Final Practicum Plan

          Well before I knew it the semester came to a quick end. I still can not believe how fast this semester has gone by but I feel like I have achieved so much in my classroom and that I have really improved and grown as a future teacher. I wanted to reflect on the practicum plan and all of my goals that I had set from the beginning of the semester. My first goal was, #1 “ To really take charge in my lessons and come up with really good effective and engaging lessons that my students will really benefit from”. And I felt like I was the most successful at this and really followed out with my goal. It started to become really natural and the lessons I would plan were very creative and well thought through. I really enjoyed having the chance to create my own lessons and my mentor teacher would only give me the topic of what they were doing and trusted me to come up with great lessons. That made me feel like a responsible teacher because I put a lot of time and effort into my lessons and out of all the assignments we had to do lesson plans were my absolute favorite! So I can definitely say that I have conquered that goal beyond my expectations and I am really proud of how easy great lessons come to my mind. The students would benefit from my lessons and they would know that if it was Thursday that I would be teaching a lesson and they would ask me every single time in the morning or I would hear them say to each other, “Yes, Miss Conway teachers us a lesson today”! That made me feel really in charge and I always had positive feedback from my teacher.
        With my second goal, “ Have good communication with my mentor teacher”. I felt like that went really well too because my mentor teacher and I really bonded and could teach together. She was comfortable with having me do big tasks for her or help the students or take over a station. We did get to talk about stuff but I quickly learned how busy she was before school and in her planning period so I did not want to bug her most of the time about questions on the rubric or anything. We still had great communication and if either of us needed something we could talk about it. For my third goal, “Get familiar with my new PDS, Johnson Elementary” I felt that I was able to accomplish that through the wiki project. I learned about my school and the faculty. I even got to interview the principal and vice principal which was great. And for my forth and fifth goal, “Work with students one on one” and “Learn more about the my mentor teachers teaching style”, those came natural and I found myself doing that every day I was there. I was constantly helping and tutoring my kids and they were always comfortable with coming to me with their questions. And I learned a lot from my mentor teacher and took little things and ideas from her all of the time! I learned so much from this semester and everything became very natural and I set more personal goals besides the practicum plan for myself and reached them every time. I feel like I conquered all of my goals and am a step closer to knowing exactly how I want to run my own classroom and actually getting the chance to!

Midterm Evaluation of my Practicum Plan

    It is already midterm and I felt like this semester has flew by! However even though it is midterm I have been following all of my goals from my practicum plan. Since we had to do this project it was helpful for me to be organized and have a set routine figured out from the first time I met with my mentor teacher. I talked to her the first day about everything I wanted to do and the goals I wanted to reach. I showed her all of my lessons and when I had to do them by so we have that all figured out. I told her how I would like to set time aside to talk with her everyday and go over everything. She she that when I get there before the students get there we can discuss or during her planning period but that in reality she won’t be able to sit and chat every time I am there. Which was perfectly fine and we came to an agreement that if I ever needed to go over anything or ask her anything that I can bring it up to her during those times. That is working out well and we get a lot of opportunities to talk. For my goal of Get familiar with my new PDS, Johnson Elementary  I am planning on participating in that for the wiki assignment and I would like to interview the Principal. Since out midterms are kind of early I have not gotten the chance to talk to her about creating things for certain students who need extra help. And for my other learning goal that is, Learn more about the my mentor teachers teaching style, I am observing everyday and can not wait to learn and see more because I really like her classroom management!

PDS Wiki Participant Members

I have made some corrections and additions to the wiki website last night. Also I added a photo gallery, I have pictures from all of your classrooms that I put up. If you both want to add some more pictures of your classroom feel free. Just go to photo gallery, under virtual tour, and hit insert, then image. Under each picture I wrote a sentence or two describing the picture. You do not need to add anything unless you want to.
-Deirdre Conway

Reviewing Blogging Experience

In my first post about blogging I talked about how it is beneficial to our program in positive ways of organization and keeping in contact with classmates, I stated that the blogs would be very informative which they definitely have been with my partner, Emily and I since we are have been tutoring around the same grade level and we have been sharing information and feedback for each other. Also I talked about writing about my experiences in my PDS and my thoughts about them which we have been doing and it is very informative to receive feedback on my comments as well as seeing Emily’s and my seminar facilitator comments which are the most helpful for me. Since I had to switch small group classes because of a class time conflict I do not have Maggie anymore and I have Michelle which I have not received any comments from her yet so I will talk to her to make sure she received my invite. Also I have not received comments back from my mentor teacher but she told me in the beginning of the semester she would read them and I told her not to feel obligated to answer. So this is very helpful for me that I still have Emily’s feedback because she gives me great reinforcement on some of my ideas as long as encouraging my goals which is very nice to hear!

After looking at my first blog and my intentions of using the blog I can see now that the blog does help in many ways most importantly my partner and I have progressed and we have been helpful to each other. This blog will be nice to always have to look back on and see what my thoughts were concerning and what my new thoughts and ideas will be later in the future.

