We are another week down, you guys! This week, I am focusing heavily on my concept-based unit and am making some definitive decisions that are going to shape the direction that the unit is going to go. I feel that my generalizations are solid and so is my conceptual lenses. I feel confident about those aspects of my unit as well as the standards from the NCSCOS that I feel like my unit will cover. I am still developing my performance task but mainly I am working on my rubric for my performance task. After talking with Dr. Parker on Tuesday, I realized that the rubric will basically break my performance task down into different sections and I will decide what I am looking for from the students in each section. From there, I will be able to develop my learning activities because the activities I develop should basically serve to prepare the students for the performance task. I will pretty much be addressing each part of my rubric for the performance task in the learning activities. To me, this is a very logical way to break it down. Now, I can see the purpose of each part of the unit plan and it is starting to all come together for me.

This week the standard "Teachers Reflect on their Practice" from the NCPTS has been something I can really relate to and focus on this week. I am finding myself reflecting on what I have in my unit so far constantly. Even when I am at work, I find myself thinking "What can I add to my unit?" "How can I lead the students to make the connections that I want them to make?" My brain has been constantly working and I think this is what everyday life must be like for professional teachers. They must be constantly reflecting on the units, lessons, and activities that they have planned and thinking about what they can do to make the learning experience better for students. I have found that even writing this blog on what I am doing each week has lead me to be much more reflective and has allowed me to think about what I can do to be better each week. So, I think blogging is something that I will continue even after I am hired as a teacher. It is just such an easy outlet to use to reflect and organize my thoughts.

Moving forward, I think my biggest challenge this week will be taking my guiding questions and my rubric and wording them so that they will be on a second grade level. Dr. Parker reminded me that I am probably just used to writing lesson plans with adults in mind. I had not considered this and I am glad this was brought to my attention because when I have my own classroom, I will be constantly be writing lessons that are for my students with learning in mind. So, I am glad that I have the opportunity to go ahead and get used to writing my lessons this week.

I hope you all are feeling confident about your units and I cannot wait to see what everyone is accomplishing!

Hi. everyone! We have made it through another week and I feel like the semester is just FLYING by. This week we are focusing on assessment and more specifically on performance tasks. I had heard of performance tasks prior to this class but never have I had an explanation of what actually qualifies as a performance task or how important performance tasks actually are. The performance tasks showcase what your students can actually do independently and allow you to see what your students have actually learned.  What I took away from our weekly meeting was that performance tasks need to be authentic, allow students to demonstrate their learning, be aligned to essential standards as well as pervious learning, and there should be more than one way for students to complete the tasks. Also, when thinking about my performance tasks for my unit, I remind myself that Dr. Parker said that performance tasks should be developed with "learning in mind, not teaching."

I have to admit that in the classrooms that I have worked in have gotten me accustomed to activities.  I do not see many performance tasks being developed but I believe that performance tasks are going to give me a much more accurate description of the learning that has taken place in my classroom. So, I am thankful to be growing as a future educator and learning about different types of assessments and how they are going to benefit myself and my future students. It is exciting to be able to say each week, "I did not know that before, but I know that now." That allows me to see that I am growing as an educator and makes me feel excited about the future.

Moving forward, I am developing my performance tasks for my unit with learning in mind. I feel confident about my knowledge on performance tasks now so I don't feel apprehensive about what I am adding to my unit. It is a good thing that I feel calm about my school work this week because it has been the craziest week ever with my sweet 1st graders this week. It was picture day first of all and right before getting her picture taken, one of my girls got very sick and vomited all over the gym floor and my leg/foot. Thank goodness our yearbook pictures are from the waist up. Also, we have had to switch our math instruction from whole group to two small groups because we felt like that is what would benefit the students we have the most. So, I am challenged everyday with keeping these students interested in the math that I am teaching. Today, I used bowling pins to demonstrate ways to make ten and I allowed them to bowl to see how many were left when you knocked down a certain amount and they seemed to like that. So, I am adjusting to that as well as coming up with fun ways for my small literacy groups to remember their sight words. That is a big challenge for our class this year so I am open to any sight word game ideas you guys have! No matter how crazy things get in the classroom, I still leave feeling fulfilled everyday so I wouldn't change it for anything in the world!

