Week Six

In honor of midterms I thought it would be a good idea to answer this blog prompt: Review your activities for the week and then select and describe three that are good illustrations of elements included on the Intern Rubric. Instead of giving three examples I am going to give 6 examples.

This week and in the past few weeks some notable activities that I have participated in have been:

1. Observing teachers with specific expertise. I was able to observe in a Spanish classroom with a very vibrant classroom and teacher. I observed a teacher in AP History and actually enjoyed history for the first time in a classroom. I observed an autism classroom with only 4 students but they had a lot of spunk. Lastly, I observed an AP Language class where I learned about the Canterbury Tales and remember what we talked about because of the conversational style the teacher used (I know I am going to be an English teacher but I had always hoped to not have to teach the Canterbury Tales). It was a lot of fun to experience all the different teaching styles and subjects.
2. Brainstorming methods of communicating with parents. We have talked about this for the past few weeks and I made a class webpage. Last week we talked about sending home Scholastic book orders with a letter to the parents about the S.S.R. program. Sometimes teachers forget that Scholastic books are available to older students. We are very excited to get the book order in the mail so that we can send it home with the students.
3. Volunteering myself for a field trip. In November, right after Thanksgiving break, we will be attending a performance of some of the short stories we have been reading. The students will get out of school for the day to go to Charleston and watch a play company perform portions of short stories. I will be riding the bus and keeping them in line. (=
4. Recording grades. I have been grading papers in the past weeks and I also learned how to use GradeQuick. I enter the students' grades and post them to the server so they can view them at home. I like this way of keeping grades but it is a difficult program to work with at times and I am concerned about some teachers who are not technically savvy.
5. Reading professional literature. I have been reading more studies on S.S.R. programs to see how other educators have set their programs up. I have learned a lot about what I can improve in our program and things that I can improve for future programs. I have also started reading literature about how to teach poetry because that is the unit I am teaching starting next week. There are a lot of great ideas for how to best get students interested in poetry.
6. Collecting action research data. I collect data for the action research program almost daily because students fill out an engagement survey each time that they finish a book. We have also been keeping data from comprehension tests that students take in class. The week before last we gave them a practice test sent by the WV testing board that will help us analyze their reading comprehension and also help the students practice for the WestTest.

Whew, that is a lot of work. I still have a lot of things to do in order to meet all the characteristics of a novice teacher but everything seems to be moving along smoothly.