I feel that the possibilities that we could share feedback on the blog could be on things we have tried that have been very successful with being engaging as well as effective to the students learning. It would be beneficial if we would post good ideas to do with the children during lessons and also good activities that the students loved. These new ideas can be so helpful with sparking new ideas of our own and I think that it would be really nice if us as tutors could share things that went well, as well as things to avoid while teaching.

Emily my question to you:
Would you like to blog more, or add into our upcoming posts, about our experiences in the classroom and things that have really stuck out to you as well as I will blog about experiences with my students and what things have been very fun for them and effective for their learning. This can help us bounce back ideas with each other for good brainstorming!
Also is there anything you would want me to do such as give you more feedback on a certain question or experience you are having? Or is there anything you would suggest to change? Let me know how I can help because you have been very helpful and encouraging for me and I really appreciate that!

Practicum Plan Blog

·       Consider one or more of your learning goals and what progress your making toward those goals. 

Some of my goals were to speak louder, take more initiative over the classroom while teaching, and keep up with paper work. The progress that I have made towards these goals were by practicing, I keep in mind that I need to speak louder and I practice talking loud when I am in charge of the classroom. Also with my goal to take more initiative over the classroom while teaching, I was able to practice that when I did my read aloud. Since I am in a kindergarten class I read them a story and asked them questions throughout the book which caused some distractions because the children would want to keep talking and tell me a million stories, so I took charge and would let them know, in a nice manner, when I needed to move on. Also it is easy to keep up with the paperwork because of the practicum plan because I know what comes next and what is due when. I am making progress on each of my goals by simply practicing these skills and being conscious of them to keep them in mind.

·       Talk about what changes you've made to your plan as you've moved through the semester so far - what things you may have added or removed.

Some changes I have made with my practicum plan were just some dates and more information on my work. In the beginning of the semester we did our practicum plan right away within the first or second week so when I went over the assignments with my teacher I had no idea what some of them were but I knew the date. So now that we have talked more about the syllabus in certain classes I am able to go back over with my mentor teacher and give my understanding to her for us to plan. I have no removed anything from my practicum plan just made some minor comments with my mentor teacher to help us both understand.  

·       How would you evaluate your own progress in relation to completing the activities you've listed on the plan?

To evaluate my own progress in relation to completing activities would be good because of the practicum plan I believe. I think that this was a really good assignment for the tutors to do because that helped us to organize all of our syllabi’s together which allowed us to present our expectations and deadlines to our mentor teachers. I thought this made things a lot easier because it is more organized and it helps us as tutors know what’s coming next. Also it is easy to keep up with completing activities on time because we have everything mapped out. I think that the practicum plan was a really good idea that is very helpful for us as tutors.

Digital Storytelling

    I truly believe that story telling is such an important part of a young child’s life and it is so essential for adults to share and provide stories for children. Storytelling opens so many doors for children in learning as well as with their skills such as observing, listening, being patient, waiting their turn and most importantly fuel for their imaginations. In my PDS I have been with a first grade class and now I am with a kindergarten class and I love reading stories to the children because of the excitement they feel when they use their imaginations and create things in their minds that allow them to fall in love with storytelling. I think that digital storytelling is a good thing because digital media such as videos and pictures can help expand children's imaginations. Also it can give children some information to help them better understand the story and be able to create a picture in their minds, for an example my first grade teacher was reading a book with little pictures and the animal platypus was in the context but some of the children interrupted her and were confused about what a platypus was, so the teacher had to pull up a picture on her computer for the students to understand. I think that digital story telling can help with problems like that so the children can bring characters to life and better comprehend.

    I think that digital story telling has many benefits and that using pictures or videos can be more attention grabbing for children. Also recorded audio of silly animal noises or voices will allow the children to interact more because they will be very interested. I believe that what makes a story a good story is the moral learned in the end. Good morals of life lessons are important in stories to help teach children what is right and wrong, good or bad, or simply morals  or endings that make you smile and laugh.

    Some ideas from my PDS experiences that I would consider to include in my digital story could be the importance of reading books to children, importance of being fair to them, the importance of classroom management, the importance of the teacher student relationships, and
the importance of the “tutor” student relationships for children to be able to make a connection with you and put their trust in me. But the topic that I would go with right now would be the importance of exciting activities and lessons in classrooms. I would have to go with this one because when I would teach my short lessons in my first grade classrooms I would try and make the activities very exciting for the children so they would be better engaged, which they were, and  there would be an overall better more positive outcome with the progress. An interesting story could be about how I taught a lesson about corn stalks and I started out reading a story to them, then I drew on the whiteboard and has them copy, draw and label the cornstalk, and lastly had them fill out a worksheet on corn and popcorn. So of course to make it more interesting I brought went in the back and popped bags full of popcorn so it would make the worksheet easier to fill out how the popcorn smelled, felt and tasted like. During the lesson I kept the energy level high and everyone was motivated and when I brought in the popcorn it was nice to see them having so much fun. The one boy even ran up to me gave me a hug and said “this is the best day ever!” I feel that lessons and activities that are engaging and fun for students, would be the ones that they will always remember what they learned that day. Another activity I did was have them get up and jump around while we practiced spelling words, there was a ton of engagement with that also. These lessons are important for children to take interest in what they are learning and keep it in their minds and with them forever!