I hope you all have a great week!

We are almost finished with week 4 which means we are 25% done with this semester. That is so crazy considering it feels like no time has passed since I was writing my first blog. It has been a whirlwind but I feel as if I have gained so much already. This semester, I feel like I have gotten to know all of you on a more personal level and that makes me feel good because I feel more connected to you all.

This week, I am thinking more about my generalizations for my unit as well as my guiding questions. Once I get my generalizations where I want them, my guiding questions should flow naturally to led the students to the generalizations. I feel like the guiding questions almost serve as clues to the generalizations that we don't want to tell students but rather have them figure out on their own as we go through the unit. So, I am excited to see what Dr. Parker thinks about what I come up with for my guiding questions.

This week I also signed up for the General Curriculum Exam and the mathematics subtest that goes along with it (*shakes in boots*). I am SO nervous to take these tests. It makes my stomach clench just typing this. I have major test anxiety and I think it stems from the one time I failed a spelling test in 3rd grade and had to be sent home because I was basically inconsolable. My brother has made fun of me my whole life for that, but I'm over it now (partially). So, the thought of this test makes me shudder. Thankfully, I got the first praxis over with this summer and I'll be honest, I really wanted to turn my car around when I got to the testing site and go home. I was so scared but I did it and I passed. Since I am trying to be totally honest on my blog, I am not even going to pretend that I didn't stay up basically all night the night before reading "Praxis for Dummies" which is available on Amazon for 12.95 and I am sure I partially owe my perfect reading score to that. So, the next step is the General Curriculum Exam and I am going to overcome my fear of testing and go in there feeling confident. I am here to tell you that if I can do it, all of you can. You might want to sign up as soon as possible though because the dates are filling up!

This week, I also decided that I am for sure doing my virtual museum on The Bostic Lincoln Center. This is a site dedicated to collecting and displaying evidence that Abraham Lincoln was actually born in Rutherford County which is the county that I live in. I have heard of this theory before but never really believed it but after exploring their website, they almost have me convinced. So, I am actually really excited to visit and share my findings with you guys.

I am looking forward to seeing your posts and I hope you all have a great week!

First off, thank you all for the comments on my blog postings! You all are extremely supportive and I am lucky to have the opportunity to work with you all. Your support and kind words really mean the world to me.

This week we have continued to talk about concepts and during our zoom meeting, I was able to share my thoughts with you all on planning my unit around the concept of oppression. That seemed to go over well so that encouraged me to move forward with that concept and what I did not know is that it is actually recommended that we use two concepts for our unit. I was actually so glad to hear this because that is going to expand our realm of possibilities for our unit so much. So, I am thinking of doing Oppression and Freedom. I am thinking of doing a 2nd grade unit because it is a grade I have not worked in but it is a grade that I think I would like to teach! So, I have been looking at the unpacking documents for the Social Studies standards for 2nd grade and I feel good about all of the possibilities and the connections that I can make.

I have to admit I am not a big fan of generalizations at the moment. I am constantly brainstorming and my problem is cutting the sentence down to just a few words. I knew I was in trouble when someone said "So, it is like a tweet?" in our meeting. Literally, a red flag went off in my mind. I have a twitter but I do not tweet because of the word limit. I end up having to re-word my tweets a million times and then get frustrated. I am a long and detailed sentence type of writer so this has been interesting for me. I will get it though and I will be so proud when I do! I like the fact that this has challenged me and who knows? Maybe generalizations will inspire me to become a master "tweeter."

I am also working on my PDP and my biggest thing is picking the two areas that I want to work on most because there is so much I want to work on. My biggest thing is deciding what is going to be most beneficial for me to improve upon this semester. I want to be very thorough and specific in my goals so that is a work in progress.

Also, I had my first wisdom from experience interview with Jerrye Ficklin, a first grade teacher at Harris Elementary. She is one of the BEST teachers I know and I look up to her so it was exciting to get to interview her. I used many of the questions that we talked about in the meeting and I loved hearing her responses and I cannot wait to share it with all of you.

I hope you all have a great and productive week!