Week of April 2, 2021

Candidate Name: Amber Tyson 

Week of Reflection: April 2, 2021

   

• Rate your overall experience of the week: 1-Very difficult | 5 – Great week

I would rate this week a 3. It was a good week as far as instruction and being with my students, but I am feeling very worn down and ready for Spring Break.  It was also the last week with our current principal who I adore. I’m excited for her and our interim principal is great, but it is still very sad to see her go.  

• Seven questions to end your week:

• Observe: What pleasant surprises / accomplishments did I achieve this week? My accomplishment this week is that I had my Summative Observation Conference with my principal before she leaves and received my summary ratings for the entire school year. I rated as proficient or accomplished in all categories which made me very happy. This has been an extremely challenging year to be a first year teacher, but I feel proud with what I have been able to accomplish and my final ratings were a reflection of that accomplishment. 

• Reflect: What lessons did my work/experiences teach me that I will build upon next week?  My experiences this week reminded me that I am going to need to be very structured and well-organized to ensure that I get through all of the standards I need to cover before end of year testing begins.  I had to push through some standards a little more quickly than I typically do this week, but my students handled the faster pace well, so I should be able to continue at this faster pace to ensure that we finish the standards with a few weeks left to review and address areas of weakness.

• Focus:  How are my short-term efforts and my long-term goals still aligned? My long term-goals are to nurture relationships with my students while helping them achieve mastery of 5th grade standards. This week I pushed my students pretty hard to get through additional standards before Spring Break, but I will be rewarding their hard work with a PBIS (fun day) on Thursday, including a pizza party to thank them for working so hard and being a part of my edTPA :). 

• Be Productive: What could I have spent more or less time doing? I still feel like I am maintaining an appropriate level of productivity each week.  At this point in the week, I have mapped out my lessons for after Spring Break and plan to finalize my lesson plans tomorrow evening.

• Have Courage:  How did apprehension and indecision impact what I did and didn’t do? I was apprehensive to give my kids a Schoolnet mastery assessment on measurement unit conversion because I wasn’t sure how they would do after only spending 3 days on this standard, but I went ahead and gave the assessment so I would have the data for after Spring Break and was very pleased with the results.  78% of my students were proficient which was very encouraging. 

• Begin Anew: What is the first logical step(s) for next week? What mental clutter can I clear?  The first logical step for next week is to work really hard Thursday evening and Friday to ensure I have all of my lessons planned and prepared prior to starting Spring Break on Friday afternoon. I want to be able to  enjoy my Spring Break knowing that I have everything done for when we come back to school. 

• What were some data you analyzed this week and how did it help guide your decisions? This week I analyzed a Schoolnet mastery assessment to determine which of my students are demonstrating mastery and which students still need additional support. I am planning on using data I have collected throughout the year to guide my instruction as I begin to plan review for end of year testing. 

• What is one piece of advice you can share with other student teachers? One piece of advice I can share with other student teachers is don’t be afraid to push your kids in the sense of expectations. Of course there is a fine line between pushing too hard and pushing just enough, but it’s okay to expect your kids to work “extra” hard from time to time. They also just might surprise you with what they are capable of doing :). 

• NC Professional Teaching Standards (be sure to reference activities from your lesson plans to solidify your answer)

• Pick an element from standard one of the evaluation tool and explain some activities/strategies you implemented this week to increase your rating for the element. Element Ia. Teachers lead in their classrooms. This week I continued to emphasize the importance of students taking accountability for their learning by having students complete missing and/or incomplete assignments during a working period while other students who had completed their work received some sort of free time. This was a collaborative effort with my co-teacher. We felt as if 5th grade as a whole was beginning to slack off, in regards, to assignments and we agreed upon this approach to help students be more accountable for their work and reward the students who have been working hard to complete their assignments as expected.  

• Pick an element from standard two of the evaluation tool and explain some activities/strategies you implemented this week to increase your rating for the element. Element IId. Teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs. Throughout the school year, I have had one student in particular that I have had to adapt instruction for to include daily interventions and working on skills that are well below grade level.  At times I have felt as if I haven’t been doing enough, but today I received a message from the parent expressing how much she appreciated me and how she felt as if I was the only teacher since he has started school that has put the time in to truly help him and recognize that he is having a hard time. It reminded me that even the tiny adaptations I have made to my instruction to try and help this student have been noticed and appreciated.   

• Pick an element from standard three of the evaluation tool and explain some activities/strategies you implemented this week to increase your rating for the element. Element IIIb.Teachers know the content appropriate to their teaching specialty. This week when reviewing what students learned about cells last week in our cell centers, we watched videos that were of real cells (for example, amoebas, etc.) to help students become more interested and curious about our topic of study while providing them with real life images to go along with what they had already learned. The students were so fascinated with these videos and I also linked them in our Google Classroom so they could watch them on their own, as well. 

• Pick an element from standard four of the evaluation tool and explain some activities/strategies you implemented this week to increase your rating for the element. Element IVf. Teachers help students work in teams and develop leadership qualities. This week I had students work in collaborative groups to complete a poster in which they sorted living and nonliving organisms and then had to discuss as a group what all of the living organisms have in common as an introduction to a 2-day lesson on the life processes required for an organism to be considered living. Students had to work together to assign different jobs and collaborate on their answers to be successful in completing this project. 

• Pick an element from standard five of the evaluation tool and explain some activities/strategies you implemented this week to increase your rating for the element. Element Va.Teachers analyze student learning. This week I analyzed student learning by looking at data from a mastery assessment in math and looking back at data from our Cluster 5 math test. All of this data is being used to help me plan for the end of the year testing review to help me assess which standards I will need to spend the most time reviewing.  

•  Other:

• What components of your portfolio have you started to complete? N/A, but I am anxiously awaiting my edTPA scores which is the last licensure requirement I need to meet. 

• What support does your clinical educator need from Mrs. Suttle? N/A

• What support do you need from Mrs. Suttle? No support is needed at this time :).