EDCI Blog#2 Performance As A Teacher

As a teacher I believe that I am growing with each lesson. Throughout the year I have conferred with and observed other colleagues. Everyday I learn a new technique or a new procedure that helps me function better in the classroom. Also, I constantly think of ideas that will help me achieve my classroom goals. In summer school the learning goal where my students are excelling is in ecology. The success is contributed to the hard work of my team: the second years and the first years. I believe that Lisa and myself have prepared the groundwork that has allowed my students to be successful. In addition, the students relate well with the material, because they can see evidence of classroom discussions outside in nature. Also, they widely involved with the lessons and are able to answer questions and participate in a friendly, inviting, and supportive environment.

My students are least successful in genetics. I found this to be disturbing, because the same solid foundation was paved in this branch of science as well as in the other branches of science that we are covering in summer school. En masse, the students’ grades in this discipline are lower than in the other Biology I topics. However, there are students who are still excelling in every summer school period. Some possible suggestions for the lack of success in genetics are the terminology and the complex thought processes associated with this discipline. Additionally, the time constraint of summer school hastens the comprehension of concepts that would normally take a few weeks to conceptualize in a regular classroom. Reteaching efforts that are vital to ensure adequate learning are forced into the summer school curriculum; considering other information must be covered in the classroom. As we see the problem of missed concepts arising among the students, my team has decided to reevaluate lesson plans in order to include this vital reteaching step.

I believe that my instructional procedures are effective. When I plan, I try to place all of my procedures in my lesson plans. Many times it lengthens my plans, but I am able to visualize how my lesson will come to fruition. My procedures also allow me to foresee problems that may arise throughout my lessons. During a lesson, I find that my procedures are a guide to show me where I am in my lesson and a reminder to help me see where I am going as my lesson progresses.

In my summer school class differentiated learning has definitely taken place. I have used differentiated instruction during class activities to reinforce previous concepts. For example, during a food web exercise, students were given the option to draw a food web with pictures or to just use words to describe their food webs. The students did an excellent job on this project. Other methods have been used to appeal to different learning styles from acting out certain ecological relationships; using auditory as well as visual note taking; drawing or writing out autotrophic-heterotrophic relationships; and using math skills to comprehend the genetic code. Additionally, the students have had the opportunity to work with mind map, in groups, and alone. They have investigated different part of a main concept and have shared that information with their peers in the classroom.

There are many things that I can do differently or better in the future to improve my students’ performance. First, I think that could plan reteaching instruction and activities before the problem arises. Also, I believe that I should distribute weekly progress reports in summer school to ensure that the students are aware of their academic progression in the classroom. I would also like to try more inductive strategies in the classroom to stimulate more learning. Finally, in the future, I would also like to think of more creative activities to include in my lessons to make my classroom a more enjoyable place to learn.

EDCI Blog#1 Learning goals and objectives

In order to make goals and for my lessons, I first had to decide what I was going to teach. Having taught Biology I last year, I knew that we should focus on the areas in the Mississippi Biology I Framework in which students score the lowest on the State test. My team member added that we should also focus on the areas that were the weighted heavily on the State test. Once we researched and gathered information for each idea, collectively, we decided that the best way to help our students this summer would be to create a course with the collaboration of our two ideas. As a result, we are teaching Genetics, Ecology, Natural Selection, and the Cell in summer school. Once this decision was made, we divided the four topics among ourselves.

Since summer school is usually a repeat of the school year, I knew that my students should be fairly familiar with the concepts that I had to teach or reteach them. With that in mind, I began both of my first lessons with comprehension level or higher Bloom verbs and very few knowledge level objectives. As time progressed, I made the objectives more advanced. It was difficult at first to find a medium in order to begin planning, because we had to give the pre-test and perform a lesson on the same day. In order to reach our students more effectively, I would have liked to analyze the pre-test to determine their knowledge levels. However, the rate at which I progressed my objectives toward more a more advanced level seems to be gauged appropriately, because, the majority of the students are passing both formal assessments and informal ones. Those who are not progressing as I would like, have plenty to opportunity to excel, because in every lesson plan, I have incorporated review, comprehension check, and reteaching moments.

I decided to use the inductive strategy of concept formation with a group of vocabulary words that could interconnect. I presented my students with the words and had them to define them. Then, I asked them to provide an example of the vocabulary word based upon its definition. Next, I instructed them to group the words into categories and to have a criteria or rationale as to why they grouped these words in this manner. I asked for volunteers to share their method of grouping and to share their examples. From this activity, the students were able to see how some vocabulary words overlapped in meaning. At first I was torn between the concept attainment strategy and the concept formation strategy. After revisiting my idea for the lesson outline, I that the concept formation strategy would be suit the needs of my lesson and students, since I wanted my students to make the connection between the interrelated vocabulary words. This strategy allowed them to gather their own information without me spoon-feeding it to them. It also allowed them to think about how to categorize certain words. Anytime my students are thinking, I am happy! Since my students make this connection between the vocabulary words regularly, I am convinced that this inductive strategy worked well in my class. As a result of my student’s concept retention, I feel encouraged to use more inductive reasoning strategies in future lesson plans.

