Week 7

This was was....well, Short! We did not have school on Monday for President's Day, and then Tuesday was a SIP day which I really enjoyed because I learned a lot more about PARCC and was able to get familiar with the test layout, the accessibility features available in it as well as take some practice test. I do not feel like my students will do well on the PARCC test because I do not think that the curriculum has prepared them for a lot of things they are being required to do. Even though it is based on the CCSS, I do not think that the students have been prepared enough with what they are expected to do. I am disappointed because I know my students are smart and will work hard, but their scores may not best reflect their intelligence or intentions.

Wednesday we did have school and it went well. Thursday we did not have school because of the extremely cold weather, and then Friday we had school once more for the week. I have learned to become very flexible in my planning as well as learning to pick out the essentials and what my students really must master to succeed in 6th grade vs. everything I WANT to get through.

This week we spent a lot of time trying to wrap up their informational writings as well as their SS iMovies. I am so excited to read and grade their papers and to watch their trailers. The students were working together a lot these 2 days and I was able to praise them for their group work and for pushing themselves to finish up some lengthy projects. We all applauded one another as they turned in their assignments because it was a BIG accomplishment. I had the students print 2 copies of their papers so that I could hang one copy in the hall on display and the other set I took home to grade. I can tell the students feel proud when they see their work displayed outside of the classroom.

In math, we started learning about decimals. I was told that the students should have a lot of background in this subject because they did decimals in 4th graded in relation to money, but surprisingly, the students did not remember much. I spent these first 2 days doing a lot of review and a lot of small group instruction going over the basics of decimals- i.e. place value, how to read decimals, that .1 is the same as .10, etc. I am excited to push them further and to record my edTPA lessons this upcoming week. Introducing decimals has really pushed me to grow in the professional teaching standard of 2G in which the competent teacher understands the theory behind providing support to promote learning when concepts and skills are first being introduced.
 
Classroom Confidential:

Chapters 8 and 9 of “Classroom Confidential” focus on teaching Social Studies and the Arts. Most of my students LOVE art and HATE history. "History is so boring." is something I frequently hear. I had hoped that the movie project in SS was something that would bring history alive for my students so I am eager to see how they turn out and hear their responses. Schmidt gives many more ideas for how to engage students more in history. Immersion is the approach to teaching history that I have experienced as being the most effective and the way in which I hope to teach SS in the future. The immersion method that Schmidt talks about means bringing history to life by actually having the students experience it for themselves. This could include but is not limited to going on field trips, bringing outside experts, cooking the cultural or time period's food and studying and making their clothing or other real-life products used by who you are studying.

I recently took an entire class on integrating the arts into the classroom. I specifically studied how to integrate drama into the classroom and I think that Schmidt is onto something big when he suggests the use of movement into the classroom. As I have mentioned in other blog posts, my students LOVE stations and they always express their love of moving around the classroom. They abhor being stationary for too long and I am constantly trying to get them up and moving in the classroom to continue their engagement in lessons. Another art that is fun to incorporate into the classroom is music. During a POV lesson, I played a point of view rap and the students loved it! Not only that, but they were able to memorize the lyrics to the song which also in turn helped them to memorize the points of view.