Reflections on my TWS

So I have finished teaching all of the lessons for my TWS. The only thing that is left is the post-assessment, which the students will be taking tomorrow morning. I am very relieved to be finished with it.

Overall, it went well. There were a few things that I missed during specific lessons as I was teaching. I forgot to include certain conversations that were needed. Eventually, I did go back to them and have them, but they should have been earlier. However, I believe the students have been mostly successful with all of my learning goals. According to my formative assessment data, the students have mostly been performing well.

I tested out the GLAD attention getter strategy. I really love this. The students are now able to define mass and weight, and it was a convenient way for my to get their attention. I have tried several different attention getters this quarter, and so far, this is the one that works best for me. I feel like we are accomplishing something while I am getting their attention, and the kids are engaged in it. Also, it ensures that all students have their hands free and have a few seconds to really give me their full attention. I really love this strategy, and will continue to use it in my classroom.

Also, after talking with Carole and Joanne about the things that I am forgetting to touch on in my lesson plans, it was decided that I should start making a checklist/outline of things to cover that I had written about. The "big ideas" of the plan. I hadn't started this until my last lesson, but it was incredibly helpful to me. As I was teaching my lesson, I was just able to look at the list, and see if I had forgotten anything, and then, if I had, I could go back and talk about it. It was much more helpful to me than trying to read through my seven page lesson plan, and try to figure out where I was and what I might have missed. Lesson plans are great, but, like with our phone calls home, students don't always respond in the way that we think they will, so having it scripted out is helpful in planning, but confuses me as I am trying to teach. Having an ouline is much easier for me to follow. I will continue to distill my plans into an outline, since it is so helpful to me. (On a side note, I do think the Literacy format that we have learned, with the Who, what, when, where, why, I do, we do, you do elements, helps me to focus on what is important a little more.)

One issue that has kind of been a challenge still is timing. It always seems to take me longer to teach than I want it to, and it takes the students longer to do the activities that I plan for. I think that I need to become more concise with what I want to cover, and also, I think that getting to know how quickly kids learn things will help me with this.

There are still some minor things that I need to work on at times. I feel that I really need to stop side talk as soon as it starts happening. I am much better at this than I used to be, but I need to keep working on it. Sometimes, I feel like it would be a bigger distraction to address it than the chatter is, but it doesn't take long for that to escalate, and I don't want the class to be out of control.

One issue that came up that gave me some food for thought was, how do I get assessment data using interviews and anecdotal notes while students are working with others? With one group in particular, I chose a student for my sample, and each time I would ask her a question, another student in her group would blurt out the answer. It is great that he knows that, but how can I help him to support his group without just telling them what they need to know?

Also, how can I be more efficient with my conferring, so I provide help to all of the students who need it, rather than just a few?