May '07 Blog #2: I Think I Just Made A Difference

I think that life is really funny the way that it turns out. If you would have asked me in February if I felt I was making a difference, I probably would have said, “If I am, I can’t really tell.” All my students seemed to do is complain over and over and over again. You can’t teach. I don’t understand. I’m going to fail. You don’t care. I heard these comments repeatedly. I began to get disheartened, so I asked my mentor teacher about it. She told me that all ninth graders know how to do is complain and that I shouldn’t worry, because I’m actually making them do work (something that they were not used to doing) and earn their grades. As a teacher sometimes you don’t always feel like your efforts are worthwhile, but every now and then you’ll see a light bulb go off in a student and somehow, in that very moment, you feel like all your hard work was significant.

My last day of school a student walked up to me with a gift bag and said this is for you. I asked her did she want me to open it now and she said no, just wait until you get home. I gave her a hug and told her that I was very proud of the effort that she had made over the past two nine weeks. She smiled. I proceeded to tell her that her hard work and paid off and that she passed this Biology I with a low B. I was very proud of her, because she changed her entire grade around from a B and two high Fs. I was very worried about Hope, because I had given her extra practice for everything; talked with her; tutored with her; conferenced with her mom; and sent her to additional tutoring and nothing was seeming to get through to her. Through all of these attempts to help Hope succeed failed, I began to wonder, “What else can I do to help her?” Finally, I had to have another conversation with her about her study habits and note taking sills. She seemed to be doing everything right, but I still did not see any results. As time progressed, I saw Hope get better. Just FYI this time progression included those two Fs she made 2nd and 3rd term. Hope’s progress was very, very gradual until the 4th nine weeks. She started participating more in class and asking more questions when she didn’t understand. I still wasn’t confident that hope could pull out with C in my class, grade wise she was still lagging behind. The last two weeks of school I gave an optional extra credit assignment for those falling behind. Most of my students didn’t participate in the extra credit activity, not because they didn’t NEED to do it, but because they didn’t want to have to do work to complete it. Hope completed all of her extra credit assignments and also earned bonus points for her responses in the classroom. Her final grade was a very high C, but with the help of her extra credit, her was computed to be a low B.

When I returned home that day, I almost forgot her present that was in a pile of belongings from school. I opened the gift bag and saw a beautiful pair of earrings and a card. I open the card and read its contents. In the card Hope told me that no other teacher had pushed her like I did and she was thankful that I stayed on her and didn’t slack up on her. She said that she never thought she would ever get through Biology, but she understands it better now. She thanked me for being hard on her, because she believe that she is a better student because of it. ;) I felt very gratified at that moment. Maybe I DID make a difference.

May '07 Blog #1: Reflections Upon My 1st Year

I am so happy to be out of school. The funny part that I keep thinking about is how much I am going to miss my kids. I won’t be returning to that school district next year, so I won’t even get to see how much they’ve changed over the summer. My kids put me to the test over and over again, and I’m sure they can say worse about me. However, I still miss them so much and I am glad that I was hopefully able to empower them for the few months that I had them. Those few months felt like years in November, but now it doesn’t seem like that at all. My last day of school I bought my students doughnuts from Krispy Kreme (the best). They really enjoyed them as they cleaned up my room and watched television. (I still don’t know why they made us basically babysit our students those last two days after final exams.) As I leave this place I thought about a list of all of the things I am going to miss about it. Here’s a few
I am going to miss…
*All the jokes (even the ones I’m sure I was not supposed to laugh at!) that were sometimes told during a lesson or before class. It is so hard to keep a good teacher face when the jokes are SO funny.

*All the drama…one of my students was dating my best friend’s little brother and felt the need to give me an update as to the status of their relationship based upon whether or not her called her everyday.

*All the changes…9th graders are very moody. One moment they can be very upbeat and perky about a “crunk“ song, and then the next day they can be extremely depressed over trivial things (he said/she said things).

*My partners in education (I was going to say crime, but I’ll stick to education)…I had a lot of teachers on my hall support me and give me advice about the school and teaching in general. From those days spent at the bar talking about the joys and pains of teaching to watching my class while I RAN down the hall to the restroom to just making me one extra copy because someone decided to take 4, because she used a pen and messed up each time, I appreciate it all.

*My students…my students…my students. I think I will miss you all, well maybe most of you anyway. I know I’m the teacher, but you have taught me a lot over the course of 9 months as well. I believe each one of you made me a better person in some way…whether it was a better diciplinarian, a better listener, a better observer, a better empathizer, a better instructor, a better preparer, a better anticipater, more patient/less patient and more focused.

I thank you all.
Ms. Siwell