ewaring1
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Provide rich teaching for students ...
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Week 5 of 5
ewaring1 commits to:
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My Commitment Journal
 ewaring1
May 11, 2021, 2:32 PM
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Enrichment Mindset Self-assessment Reflection: When answering these questions, I realized that I can easily get into a judgemental mindset about students capabilities. This usually happens when I feel pressure to get the curriculum taught and under a deadline to keep up with the expected pacing. I did this alot more when I first started teaching because I didn’t want to get behind on expectations set by my district. I would want all students to approach learning in the same type of way. Quickly I realized that this is not effective teaching. Students can pick up on our internal thoughts. They need teachers to believe in them, not automatically assume that a student won’t succeed. Now, I still like to keep up with the pacing, but I feel strong enough to use my teacher's judgement to make decisions that are for the betterment of my students. This comes when I need to slow down and reteach or when we take time to discuss strategies that will help them with organization or collaboration. Insights/Questions: It is often our mindsets and our internal narratives about why we are failing that shape our future. How we respond to failure will help determine if we learn and grow from our mistakes. We need to model that for students. The enrichment mindset broadens the growth mindset, because we can use mistakes and feedback and use them to get better. Labeling the setbacks with changeable variables helps us to determine how to grow. For example, was there a lack of effort, poor attitude, inappropriate strategy, lack of tools, or insufficient experience once you have identified a changeable variable you can use that to push yourself to grow and change from that setback. Strategy: I chose to implement the ‘Use Big Words’ strategy in my classroom. Vocabulary is an area that many of my students could grow. When I read this strategy, I realized that I often use the same type of language everyday. I need to take the opportunity to expand my vocabulary while I am teaching, so that my students are being exposed to more sophisticated words. When I tried it out with my class, their engagement heightened. Some were excited because they knew some of the words I was using. We also discussed how to determine the meaning. I even heard some of my students trying out some of the new words when they were talking with friends. This strategy will help them build their context clues and hopefully their own vocabulary stronger. I am interested to see if I did this for an entire school year, if I would see a difference in my students reading comprehension. |
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krharrison
May 6, 2021, 6:08 AM
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Your philosophy really resonates with me. You are a teacher who is changing the world. There's still a glitch in this system and it's not allowing me to mark your posts as successful. I am keeping track of them, though. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. This isn't going like I had hoped. |
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ewaring1
May 4, 2021, 2:04 PM
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Engagement Mindset Self-assessment Reflection: In my classroom, I hold myself and my students accountable for ensuring they are engaged in their learning. They must take ownership of their own learning. However, it is my job to plan engaging lessons that connect with their interests. I use different strategies to keep students engaged. In a third grade classroom movement, songs, time to share and debate, and student choice are all ways that I keep my students engaged. If my students are sitting for too long, I am guaranteed that their minds are drifting. Students putting their heads down, pushing back from their work, and sometimes even tears are ways that students let you know they are frustrated with the work in front of them. In this case a cool down time is needed. Sometimes it is as simple as asking them to run a message to the office for me or to go get a drink of water from the water fountain. When students hit their frustration level, I usually make sure they know that I believe in them, I walk them through the next steps to get them back on track, and praise them for putting forth the effort even when things get challenging. New Insights: Learning is something that students should feel, make, build, talk about, collaborate with others on, and write about. All of these things allow for students to make connections and care deeply about their learning. When they care, they are engaged. Teachers with highly engaging classes have students who look forward to class everyday, because there’s always something they can do to keep them active and contributing. Movement is so important! Engaging with purpose every day, with every student, every nine minutes or less is what makes the engagement mindset. That seems like a huge challenge, but when you plan your lessons purposefully and have your students at the forefront of your planning it can be done. Strategy: I plan to try the set-up, buy-in, and relevance strategy. This is a very simple strategy that frames the lesson so students are engaged and ready right at the start. I think this is a great strategy because it taps into student’s curiosity, gets them excited, and relates the learning that is going to take place to real-world connections. I can see that when you take the time to do this it will cause the students’ engagement to peak and ultimately more learning will take place. |
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ewaring1
April 27, 2021, 1:14 PM
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Rich Classroom Climate Mindset Self Assessment Reflection: Some aspects of the climate and culture in my classroom is that my classroom is run by my students. They know from day one that the classroom doesn’t function without them. At the beginning of the year we work really hard for everyone to take ownership of our room. Students take on the responsibilities that are needed based on their skill sets. I have students that run our lunch choices, designated people that students can go to for help with technology, etc. My students also create a class contract that is written by them. They set the tone for what they want and expect from each other. With the understanding that everyone, including myself, follows the ‘Big 3’ - do your best, be kind, show respect to all. From day one I refer to our class as a family. I also take interest in their interests. I do my best to make the content relevant and meaningful to what they care about. I also ask their opinion and honor them. I treat them as the mature students I want them to be. In most cases, they always rise to the occasion. New Insights/Questions: Focus on what students need to succeed and build it into the learning and social environment daily. Build your culture to foster language that facilitates personal pride, purpose, and energy. Repeating key positive words or phrases is one way to do this. Teachers can do this also by affirming what is good and making up the difference. Three factors for a rich classroom climate mindset are engaging voice and vision, set safe classroom norms, and foster academic optimism. Strategy: After reading this chapter I feel like I need to change by “Big 3” expectations to “Big 4”. In the chapter it talks about having clear expectations. For example pairing down the twelve classroom rules to just a few that students can refer to. Students see the rules as ‘cool’ and they become well known and well followed. I have flagged this page because I really like their suggestions of rules. They are similar to the ones that I mentioned previously that I already have in place in my room. However, taking ownership of your choices is usually a conversation that I have to teach into often in my room. This chapter suggests potential rules could be Make no excuses and choose well. Both of these are great rules and could apply to so many different situations in life. I really like these suggestions and I think I will implement them next school year. Who knows, maybe I can talk with my class and see if these are things we need to implement to finish off the year strong. |
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krharrison
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Hey, Erin. I'm having trouble getting these reports to go through. It looks like this one might work. I've been working with Stickk support. I want you to know that I see your posts and am keeping track of them. Thank you for your thoughtful responses.
ewaring1
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