Blog 8

Blog 8

350-
This was a really interesting week for my 350 class. We had the chance to take a class trip to a low performing school and spend the entire day there. The school has a lot of strategies in place to raise their school scores in their school improvement plan. They have succeeded a lot and achieved a significant amount of growth, which is the main goal for every school. Having the opportunity to experience this classroom was challenging, intimidating, sad at times, but overall so so worth it. I left with a heavy heart because of the sweet little souls I encountered. Not all of the kids were well behaved at all, and a lot of them had serious behavioral issues. It just opened my eyes to the amount of poverty that truly is out there and how helpless children can be to their life circumstances. Working at a school like this is no easy feat, but to get to be a smiling and caring face in these kids lives must be absolutely beyond rewarding. I'm really thankful I got to have this experience and am grateful that this school is taking so many steps to get better every day. The teacher I got to observe was very loving and attentive to her kids. You could tell she earned their respect by being a firm, and kind presence. Kids thrive when they feel important and this teacher made a great effort to do that. Right away I connected this class to NC teaching standard number 2. This standard says that teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students. This standard also says that teachers are to embrace diversity in the school community and in the world. This teacher was an amazing example to me of embracing diversity and I hope to be a teacher like that. She gives them all individual attention and there was one boy in particular that truly never wanted to leave her side. She later said, "oh yeah that little boy is precious, I call him my little leech!" She just went out of her way in so many ways for these kids and it just really felt special to witness.
I did my outside research on: "What is really the difference between high- and low-performing schools?"
http://schoolleader.typepad.com/school-leader/2016/01/what-i-see-in-low-performing-schools.html
"The bottom line is that, if you work in a low-performing, high-poverty school, the stakes are simply higher to improve student learning." I really agree with this and am thankful for all the current and future teachers that work in these schools. 


410-
We are still continuing our topic of integration and I saw this demonstrated exceedingly well in the classroom I observed. The teacher I observed blended subjects and topics effortlessly and smoothly. My professor says this takes a lot of hard work and practice/ trial and error to get good at! I can't wait to have more real life practice with integration and watch teachers put this idea into action. I think its such a beautiful thing to be passionate about children receiving a whole and all-inclusive education that prepares them for the real world and for further education. 
This website told me 11 ways that blended learning can be incorporated into a kindergarten classroom. 
http://web.learnbop.com/blog/11-ways-to-incorporate-blended-learning-into-kindergarten

"There are a number of learning opportunities when technology is integrated effectively into the classroom: learning can be individualized, students can collaborate, and teachers become facilitators. Recognizing this, I opted to give blended learning a try in my own kindergarten classroom. And indeed, by the end of the year, my five and six year olds were able to operate computers independently, created projects together, and were developing some basic coding skills." 

Blog 7

This week was a little bit hard because I got really sick beginning on Sunday...A little bit of a catch up week but I have been trying hard to get myself back on track.
I was in 350 this week but missed Thursday of 410 so I was not present for the seminar. I am feeling tons and tons better now so I am really happy about that.

350-
I really enjoyed the information taught by the guest speaker. Her name was Dr.Mitcham. She taught us abouta lot of different principles. The main thing we learned was about Exceptional Children and a system called MTSS. This stood for multi-tiered system of support. Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) is an umbrella framework that includes Response to Intervention (RTI) and Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) frameworks. P.K. Yonge uses this tiered system, where every student receives core instruction, known as Tier One. We practices categorizing different items into the tiers and I thought that was a good way to really ingrain them into our minds. While doing some research I found a quote that said:

"If a child is not behaving there’s a need not being met, and that’s the premise I always go on."

That seems to be the premise that these systems are based off of and I think that is really important. 

P.K. Yonge strives to create a culture of support and safety, making it seamless and normal for all students.  

For my future classroom that is the culture that I want to create. I want kids to feel like I will intervene and be there always when they are struggling or stuck on something. 

 https://www.edutopia.org/practice/supporting-behavioral-needs-multi-tiered-approach

 

 410- 

I read the articles that were discussed in the seminar and thought they were very applicable to what we have been really learning about. (Assessment) 

 Data and assessment go hand in hand and cannot really exist functionally without the other.  Like a toothbrush with no toothpaste. Still useful but way less than it could be.

Assessment is crucial and formative assessment is so beneficial for student success. Knowing when to use it will help with everything. It will also help you implement the MTSS because you know which students need help where.  

Teachers need to be aware of progress or lack of progress being made in their classroom and that is why I plan to formatively assess my kids a lot in the future. 

I think this relates to standard 5 of the NCTCS which says teachers reflect on their practice.

Blog 6

350 

Hello classmates! 
On Wednesday in 350, we focused on IDEA, which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This specific law governs and oversees students with disabilities and their education. 
The IDEA requires students with disabilities a "free and appropriate education." 
This aligns with NC Teaching Standard 2: "Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs." 
We briefly touched on the topic of IEP's (Individualized Education Plan) and LRE (Least Restrictive Environment.)

There are 4 total of settings for LRE: (ranked 1-4, 1=least restrictive and 4=most restrictive)

1. Inclusion (What I will teach/traditional classroom in which EC kids are functioning below grade level, but with support, can be in a traditional classroom. Kids are included in traditional day and we just provide accommodations.)
2. Resource (The EC kids are still in the traditional classroom, but they go to a resource teacher as they are pulled out during different times of the day.)
3. Self-contained (EC kids are still at your school, just in their own classroom.)
4. Separate setting
5. (May have a few students that are on monitoring… these kids have an IEP and the EC teacher comes in and checks if they’re still progressing)
    
   Outside Research: 
   I continued to research this Act because I just started learning about it and the way it is implemented in the classroom.  
    
   This website I found talked about implementing this act in the classroom.
    
   “The intent of LRE is to make sure that kids who receive special education are included in the general education classroom as often as possible" 
   I think this is such an important statement to reflect on. 
   An inclusion classroom is a general education classroom that has students who receive special education. Inclusion is a teaching approach that focuses on including students with special education needs in the school community.
   Inclusion goes beyond placement in a general education class. It also aims to have a child participate in the classroom, lessons and extracurricular activities.
   
   https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/special-services/special-education-basics/least-restrictive-environment-lre-what-you-need-to-know
   
   
   

 410-

Natalie led our seminar really, really well this week. The topic was rubric use in the classroom.Teachers and students can both benefit a lot from rubrics and that was the class decision at the end of the seminar. We read some super interesting articles and I think the whole class engaged well in the conversation. 
We agreed that this was basically our definition of rubrics:
"A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery."

This article was one I found on my own and it talked a little more about the advantages to using rubrics. 
https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/rubrics.html

Using a rubric provides several advantages to both instructors and students. Grading according to an explicit and descriptive set of criteria that is designed to reflect the weighted importance of the objectives of the assignment helps ensure that the instructor’s grading standards don’t change over time.

 Grading consistency is difficult to maintain over time because of fatigue, shifting standards based on prior experience, or intrusion of other criteria. Rubrics can reduce the time spent grading by reducing uncertainty and by allowing instructors to refer to the rubric description associated with a score rather than having to write long comments. 


Finally, grading rubrics are invaluable in large courses that have multiple graders (other instructors, teaching assistants, etc.) because they can help ensure consistency across graders and reduce the systematic bias that can be introduced between graders.

 




Future classroom:

My classroom will always follow strictly along with policies and guidelines that make my classroom an inclusive and safe environment. Rubrics are something that promote organization and clarity in a classroom and for those reasons I will include them in my future classroom teaching.