Happy blogging week. I truly have appreciated blogging more now that it is a once a month occurrence. It gives me time to gather MEANINGFUL information to talk about in the blog rather than filling it up with information just to check it off a list. Anyway, enough about why I love once-a-month blogs!
Learning Experiences (NCTCS)
In my classroom, I have been working on making positive parent contacts and putting brags in the brag box for every student. I love being able to make positive parent contacts because it allows me to build relationships with my students as well as their parents. My goal is to make at least one brag for every student before the end of the semester and send a positive note home with every student before the end of the semester. Our "brags" are read every morning during morning meeting. Being able to call a student out for doing something good is so much more powerful in creating a positive classroom culture than one might think.
In our PLC, we did deep data dives immediately after we got our scores back from the MOY benchmarks. It was an awesome experience to be a part of. The teachers looked at the scores, standards, and percentages in order to formulate a game plan for redirecting and reteaching. During our PLC, the teachers compared third grade standards to fourth grade standards in the lowest scoring sections of their MOY benchmark scores. They unpacked the standards in order to have a deeper understanding of where they needed to go with their teaching. This aligns with NCTPS Standard 5A: Teachers analyze student learning.
I tweeted about the google forms professional development that I went to on Wednesday. Although I knew a lot of what she was teaching (thanks, GWU), I did learn a few tricks! For example, if a student gets a question wrong, they can immediately be redirected to another question for reinforcement/further explanation. If a student gets the question correct, they would never know the redirection was on the google form. Can't wait to try that out as a differentiation tool.
Outside Learning and Research
At the Education Station, we believe in having students take responsibility for their actions. This is one of the things that HEAVILY contributes to each classroom culture which prompted me to start researching how classroom culture is made. I found the following websites very helpful in my research. I hope that they will help you, too. In our class, we have some very sparky personalities. By that, I mean that we have some students who do not get along very well. I wanted to continue to read up on this particular area because I want to be able to help solve some of these problems before they start. Are all conflicts avoidable? No. Can I greatly decrease the amount of conflict by creating a positive classroom culture? I'd like to think so.
Future Classroom
In my future classroom, I am going to work to create a positive classroom culture with my students. I know that in my class currently, they are all so diverse not just physically, but emotionally, academically, and more. I love that I get to work with a variety of scholars, but they are often wary of the differences within their classmates. I will have a morning meeting every morning where students will get the chance to greet each other, learn about each other, and build positive relationships.
{Positivity}
Life is short, buy the book. Life is short, tell people you love them. Life is short, laugh at yourself.
Life is short, live it. Leave the world and the people around you better than you found them.
Mallory, I couldn’t agree more with your first paragraph! Our blogs can actually be meaningful now that they are only once a month! Wow what an awesome learning experience you have! I LOVE that you send home notes to parents in order to form a relationship with them and also that you announce it to the class. This is powerful so students see what other students are doing and can follow their positive examples. I’m glad you were able to sit in on a data dive, I was able to a couple weeks ago and it was a great experience! It sounds like you are learning a lot and growing more and more each day! I hope you have another good month!
ReplyDeleteMallory,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the comment about monthly blogging. When we had to blog weekly, it was difficult to write detailed responses. It seems like quite a bit of us are participating in the PLC's and diving into data. I am becoming more familiar with what data driven instruction is. I believe that fostering parent-teacher relationships in your classroom is essential to reaching the students. Way to Go!
Mallory,
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see you are already part of a PLC and you are making connections with the group. This experience is invaluable for you as you move into the clinical internship.