Reflection on fieldwork

Fieldwork provided me with an experience unlike any other. I got the chance to see what my strengths and weaknesses are as well as those of my peers. By seeing this, I thought of ways I could build on my strengths and fix my weaknesses. Fieldwork gives us teacher candidates the chance to see students grow, get comfortable with the process of making lesson plans and put our skills to the test. 

Before beginning our lessons the students took a pretest. The purpose of the pretest is to see where the students currently stand with the material. It is a way for teachers to be able to see what students know and what they do not know. The pretest is a form of assessment but there are many other forms that teachers use during their lessons. A pretest is a formal assessment. It was very helpful to myself and my colleagues to look at before we began teaching. After going over the assessments one can properly give feedback to the students which is incredibly important. Researchers (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998, Sadler, 1989), have identified elements of the formative assessment process. The elements are: Identifying the gap, feedback, learning progression and involving students in building their own knowledge. These are essential elements because they are the best way to get the most out of assessments. Formative assessments with appropriate feedback is so powerful and can help students achieve success (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). When we gave the pretest to the class, many of them were unaware of some aspects of our lesson such as who can vote. By the end of our first lesson, students were able to successfully answer four questions that went along with our lesson of choosing a country's leaders. But, of course as expected, not every student fully grasped the lesson by the end of one days teaching. That is why it is also important to incorporate and let the lessons build off of each other. Students should always be revisiting past knowledge they learned. Here are some students work; those who understood right away and those who are on their way to the finish line! 

There are other ways to assess students informally during lessons. We used many of these informal methods doing our lessons. For example, when a student answered a question I would ask the students who agree to put their thumbs up and those who disagree to put a thumbs down. This was a quick way to see what the students were thinking. I used this several times during the three lessons.

Teaching is an ongoing process. Teachers are constantly building their knowledge and developing certain skills to become the best teachers. While teaching social studies, you have to be secure with your content knowledge as well as your educational contexts. This can include all information related to the content of social studies, and knowing classroom management and grouping etc. Pedagogical content knowledge is gained through experiences and preparation on the teachers end. I think that the instructional methods that the students benefited from the most were the direct and inquiry. During the direct, which was just lecture, the students were fully engaged in the lesson and were paying close attention. Through the use of repetition in the direct lesson it allowed for the students to really remember the information. Another benefit of a direct lesson is that it is very structured. The inquiry method was good as well because it allowed for more independence to fall within the individual students. All the students took an active role to investigate. I think that students learn better when they are actively participating. 

In order to support collaboration within the classroom I think it is important to provide lessons where students work together. By having students work together it increases their social skills and they learn how to be a group member. It is important that students learn to work together toward the same goal. A cooperative lesson helps students to realize their individual differences and at the same time taking responsibility within the group. The best way to implement cooperative learning is making sure that all students within groups have their own responsibilities as well as positive interdependence and social skills.  
The best ways to support inquiry learning within the classroom is by providing activities that foster exploration. Inquiry learning helps to develop critical thinking and gives students the chance for a reflection. Having students reflect is really important because it invites students to think about their thinking, processes and skills. 

In order to engage and support all learners within the classroom the content learned should be relevant and flexible. What works for one student may not work for another. If students can create a bond or relate to the information, they may be more engaged and involved. Another way that would be really helpful is by teaching students to self monitor. Self monitoring is a resourceful tool that can help students take control of their behavior and in return become more engaged with the lessons. 

