#12

Teaching the sixth graders was so fun and taught me a ton. I definitely learned that sixth graders are not as young as I thought they were. They were a sharp group of students who kept us on our toes. I think, overall, things went very well. Despite our issues planning with our group, we came together when it came time to do the actual teaching. We supported each other well and taught our very best. We were able to answer the questions that the sixth graders shot at us, which felt good. They were interested in what we were doing, so they participated very well. Them taking notes didn't really happen, so in the future, I think I would need to have either a format that they can follow to help them, or give them more incentive to take notes. We told them to pay attention so they might be able to "do something cool" at the end of class, but that did not really help them know that they wouldn't get to launch as much without knowing the answers. I learned that when it comes time to launch the trebuchets, we need better defined rules of our game so there would be less yells of "CHEATER!!! SHE'S CHEATING!!!" We started to lose control of the class as they launched. I need to figure out how to let the students have fun but still be able tot have control of the classroom.

#11

As I have started reading the Classroom Instruction that Works book, I've found that there are many methods to do everything. There are pros and cons to all of them and a lot of deciding simply has to do with personal preference and style. Studies show that there are some methods that work better overall in some scenarios, but the significance is not very strong. What I take from this book is that as long as you know what you are doing and you are consistent and have a strong desire to improve the lives of your students, you will be a successful teacher. A lot of the strategies given in this book are contradictory to each other, so I will have to figure out which few I want to implement in my own classroom to be the most effective teacher I can be. I thought the section on Homework and Practice to be particularly interesting. It opened my eyes to why I had to have so much homework in High School. Each teacher was trying to get me to spend the recommended 50-60 minutes a day working on that subject outside of school. With six classes, I spent a lot of time outside school working on school work. If I understood as a student the reasoning behind the homework, I feel like I would have been less resentful of it at the time.

#10

I found, as I was preparing to teach sixth graders, that I am really happy that when I teach, I will be able to get input from others as I want it, but I can still make decisions for how I will run things in my classroom. I liked being able to brainstorm in a group to decide the best way to teach trebuchets to sixth graders, but I'm not sure I enjoyed the whole process. Having so many different teachers who have different styles made it so none of us could guide the lesson towards our personal styles. We were able to find a way to collaborate and make the most of our individual parts so we could briefly work in our strong areas. I feel like in our planning process, we were butting heads the whole time. We all had different ideas about what our main teaching goals should be, and therefore had issues maintaining good focus on those goals. Our lesson plan seemed disjointed and lacking strong focus.

#9

As I watched more classmates teach STLs, I also noticed that some people have a more natural "stage" presence. That presence makes it a lot easier for some teachers to adapt to the different questions or responses students give. Some teachers got flustered and confused when a student gave an answer they did not expect. Others, however, used it to improve their teaching moment. Some teachers it was hard to pay attention to because they natural speak in a monotone or very softly. Others made it fun to listen to them and they said stuff that made you want to keep listening. Some of the analogies used were so random and out there that it made it much more fun to listen to, even if they didn't work 100%. I would be curious to find the trade-off between crazy analogies that don't exactly work vs boring analogies that definitely work. I would think that some people would gain more from the crazy ones and other people would get confused by them. But if nobody is listening to the boring analogies, then nobody will learn even if they are good parallels.

#8

Watching the other students teach their STLs taught me a lot about things I like and don't like in other teachers. That, in turn, shows me things I want to do in my classroom or things I want to make sure don't end up in my classrooms. I liked it when we were in small groups discussing and working on things, but I will want to make sure that there is a clear purpose for our talking. Sometimes, as a student, I did not have motivation to participate because I did not see a reason for why I was learning what I was. This all comes back to stating learning objectives and making sure they are pronounced in the lesson. Some of the lessons seemed really patronizing to me. I'm not sure if that was just the content, or the types of questions asked. I want to make sure that I treat my students like they are their own ages. I don't want to teach a 10th grade class like they are 6th graders. That would not go over well.

#7

I taught STL #3. In doing that, I learned that I get very specific very quickly, which makes keeping a lesson interesting difficult. My topic was already very specific and I kept it simple. I thought that keeping the topic very straightforward would be effective, but I felt like I was beating a dead horse by the time I was only a few minutes in. I feel like I had a good anticipatory set, but it could have tied in a little better. It did illustrate my point, but then my whole lesson was taught in just my set. I needed to find more to expand on. As it was, I only taught for ten minutes. I don't really know how to teach for much longer than that, so I need to learn how to do that before I try to teach an hour-long class. I said "um" a lot, which bothered me. I did make a point to call on specific people when I asked questions, but my questions were not the best. The students were not sure what kind of answer I was looking for. It could have gone a lot better.

#6

Alisha Spjute's classroom was very enlightening. She was a very energetic and involved teacher. You could tell that her students loved her and respected her. She knows how to get her students excited about her different projects.

I loved the assignments she used to teach her students the different Adobe products. She added a personal quality to all the projects, which helped inspire the passion and excitement for the students. She used a project where the students were supposed to make a "geek" version of themselves on Illustrator that showed what they loved to do. The kids got super into it and learned tons about Illustrator in the process. A Photoshop project her advanced class did was an assignment about what kids would do if they were invisible for a day. They were supposed to take pictures of themselves doing something and then Photoshop out all the skin so it was just clothes in the pictures. They had to fill in the background realistically using the clone stamp tool or filtering through a second picture. Her project to teach the basics of Flash was simply to have students have the letters of their name fly in and change colors. It gave them the groundwork to be able to do bigger and harder future projects.

