Week 11 Reflection

Last Monday was the first time I hosted a twitter season and I wanted to make sure that the questions were simple, but not so simple that people were getting bored. When you are the person leading the session, it can be hard to tell how well it is going. I feel like it went pretty good hopefully this Monday will also go well. It can be challenging to not repeat the same questions as last week when it is the same topic.

Josie commented on my blog and we talked about how we are both teaching our units in a nontraditional setting. We both find it hard to pace the unit when there are not school time frames already in place. Gerald and I had a conversation about how teaching just one student can be challenging because there are no other students doing the same work to model how the learning could be happening. He also gave me some useful advice I want to try. The child I am working with L, is very active and needs movement. He suggested that I try having music on while she is working. I will ask her what she thinks and maybe try it the next time we get together.

I commented on Jim’s blog and talked about how time management is also really hard for me. The balance of how hard to push students to finish something, while still making sure that they are learning the information is a struggle that I have. I posted on Kendra’s blog and talked about how I have never had to deal with trying to get students to turn things in on time. She changed how she has dealt with assignments in the past and said that they will not be excepted if they are late. I look forward to seeing how that works for her and if anything changes. I also commented on Josie’s blog. I said that I would have enjoyed learning this unit that she is teaching. I also talked about how everyone works at a different rate and the struggle of the teacher to keep that in mind when planning a unit.

This week I realized that I need to keep working on timing and it is something a lot of people struggle with. I also thought a lot about the difference between teaching in a traditional classroom and what it is like to teach one child outside of a classroom. The idea of school already has a strong context to it, that when you are there you are learning. This is not the same when working on something at home. This week I am going to try to get L in the learning mind set by asking her about what she remembers from the last time we worked together.

Week 11

Essential question: What are my challenges and successes in implementing my unit? 

The biggest challenge that I am discovering is that I am not able to teach the unit in the classroom. So, a lot of the plans must be scaled back and some do not apply. It has also been challenging to make sure that we can meet for long enough to do some learning, but not so long that L becomes disinterested. She is consistently moving and I am working on some ways to help her have movement and still work on the unit.

               We are figuring it out and she has made progress though the unit. It is interesting to try and figure out how to brake everything up. I could be with L for a lot longer than if I was at school. I think that it will be good when we get to the book making part. L will have a lot of time to work on the book and won’t have to stop to start a new subject. I just hope that she keeps her interest in the unit, if not it will be a struggle to teach the whole thing. So far, so good though.

               If anybody has suggestions for teaching students with a lot of energy  I would love to hear them and try to implement them.

Week 10 reflection

Sometimes the twitter classes can be confusing. I don’t usually look at the week’s class until I start to write my blog on Tuesday. So, when I got extra confused this last week, I looked at the weeks website, but it was still hard to follow.  I think it was just a more challenging week. We really had to do a lot on inward thinking as well as looking back at what we have learned throughout the semester.

               This week I commented on Mariah’s blog. I talked about how important the learning environment can be in the classroom. There are also so many aspects to a differentiated classroom it is challenging to just choose five. I also commented on Gerald’s blog. I talked about how it would be more challenging to have differentiation in a math classroom. There seems to be a very limited number of things to change or do differently, especially for high school level math.

               Shauan commented on my blog and we talked about how important flexibility in the classroom can be. She actually went back into her unit and edited it. It was really nice to see that someone took what I wrote and used it to help their lesson.

               This week I did a lot of thinking about how and why I wrote the unit plan the way I did. Self-assessment is important and not just for sour students. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the flow of the school year that we can forget that we also need to be striving every day to be a better teacher. This week, I was reminded to slow down and understand myself better as a teacher.