How lessons create experiences~

I can't believe we have finished fieldwork! I must say, I have learned so much and gained a great experience. I have observed in classrooms plenty of times and worked one on one with students. But, nothing compares to being up in front of the classroom and teaching a whole class. It is very intimating but it is a great feeling. This was my first time so it was all completely new for me! What's even better is teaching students and having them really understand and enjoy the lessons that you have worked so hard on. I don't think theres any better feeling! It really shows that your hard work has payed off! The students we got to work with were excellent in every single way. They were always so ready to learn new things and so engaged! This experience has really taught me so many things that you cannot learn from a textbook. I really learned the importance of collaborating and working together. It can be hard at times but it is so crucial. Working together is the best way to get things done and creating lesson plans has really showed me that. Collaborating can make a task much easier and you can get a different perspective and more insight from other people. Through this experience I got to learn what things work and what doesn't work in classrooms. One of the biggest struggles I personally faced being up in front of the classroom was my academic language. I am so used to saying "guys" and I worked so hard to try and take that out of my vocabulary! Academic language is so important and many people seemed to struggle with it. But, I think I really got a handle on it and was able to use correct academic language. It is very hard to try to break a habit or something you are so used to doing/saying. I tried to control myself in every situation so I could try to take it out of my vocabulary completely so that it would not be an issue!Another important thing that I learned from fieldwork was that not every student learns in the same way and not every strategy works for all. While creating lessons plans you have to think about every student and make adjustments based on different students. It is really important that you fit the need of every student in the class. Fieldwork has really opened my eyes to that and I got to see the differences in how students learn. This experience has also made me so much more comfortable with creating lesson plans. I am a junior and I have been creating lessons plans for quite some time. But, this has given me the chance to create a lesson plan, teach it, and then adjust it if needed. It was an experience that I am fortunate enough to have. Dr. Smirnova assigned us another task where she asked us to make edits to a personal copy of our lesson plan. It was really helpful because although we created the lesson plan with our group, we got the opportunity to personalize it and make it our own. So, if something happened during one of my lessons that I did not particularly like or don't think went so smoothly I changed it in my lesson. This gives us all a chance to make the lesson plan more personalized to each of us. Overall, I am ecstatic that I got the chance to be a part of such a wonderful experience. The 2nd grade class we taught was so great in every way possible. I'm sad that the end of fieldwork approached so quickly! 

Fieldwork flew by!

Wow, I can't believe that today was our last day of fieldwork! It feels like just yesterday we were starting! Today me and my group taught our last two lessons; Inquiry and Cooperative. I was very nervous going in because we only have 60 minutes to teach two lessons. But, we also had to leave some time at the end for a whole class wrap up and celebration. So we really had to teach two lessons in about 45-50 minutes! It was a very intimidating thought to think about! 


I must say, the lessons went EXCELLENT! During our inquiry lesson we had students formulate a hypothesis about who they thought the best candidate would be for a new principal. Then, three of my fellow colleagues played the role of potential candidates and had a mini interview with the students in the class. The students created questions and asked them to the candidates. The students really seemed to love the whole process! Then the students got the chance to vote! We had a voting booth for the students to go into and cast their vote. In this photo, one student just finished voting and two students are waiting their turn to enter our voting booth! ->

For our Cooperative lesson, students made a poster on the best principal candidate and what were some of the great things about them that they learned from the interview. The students really loved doing this as well and they worked so well together! 

Overall, I am so pleased with how well all three of our lessons went and I think we did a really excellent job. My group worked extremely hard on them and I think it really showed! I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity! This was my first time teaching a whole class of students and I am really happy that the class was so cooperative and ready to learn! 

If I could change one thing about teaching today, I definitely would want to change the amount of time we had. We had two really awesome full lessons. The students seemed to enjoy them a lot and I think they would have really loved the full lessons since we had to cut out some aspects for time sake. But, other than that I am extremely proud of myself and my colleagues.

I really think that all four groups did an awesome job and we all worked really hard to create amazing lesson plans. I think we should all be very proud of ourselves. I am extremely thankful for this opportunity because I feel that it has really prepared me for my future and gave me a glimpse of what it will be like student teaching!

Assessments

Assessments are extremely important because asking students to demonstrate what they learned is a crucial aspect to learning. Once students learn material, it is important they know how to apply that information. Teachers can make sure that students are applying and understanding the material through the use of assessments. As a teacher,  you need to make sure that the students in your class are achieving the goal you have set for them. If they are not, it is a way to see how you can adjust or help particular students who do not seem to be meeting the goal.

Assessments are also a way for teachers to set standards based on the class because they get to see where every student is currently at with the same material. Based on assessments, teachers might realize certain things need to be changes. Assessments can also help teachers to evaluate themselves. It can show teachers what is working with students and what is not and also where to go from there.

