Friday, January 22, 2021

As I this short week of virtual teaching due to Martin Luther King holiday, I would like to give it a ranking of a 3 out of 5. It was not the best week and neither was it the worst week I have had. Just rather OK. One of the bright spots was that all of my students have their packets that they will need for continuation of virtual learning. I have our school counselor to thank for that. She, along with our school social worker, delivered packets to 2 students who's families were unable to pick them up. Another bright spot is that planning has been done through next week. It does not seem as if it should be, but lesson plans for virtual teaching is a lot more time consuming than in person lesson plans. At least that is how I feel. This week has felt like it was longer than just four days. Although, I find that to often be the case when you have a day off. 

A great accomplishment for me this week has been the fact that out of my now 14 students, I am having 13 attend the majority of my virtual Zoom lessons. I think that is pretty awesome. I am proud of my kiddos for hanging in there. They log in every morning at 8:30 ready to go. I have scheduled breaks throughout the day to give them rest from screen time. They come right back on when it is time to start back. 

As I reflect on this week, I plan for my reading lesson this week to build upon the reading lesson for next week. Both lessons involve children from Korea. This past week I incorporated the Korean alphabet in the lesson and I plan to continue with that next week. My students loved learning to write their names in Korean.

When focusing on short and long term goals, I am beginning to implement more of the mechanics of writing into my writing lessons. Writing is hard to teach during in person learning and it is even harder during virtual learning. I have noticed even before virtual learning that my students struggle with just remembering to use punctuation and capital letters. Some have trouble just forming a sentence with a noun and verb. It is my goal to have my kiddos leave first grade knowing the foundations of writing. I hope that by using part of writing to focus in on this will help my students reach this goal.

Productivity is still not a problem with me at school. I find that I am always "on" from the moment I enter my classroom at 7am through the rest of the day until I leave at 4pm. There is very little down time. Due to this, I am so tired when I leave I do not want to do anything else and that includes my edTPA. I am dedicating this Sunday to work on my tasks.

I asked my principal if I could do a lesson for inauguration day. She said absolutely to go for it. I designed a short lesson for my team. I was a little apprehensive about it at first considering the current political climate. However, the lesson was great and my kiddos loved it. They got so involved. We even "flew" to Washington, DC and went from the capital to the White House. My students love Google Earth and I utilize it a lot in lessons.

I have a sense of relief knowing that my lesson plans are ready to go for next week and that my Google slides have been made and ready to go. The slides help keep me even more organized, which I like and need.

I did not have any formal data to analyze however I did have informal data that I have used to guide my lessons for next week. This is especially true for math as we continue to work on measurement.

One piece of advice I would share, is to not be afraid to ask your principal. I explained why I wanted to show my class the inauguration. First, it was something that is monumental for our nation. Second, not only the first woman but the first woman of color is now our vice-president. I believe that it is important that our students see what a diverse nation we live in.

Standard 1a: Teachers lead in the classroom. Or in my case, lead in the virtual classroom. I strive to develop lessons that have my students thinking globally. I felt that this week my lessons helped to not only do this but to also empower my students with the knowledge what they are learning now will benefit them in years to come. This was seen in my social studies lessons on Martin Luther King and the lesson on the inauguration.

Standard 2a: Teachers embrace diversity in the school community and in the world. This week, I presented lessons to my students that incorporate contributions that people of color have made. This was done as I stated above in the lessons about Dr. King and the inauguration. During our reading lesson, my students were exposed to life of a little girl from Korea who moved to the United States. By engaging students in such lessons, I am helping to show them diversity is something that is good.

Standard 3c: Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines. I understand that the content that I teach relates to other disciplines. This was shown during this weeks lessons. One of the standards in first grade is to learn about different cultures. Through my lessons in reading, my students learned about the Korean culture. They learned about their language and geographically on a map Korea is located. This lesson also added to their global awareness.

Standard 4a: Teachers plan instruction appropriate for their students. I collaborate with my team to develop lessons that are engaging and appropriate for my students. My students were so excited this week as we read the book "My Name is Yoon". They were engaged not just with the book but also with the side lessons that we did. They loved learning about how the alphabet in Korea is symbols and not letters. I student even stated that it probably takes a long time to write if you have to make all of those symbols. Each student wrote their own name in Korean and then we compared it to their name using our alphabet. The social studies lessons also keep the students engaged as they learned more about the President and Vice-President and important buildings in Washington, DC through our "fly" over with Google Earth.

Standard 5c: Teachers function effectively in a complex, dynamic environment. I feel that I embrace change pretty well. This week I actively sought ways to change a lesson at the 11th hour in order to expose my students to something of historical importance that was happening in real time. I sought ways that I could teach my students about the inauguration that was done in the most unbiased way possible.