Week Three

This week was a roller coaster of emotions for me. Between preparing for the edTPA, lessons, failures, and successes, I found myself feeling a variety of emotions every day. I’m learning more and more everyday about my students, their level, their personalities, and how to teach them. Many of the students in the class are very low and require more intensive lessons and extended time on content.

Because we are still early in the year the majority of our lessons consist of reviews from the fourth grade. This week, I struggled to review with the students how to use quotations. Although my students should’ve already known how to use quotation marks they struggled with how to use them in direct quotations.

I approached the content in several ways to try to help the students understand where quotation marks went. We talked about scripts and how they are written. We talked about comic strips and quote bubbles. While the students understood what a direct quote was they struggled with the placement of the quotation marks. I, then, instructed them to underline the direct quote. I told them to pretend they were putting the speaker in a comic. What would the quote bubble say? I explained that the quotation marks go at the beginning of what they underline and at the end. While some of the students understood it after I asked them to underline the quote, some of the students still did not. I found myself at a loss. I had worked so hard and tried to teach them in so many different ways and some of the students were still lost. I had spent three days reviewing with the students and several of them were still lost.

After three days of being discouraged and feeling completely helpless I had to come to the realization that I could not take the blame. I gave the students my absolute best. This week I learned a very valuable lesson. No lesson will ever go perfectly. I cannot expect my students to understand everything I teach. When my students don’t understand how to use a new skill that I have taught them it is not my fault nor is it theirs. I simply must gather data, give second chances, and reteach.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to call six parents regarding permission slips I had sent home. While I was nervous to contact parents for the very first time I felt confident because I contacted parents daily during my time as an Administrative Coordinator at a daycare in Berwyn, Illinois. I had to leave one voicemail where I stumbled on my words a little bit. Many of the parents I did speak to were very kind and were happy to talk to me and treat me like their student’s teacher. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to contact parents.

My best lesson this week was the review of common and proper nouns on Friday. Because I was pretty confident that my students knew what common and proper nouns are I decided to play Proper Noun BINGO. I used myfreebingocards.com to create our BINGO cards.

I had a list of common nouns in a baggy. When I called out a common noun, the students had to check their BINGO card to see if they had that common noun. If they did, they had to write a corresponding proper noun for that common noun. For example, if I called out, “website” they had to write a proper noun for “website.” The students could’ve written anything like, “Google,” “Facebook,” “YouTube,” or other websites. The kids played to win Panther Paws, which are a currency for the whole school. The students loved it! They were really excited to play and win Panther Paws. My favorite part was when one person would win a BINGO the whole class would clap for them.

After a long, discouraging week, Friday reminded me that my job isn’t to just give students knowledge, but to give them hope, love, and most importantly an appreciation for learning.