did their own thing and didn’t communicate very well or use each other as resources. I was able to sit in on a few first grade meetings which I don’t believe were used in a very positive way. Although I didn’t see much of a positive aspect of professional relationships this semester, I still take it as a learning experience and it still makes me realize how I want to act as a teacher with other professionals, especially my cooperating teacher for student teaching. I want to make sure that I build a strong relationship with her from the very start. I will be starting the year of with her so I hope that I can make contributions from early on and that I will feel like more of an equal in the classroom as a teacher instead of just someone who is there to work for them.

Goal #3

Writing lessons plans are something I feel I improved on the most this year. Although at times the lesson plans I would write felt very long and rigorous, I feel that my lessons went much better. Some of the new components in the planning such as planning for potential problems really helped my lessons run more smoothly in the classroom. I also think that the feedback I received on my lessons helped me understand how to teach lessons that weren’t so surface level and really got into the concept I was trying to get across. I know next semester in my student teaching I am going to be writing plenty of lesson plans! I am definitely going to be taking the lessons plan templates that I used this semester to use in my classroom. I have learned that the more detail and planning that goes into it the first time, the more your students are going to enjoy a well-run lesson and will grasp the concept better.

Goal #4

One piece of technology I feel I really improved on using this semester in my clinical classroom was the SMART board. My CT used the SMART board for any type of group meeting, for math, and for parts of literacy. She really motivated me to look more into SMART board and all that it can do. I explored the SMART exchange and found some great lessons I would love to use in my future teaching. I found that the SMART board can be extremely interactive, which is something I aim for in my lessons. I was able to download SMART board on my computer for a free trial and explore all that it can provide for a teacher.

Here is a copy of the SMART board slides for my Social Studies Lesson on maps!

I find that it is important to always have goals for yourself. Goals motivate and push you to want to be better. My main goal moving forward is really just keep discovering what type of teacher I want to be and where my beliefs stand on a variety of issues. Throughout all my clinical experiences I have seen things in the ways teachers teach, what they place emphasis on, and how they manage their classroom that I have liked and some things I don’t agree with at all. I take both the positives and negatives as learning experiences and store them as knowledge for when I have my own classroom one day. In student teaching, when I have the opportunity to really take over the classroom, I want to be respectful of my teacher’s wishes but also try out some things of my own to test my comfort level and see what I want to bring with me when I run my own classroom one day!