#5

My visit to Salem Hills High School was not as beneficial to my learning experience as I would have liked. There happened to be a guest speaker in Chris Andrews' class when I went today. While I got to learn a lot about Art Institute and careers that multimedia can take you into, I did not get to see Mr. Andrews teach his class.

Talking to him afterwards, however, was very enlightening. I learned that if you get the right people in the administration behind you, you can accomplish a lot more and have greater flexibility with what you want to teach. Administrators do not really know what to do with tech teachers, so they let them do their own thing.

Since Chris is new to teaching, it was interesting to see how he is adjusting to being a real teacher rather than a student teacher. It sounds like everyone will at some point have to go through an experimental phase when we are on our own to figure out what theories we can effectively work with in our own classroom.

I am interested to see what theories I will try and what will work in my future classroom.

#4

The idea Gong has of exponential learning is one that I love. It fascinates me. I like the theory of learning to teach. It honestly does change the way I learn when I have to be able to teach someone else how to do it afterwards. Teaching anything to someone else solidifies the knowledge in my own mind and makes it easier to explain each time after that. When I am truly interested in what I am learning, I go above and beyond the required assignments to explore on my own. I like to always do my best work and put all my effort into the learning I do, but I do my absolute best work when I love and am interested in the things I'm doing. When I see the purpose and the application to my assignments, I thrive. I love having enough direction to know where to take assignments, but the freedom to go as far as I can with the available time.

Knowing and understanding how my thinking and learning works, helps shape how I want to teach. I want to find the balance where students who need more direction have it, but those who understand can have the freedom to experiment and excel on the same assignment as others just learning. I want my classroom to have the flexibility for students to help each other before they come to me for help. I like that learning style.

#3

Visiting my first middle school was an enlightening experience. The teacher, Mr. Meeks, used a very involved teaching method. He did not sit and watch the students struggle when they got stuck. He gave a quick lecture to explain the project and the objectives of the project, and then let the kids go to work. The structure of his class was very exploration-guided. The students had to experiment to do their assignment and prepare for the building process of their project.

I like his method of a quick lecture followed by an activity. It helped get the kids focused on the right thing and gave them needed guidance, but allowed them the time to get the work done. However, this system left room for the students to be confused and have to guess some to figure out what the true purpose of the assignment was. The method leaned to a "experiment first, learn why later" attitude from the students. Many just played around until something worked for them. Some proceeded to try to figure out why it worked, and others just accepted that it worked. Trial and error.

Reflection 2

As I finished reading Wong, I learned the most about how to structure tests properly. I had always been curious how to do it in a way that is beneficial to the learning process as opposed to being a method of punishment. I learned how to match up test questions with objectives rather than simply facts or information. I like the idea of having tests that are not composed of rote memorization like so many of the tests I have taken over the years. I can now see why it was so much easier for teachers to make memorization tests, but I hope that I will find the energy as a teacher to make effective tests.

Classroom procedures was an interesting thing for me to think about so consciously. I remember classrooms where the teacher would walk in and say "Good Afternoon, 7th Period!" and the class would respond with "Good Afternoon Mrs. Beck!" With that teacher, I knew that as soon as I came in the door, the assignment for the day would be on the overhead projector and I should copy it down and get my notebook out. Having that simple stability helped get me focused before the instruction time began. I was ready to start when she finished taking role. Other classes, in contrast, were always chaotic and it was much harder for me to want to focus because I would just hope that the class would distract our teacher enough so we would not need to accomplish as much. Those classes were the ones where there was no structure to our time and we had to wait for our teacher to tell us what to do every minute of the period. When I teach, I'm not sure I'll have a "good morning" routine, but I plan to have some sort of procedure for starting class so I can make the most of every teaching minute I have.

Reflection 1

The reading I have done in The First Days of School has opened my eyes much more to the preparation that goes on before the teacher even begins teaching. I always assumed that good teachers were given that gift and bad teachers simply were not. I knew there were some skills to be learned, but I did not realize just how many things teachers think about that students only recognize subconsciously.

In high school, I did give teachers different levels of respect based on the way they dressed or the way they had us address them. I found that the teachers who dressed more on the casual side were much easier for me to approach and ask questions about class or life in general. However, those were also the teachers I found myself making more smart remarks to and tried to challenge their authority more. I think there is a balance to be reached between over-dressed without being approachable, and under-dressed without maintaining good authority. When I am a teacher, I want to be able to look professional without looking or acting stuffy.

Teachers, according to this book, need to be proficient in practicing positive expectations, have good classroom management skills, and have their lessons mastered. In remembering my own experiences with teachers, the teachers I have learned the most from had all of these skills. They made me believe that they believed in me and thought I could succeed, knew how to maintain control in the classroom without being harsh, and knew the material they were covering.

A perfect example of this, is my middle school math teacher who is the one who first inspired me to become a teacher. She talked to me after I finished taking a test and asked me if I had learned what she was teaching before. She told me that I took the test almost as fast as she did and scored very well on it. That let me know how much she thought I was capable of. She also had avery unique way of organizing her homework. She set up three different homework assignments based on skill level. Those who were struggling and just wanted to pass the clas could do the C homework assignment and expect to get C's on the tests. Those who had a better handle on things could do the B homework assignment and expect to get B's on the tests. Those who wanted to be challenged and wanted to ace the class could do the A homework assignment and expect to get A's on the test as long as all of the homework was understood. I do not remember her discipline technique, but she was always in charge of the classroom and always had everyone's attention. She was also very wee-rehearsed in the math she was teaching. She knew how to explain the same problem in at least three different ways if students were having trouble understanding her first explaination. She is the type of teacher I want to be.