Friday, January 15, 2021

As this week draws to an end, I would like to give it a rating of 2 1/2. This really pains me after coming off such a great week. There are several things that contributed to this rating. On Monday evening, our school board voted to extend virtual learning until February 16. This threw us into a frenzy creating packets to make sure that our students had materials and supplies needed for another four weeks of virtual learning. On top of getting packets together, I had report cards to finish and virtual lessons to teach starting at 8:30 and running until 2:15 with a 30 minute break at 9:30 (specials time) and 30 minutes at 1:00 for my lunch. All this and we have to be out of the building by 4:00 each day so they can fog. This exhausts me just typing it. Then to top it off, I found out Thursday afternoon that I am losing one of my students. This is a student who has shown such great progress since the beginning of the year. It breaks my heart thinking about it.

A great accomplishment for me this week was my ability to complete report cards by Tuesday afternoon with very little help from my team. It doesn't seem like much, but today's report cards are tedious to complete.  

As I reflect about this week, I realized that the book we were reading in ELA about an island, related to our Social Studies unit on maps and land forms. I added Google Earth to our lesson and we "flew" from New York City to Puerto Rico. I plan to use what we saw, mountains, beaches, etc., as part of my Social Studies lesson next week on landforms and bodies of water. Google Earth is a great tool for students to actually see what the earth looks like.

Focusing on my short term and long term goals, I deemed it important for my students to spend time talking to and interacting with each other. I have implemented time in the morning for them to "socialize" before the lesson begins. As we continue in virtual learning, I hope to add other ways for my students to interact with each other during virtual school. I think it is very important for kids to have social time with their peers.

Staying productive all week was easy to do. I am finding that with virtual teaching I am "on" most of the time. There is very little down time. I can not really think of any thing that I could have spent more or less time doing. It all seemed beneficial to me this past week.

I have had more courage this week in dealing with my students on live Zooms. Last week it was always in the back of my mind that parents are watching me. This week I have had no apprehension with dealing with behavior issues. I treated Zoom as if I was face to face. My students responded as they do in class and promptly stopped behaviors that they knew were not acceptable. 

As I look to begin anew next week, I plan to continue to keep organized and have all materials ready for each days lessons. Now that I know we will be teaching virtually for the next four weeks, I feel as if the weight has been lifted somewhat. 

The data that I collected this week lead me to the conclusion that I need to spend more time on how to use details to describe the beginning, middle, and end of a text. My students found it hard to determine important details. I plan on continuing with this concept during small group instruction.

One piece of advice I would share, is that if you are virtually teaching treat it as if you are in a face to face classroom. Once you do, your students will understand that is for real and not a game.

North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards

Standard 1b: Teachers demonstrate leadership in the school. This past week I have attended both a staff meeting and MTSS. During the staff meeting, I made the suggestion of adding Zoom links to Seesaw for our specialist. Before, they had been sending us the link and then we would send it out to each student via Class Dojo. For the younger students, this is way to much. A one stop shop is the best way to go. We now have a link for the specialists on Seesaw with an icon for each class.

Standard 2a: Teachers provide an environment in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with a caring adult. I make sure that my Zooms are inviting. I greet each student by name as enter  Zoom. In our first meeting of the day, I check to see how they are doing. I often ask them if they have any questions, comments or concerns about what is going on both within the lessons and outside of our lessons. I also remain very flexible and with young students this is a must.

Standard 3c: Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines. Since we were studying maps and landforms in social studies, I added Google Earth to my ELA lesson. The book we were reading "la isla" was about a little girl who loves to listen to her grandmother talk about life on the island. Since she lives in NYC, I used Google Earth to compare the city to Puerto Rico. I used the opportunity to talk about what is a continent and island. I also talked about and show how to find our country and state. 

Standard 4b: Teachers plan instruction appropriate for their students. I use iStation data along with assessments to plan for small group instruction. Since I use different forms of data, my small groups are often changing as I see how students are doing. At the beginning of this week, I restructure two of my small groups to reflect what the students needed to focus on. These changes help to focus on the individual learning needs of my students.

Standard 5c: Teachers function effectively in a complex, dynamic environment. This week has reinforced one thing that I already new  that change is constant. I had prepared for doing remote learning for two weeks and then at the beginning of this week our board votes to continue with virtual learning until February 16. Since I have already developed a platform for my virtual lessons, I feel prepared to continue through the next four weeks.