Creating an authentic assessment for students can be a difficult task. There are many things that you have to keep in mind in order to make the assessment meaningful. The first thing that should be wondered about when creating an assessment is what the students should know and what skills should they have.  You also have to make sure that you are testing students on what is being taught to them and that it is clear and concise. I personally believe that there should be a variety of question types on assessments. So, there should be some multiple choice, fill in and true and false. Therefore, the students get the chance to work with different types of questions and appeals to different forms of knowledge. By having different types of questions, some may be easy to answer whereas others may be more thought provoking and require more thinking and analyzing. Blooms Taxonomy shows us how to create questions that appeal to different ranges of thinking.

The most challenging part about creating assessments is that although assessments are a mandatory aspect, not all students may perform well on them. Just because a student may do poorly on an assessment does not mean that they may not know the material or how to apply it. It is also hard to create questions that are simple enough to answer but provoke thought at the same time. Each question takes a lot of time to think about.

Assessments are key in lesson plans though because a teacher has to see where his/her students are. If the whole class is not understanding something, it would be a bad idea to move on and not address any difficulties. Assessments are used as a tool to help the teacher and the students evaluate performances. Along with assessments, there should be other ways to collect data on student performances.

Completed teaching day 1!

We have finished our first day of teaching! It was a little nerve wracking at first, but I think overall the lesson went very well. The students seemed to stay engaged throughout the whole time. It was a direct lesson so we tried to get them involved as much as possible. One thing we used that they particularly seemed to like was having yes and no symbols. So when we would ask a question if students agreed or disagreed we would instruct them to use different symbols. Some of the symbols included standing up, thumbs up, hand on head etc. 

The students proved to be very knowledgeable about out topic. We showed a cute presidential fact video that was humorous and educational. The students really seemed to enjoy the video. We did a lot of review and revisits after introducing new vocabulary words and for the most part, the class remembered the material. 

If I could improve one thing from our lesson, I think it would be our time management. Seeing many of the previous groups run out of time, we overcompensated and finished our lesson about five minutes early. We did not have another quick activity that we could have the students do.
We will teach our next two lessons, Inquiry and Cooperative, a week after we delivered our direct lesson. I hope that the students will remember the information we covered. 

I am nervous but excited to teach the next two lessons. We have excellent and engaging lessons planned that I think the students will really enjoy and have a lot of fun with. I think it is important to plan lessons that will get students directly involved and have a fun time with because I think they retain the knowledge better that way. 

Hopefully our next two lessons will go as well as our first lesson went! 

Teaching groups 1-3....Done.

So far all three other groups in my classes have delivered their lessons to to the second grade class at Bishop Dunn! Nerve wracking. All of my fellow teacher candidates did an excellent job with the creating and carrying out of their lessons! That leaves my group and I, group 4, with a lot of pressure on our shoulders! Each group had to deliver the three lessons to the class: Direct, Inquiry and Cooperative. The Direct lesson was one class period and the inquiry and cooperative had to be completed together in one period.

The first group covered the topic of Native Americans. I believe they did very well and I commend them for their courage to be the first group and dive right in. They struggled with time management but it was the first time and things happen. Even worse, while conducting their lesson, the SmartBoard when out! Tragic. But, they did such an excellent job recovering and carrying on with their lesson. I don't know if I would have been able to recuperate under that immense pressure as smoothly as they did! So, excellent job!!!!

The second group covered the topic of Early Travelers. Like the previous group, I think they executed and delivered the lesson very well! This group did especially well with keeping the students attention and quickly ending any any side chatter or excitement from the students. Timing again was an issue, but they got everything they needed done and done well!

Group three covered the topic of colonies gaining their independence. The third group really improved on everything that the previous two groups struggled with. They managed their time precisely and excellently. The activities they planned were very well and kept the students strongly engaged. My favorite part of the group three's lesson was when they began their introduction with a cute song. The teacher's sang it first and then asked the students to join in with them. The students really seemed to enjoy it!

Finally, my group will cover the topic of Leaders. There is a lot of pressure on us to be the best because we have seen many mistakes that happen. We have been practicing very hard and I am confident in my group and I. I think we will do a great job and I am very excited!

Time management is a big concern of mine because many of the groups struggled with it. Overall, the groups all did a wonderful job and I was extremely impressed with their lessons and how they carried them out!