One of my most important learning goals listed in my Practicum Plan was my aim to increase control of my classroom to ensure that students respect me as a teacher. I feel that this could be best accomplished by establishing a better relationship with my students that makes them feel comfortable in the classroom when I am teaching and allows them to bring their questions to my attention. I tried to do this by learning student names as soon as possible to be able to call on specific students during lessons. I also decided to add more discussion activities to my curriculum so my students understand that I respect their thoughts and opinions so they will learn to also respect mine.
In my plan, I originally included a lesson that includes Creative Arts in relation to social studies to be completed in February. Although I have not removed this from my plan, I have not been able to complete this lesson in February. I will have to change the target date for completion to a date in March.
Looking through my plan, I have already completed every activity that I planned to complete in February. At the moment I am also already planning my activities for March. Though I feel good about my organization and completion so far, I am extremely worried about the about of activities and lessons due in March. March is going to be the biggest problem in my plan, mostly because we have very few days of school in March. Our county has a Spring Break in addition to an Easter Break of three days. I will definitely have to buckle down to complete everything required for this time.
Sara, I really respect you for having chosen one of those "intangible" learning goals. I believe that building that core relationship with your students, so that they recognize that you want to know them and care about them as people and not just as students, is so important. This is especially true, I believe, of those students who are less motivated. Those kids that don't really want to be in school and don't really have much interest in school need to feel that they are cared for and appreciated.
ReplyDeleteLike you, this is also one of my main goals every semester in my classroom. I work really hard to learn my students names. I've noticed that I feel MUCH more comfortable in classes, teaching, when I know students names and I can call on them to answer questions, acknowledge participation and responses, and to manage my classroom. Just the other day in class, I taught the same lesson to three different classes. My level of comfort had nothing to do with the content I was teaching, but more so with how well I knew the classes. One class, I knew every single name and I felt so at ease in front of them.
To get to know my kids better, I try to keep most of my lessons very discussion-based, but I also try and squeeze in as much casual conversation as possible. I'm not saying that I waste instructional time, but when kids are walking in, getting seated, cleaning up, etc; I try and ask them something about their day, their lives. The kids really appreciate this and notice this. I find out little things about my kids and they really do affect how I plan my lessons.