Week 3

1. Describe your teaching day. On Wednesday, Karen and I had our second observation. We were teaching another class we'd never taught before, and we decided to do a jigsaw to teach about the location of Rome. The students were a bit rambunctious, but it went really well and our supervisor was really impressed with us. I am so glad that the whole observation thing is over with! I've just been enjoying myself since then.
2. Describe your favorite part of the day. I find I really enjoy Reteach. The students are divided up among the four sixth grade teachers and are taught at their skill level certain math concepts. My teacher had the students who scored the lowest on their last math test, but the table of students I worked with were actually pretty good at what they were doing. The biggest problem they had, though, was going too fast and accidentally skipping steps. I had to keep making them go back over each problem and explain to me what they were doing. I really hope it makes a difference in the long run for them.
3. What went well, what didn't work and what did you change? The student I've been trying to work with for Dr. Byrd's ZPD assignment has shown mixed results over the last couple of weeks. I think the most disheartening thing I suffered was when the resource teacher said this student had mentally checked out of school three weeks in, and that he would never go on to finish school, same as his older siblings. I tried not to let her negative attitude affect me, but it was really hard. This boy goes to resource twice a day for 30 minutes, as well as spending time with the ESL teacher once a day. He's a sweet boy, and probably the most soft-spoken boy I've ever met, but I wasn't fully convinced that he had completely given up. I tried using a positive attention approach with him using his teacher's star chart system, and he started paying more attention in class, but my goal of helping him finish just one written assignment doesn't look like it's ever going to happen. I tried guiding him through the steps the teacher required for every written paper, but I couldn't step back or he would lose his focus. I worry that the resource teacher's negativity had a negative impact on how I worked with this student, so I think in the future, I'm ignoring everything that everyone says.
4. To help your students you would... I found ways of rephrasing questions on tests the students were struggling with to help them answer the questions correctly. I also gave gentle reminders when students started getting off track in any way.