#ssed307 March 26, 2018 // Blog 3

Hey y'all!
This class is absolutely flying by! It's week 11 out of 16. We're almost there!

Learning Experience References
     This month in Social Studies Methods, I completed my clinical experience! It went great. I feel like my clinical class is my own kindergarten class. I always wanted to teach 3-5 until I taught my first ever lesson in kindergarten, and now I think my heart is changing towards kindergarten. (Who knows, I might change my mind another million times.)
     My lesson for my clinical experience took longer than I was expecting it to. I taught them about community helpers for a social studies lesson integrated into some ELA. I borrowed community helper puppets, puzzles, books, and dress-up materials from the ECLC. My students were so engaged in the lesson the entire time, and they begged me not to take the puppets and dress-up clothes back to Gardner-Webb! I was shocked at how well their behavior and attention spans were during my lesson! I was so thankful that my first ever lesson was taught with my amazing C.E. this semester and her kindergarten babies. My C.E. has been so helpful with everything, and has really taken me under her wing.
     This month I taught my first ever flipped lesson, and it went better than I thought it would! Honestly, I didn't really know what to expect with teaching a flipped lesson because I had never heard of flipped lessons until this semester. I had no experience with them. However, I think it went well. I have also been working on my PDP this semester. I'll give an update on that in the next blog! I am also continuing to work on my unit. That is still a work in progress.
     I have been working on my virtual museum a lot this month, of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. I don't know why I was dreading this so much, because although it's a ton of work, it isn't as hard to figure out how to do as I thought. I think it'll be a great learning experience for my future students!
     This month we haven't had a whole lot of class meetings due to the D.C. trip, Spring Break, going to the elementary school that we have a partnership with, etc. Most of the time that we have spent in class has been used for talking about edTPA. I was really thankful to have been given my own copy of Making Good Decisions, as well as the edTPA Handbook. This will help me so much between now and student teaching! (We should be finding out our student teaching placements here in the next couple of months!!!)
     This class is moving right along, and I am just trying to buckle down, hang in there, get my work done, and learn all that I can.

Outside Learning/Research
     I want to highlight some learning that has been going on for me during outside research. This month, I learned a lot of differentiation strategies that I didn't know of before. Those strategies are:

• Think-Pair-Share
• Journaling

I have used these differentiation strategies in my lesson plans for both my flipped lesson and traditional lesson plans, and I have to say that it has been a game changer! Not only are they differentiation strategies, but they provide the teacher with tons of qualitative data while allowing students to develop their 21st century skills of communication and collaboration. There are lots of resources out there that cite this information, but here is a good one:

Guido, M. (2017, August 24). 20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies & Examples | Prodigy. Retrieved March 26, 2018, from https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/differentiated-instruction-strategies-examples-download/

NCTCS 
     There are many connections that I could make to the NCTCS with what we've been doing in class this past month. Here's a few examples:

• All the edTPA talk that has been a little overwhelming at times is more beneficial to us that we can even imagine! {Standard 5 a and c, "Teachers analyze student learning. Teachers function effectively in a complex, dynamic environment."}
• Working on our PDP's is great practice for when we have our own classrooms and have to turn a PDP in to our administrators each year! {Standard 5b, "Teachers link professional growth to their professional goals."}
• Learning all of these differentiation strategies in outside research is really going to pay off for our students. {Standard 2d, "Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs."} *Remember, "special needs" does not necessarily translate into "disabilities!" At least to me it doesn't.*
• Learning how to integrate various content areas into a single lesson for my clinical experience and other lesson plans that I have been writing this semester is really teaching me the art of integration. {Standard 3c, "Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines."}

So what does all this mean for my future classroom?
     All of this means that the future is looking bright for my future classroom, because I have been learning some pretty amazing things that are going to help me so much in the long run! Just this month I have become so much better at integrating, writing lesson plans, and I have become a stronger teacher. I taught my first ever lesson to real students this month!! I loved every minute of it, and I am going to carry lessons I learned as a teacher in that experience with me throughout my career.

March 1, 2018

Learning Experiences this past month:
     This past month has been insane with the amount that we are learning, plus the work load. I must say, I have a clearer picture now of edTPA than I ever have because of how much we have been talking about it in class!
     I am really enjoying my learning experience this semester in the 5th grade class at the elementary school that we have a partnership with this semester. I always said that I wanted to teach 2nd or 3rd grade, and this hasn't really changed, but I do know that 5th grade is such a crucial time in a child's academic and social life. In a nutshell, 5th grade is awesome!
     This week I completed my edTPA Context for Learning, lesson plan, and planning commentary and it was an insane amount of hard work, but worth every bit of it. I am going to be teaching my lesson on Community Helpers to my kindergarten babies in my clinical placement this coming week while everyone is in D.C., and I am so excited! This will officially be my first time teaching to a group other than my school of ed friends here at GWU, and I cannot wait. I'm so ready.

Outside Learning & Research:
     There is one thing that I came across the other day that I want to share with my audience for this blog, and it's a research-based literacy strategy, because who doesn't need more of those, right?
So here it is: it's called the “Collaborative Community of Writers” strategy. The “Collaborative Community of Writers” strategy is based on the analysis of research whose evidence shows that “Because well-structured collaborative writing activities allow students to learn from each other, compositional quality improves significantly.”

• Santangelo, T., & Olinghouse, N. G. (2009). Effective Writing Instruction for Students Who Have Writing Difficulties. Focus On Exceptional Children, 42(4), 1-20.

In this strategy, students write with their peers, and they become stronger writers as a result!

NCTCS:
     This semester is started to get crazy busy with our SSED 307 class; there's just no other way to say it. But by working hard and using this time to become better teachers, we are all adhering to Standard 5c, "Teachers function effectively in a complex, dynamic environment." By implementing research-based strategies in our classrooms, we are also adhering to Standard 3d, "Teachers make instruction relevant to students."

What does this mean for my future classroom?
     This means that I will implement research-based strategies in my future classroom because they will help my students. Whatever is going to help my students succeed in their learning, that's exactly what I want to do!