New Beginnings...

WOW WOW WOW! It's been a busy week and next week will be even busier! This week I had to the opportunity to work along side my CE in setting up her classroom, attending trainings, PTO luncheon, and open house. I'm beyond excited for the kids to come in Monday morning and get started working with them! One moment I was very proud of is that I was able to talk to the principal of my school about PDPs and what it means to make SMART goals (thank you Dr. Parker)! She was very impressed that I was familiar with this process. One area I have tried to improve upon this week is asking more questions, for example rather than just knowing that's how they do things, I try to find out why so I can better understand the procedure and thought process behind it. This week's class was  more of an overview week however I did have the chance to connect with my new classmates in trying to navigate the blackboard page. 

This week in my outside research I looked into "Number Talks". This is a new math method my school will be using for the upcoming year and since I am not familiar with it I decided to do some research. Number Talks is all about using relationships between numbers to do mental math. Students then can share the various ways they came to get their answer. I'm very interested to see how the students will respond to this method! Here's a link if you're interested in seeing some videos about it: http://www.insidemathematics.org/classroom-videos/number-talks

TTotW: My first tweet is about when students take ownership in their own learning. This is such a valuable aspect as it truly encourages students to do their best. It also encourages students to dig deeper and find the meaning behind what they are learning about. A few examples given in the infographic are: they become problem solvers, they view mistakes as learning opportunities, they become explorers. All of these things are huge benefits of students owning their learning. 

My next tweet is a Bloom's taxonomy cheat sheet. This cheat sheet includes some question starters for each level of bloom's. So the questions range from requiring surface level knowledge to requiring students to think outside of the box. These are super helpful for helping your students progress through their learning and supporting them along the way.

My last tweet is about the importance of student teacher relationships. In order to inspire and encourage a student you must first show them you care. I love the quote from this "The way to influence is to begin with warmth". This is so simple yet so forgotten. Connect with your students and the benefits will be amazing.

             

This week was Solar eclipse week! I unfortunately was not in the direct path and only saw about 90% coverage, however, it was still very eery with it feeling like dusk in the middle of the day. This current event connects perfectly with science because it's all about how the planets align and why this happens. The perfect topic to dive into with students to begin the school year because it's relevant and educational!

Part of what I learned about NCTCS this week came when I was in teacher training with my CE. As I sat there and read through the standards, I thought about how often I just relate these standards to how I think about teaching ELA or math. But that's not including the whole picture. I then read through them again with science instruction in mind and realized there were a lot of areas I felt I could be more prepared for. I am excited to begin science methods and become more prepared in those areas!