For the weeks of
March 2nd and March 9th my goals will be to:
1.
be observed again by my college supervisor Mr. James
Wolff, and
2.
to fully take over the classroom so that I can do my 30
consecutive days of teaching as required to meet EdTPA standards.
Since I was sick
for the most of the past week, I would have to say that the one word to
describe it would be MISEARABLE. It had nothing to do with the children, or the
teaching part of it, however, having to get up and go, and be active was very
difficult. I’m really glad that I had this longer weekend, thanks to our school
being off for Pulaski Day, to get better. While I’m still not a hundred
percent; I am on the mend.
The lesson that was most fun to teach in the
recent weeks was the lesson on Centripetal Force. It was the last thing I had
to teach the students before they had to take a test, and it is usually the
most challenging force for them to comprehend; or so I’ve been told by my
cooperating teacher. My cooperating teacher Anna and I decided to teach this on
a shortened day, so that this would be the only concept students had to learn. I started by doing research and actually
building a model to demonstrate centripetal force. I saw it in a YouTube video
and I thought to myself that it would be more effective if the students got to
use it themselves rather than just watch it. Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsqpuRIwxoY.
Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the model I made, but I will and I
will add it to my post on Tuesday. I think it turned out really well.
As usual, I
started the lesson with a Bellringer question, but we didn’t discuss the answer
right away. Instead I used the model, and had several students come up and
demonstrate using it to the class. The remainder of the class was tasked with
observation and making inferences. Before the students used the model, I asked
the class for some informal hypothesis about what would happen to the bobbers
in the jar, and I was really happy that none of the students predicted that the
bobbers would go inward (exactly what does happen); this made for a better
discussion. The students were amazed to see that the bobbers went inwards, and
this was a great jumping off point to teach them about Centripetal force.
While preparing
my lesson on Centripetal force,(which
was the academic language word of
the day) I found the school textbook lacking, so I went on line and found one
piece of crucial information that I believe made all the difference in my
lesson. In the textbook there was no mention of what “centripetal” actually
means. I was able to find that “centripetal”
means “center seeking,” and considering that this is a lesson about force
that travels inward to the center, “center seeking” made it much easier to
remember than “centripetal.” I made a point to repeat that during the lesson
numerous times, as I referred it to it when showing the video examples and
discussing other examples with students. At the end of the lesson, I asked
students to provide examples of Centripetal
force they’ve observed in their life, and then explain to everyone why they
thought that. This was a very helpful exercise, because it gave students other
examples to think about, but more importantly, it showed me that they
understand the concept of centripetal force; some of the students came up with
examples I would have never thought of, and I ended up using them in my
subsequent lessons of the day. I made sure to give credit where credit was due
for the examples I used, and they all thought it was really “cool.” (Their word.)
I believe that
students really enjoyed the lesson, and what’s more, they remembered it. In the
second part of the day the school had a “RAM JAM” day, which is a day of
activities for all students throughout the school. As I was walking downstairs,
(before any student saw me) I heard one of them refer to “center seeking.”
Hearing that outside of the classroom was the best feeling and experience while
teaching I’ve had so far.
“Academic language”
is important because it prepares students to think and write in language beyond
that of their common everyday conversations; it teachers them to think
critically.
As I read pages 221 - 245 in “The
First Days of School” I found the
following quote very striking. “The
bottom line in education is student learning. If the students do not do their
assignments, no learning will occur.” The extension of this comment goes on
to talk about how important it is to design an appropriate and effective
assignment to ensure that students understand it and know how to complete it. I
see that now. I see how important the preparation process is. In the past two
weeks I prepared a homework assignment on calculating force, acceleration, and
mass. I tried to have the students do some critical thinking, instead of simply
answering questions, so I had them come up with three word problems and then
solve them. (They were encouraged to use the class problems as a guide) There
was a portion of the class that had a difficulty with understanding this
assignment, but a majority did it; not without complaining about how difficult
this homework was. In retrospect, I could have made the directions much
clearer, and modeled it a little more. In the future I will make sure to put
more emphasis on preparation of an assignment and then reviewing it with a
colleague before I assign it.
The other thing that stood out to
me in this section of the book was the stressed importance of a curriculum. I
can’t imagine having to teach in a district that doesn’t have a curriculum, or
at least some sort of guidelines for a first year teacher to follow. I am
fortunate that my cooperating teacher has her curriculum planned out. Anna is
able to tell me what I need to teach and she was able to tell me about how long
it should take to teach a certain concept. This is extremely helpful since I
have no clue about these things right now. I feel very grateful.
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