Cross Final Notebook Action Plan

Final Notebook Action Plan

What are at least three steps you will take in the fall to get to know your students as learners and as people?

1. I’m not sure if this can happen in my internship, which will not be in the fall but next year. One of the things I remember most about my school days is when we made things in class. More specifically I remember the times we would learn about making food. I still remember the time we shook milk jugs in kindergarten to make butter. That was 30 years ago. I want to incorporate this as many ways as I can into my classroom. A simple way to do this in my internship is to invite students, individually or in pairs, to join me for lunch in the classroom. We can make different kinds of sandwiches together. Explore where the sandwiches came from and talk about our home lives while enjoying a break from the rest of the class. 2. I’m sure you think I’m trying for bonus points, but I have always loved books. I buy my children tons of them and enjoy reading children’s literature myself. I have read many of the books that my students will be reading and I think that a great way to get a conversation started with my new students is by talking to them about the books they read and then make connections between that and their experiences and home life. This will give me insight into what they know and what they have experienced in their lives. 3. I think the teachers at schools now spend less time doing fun things with their students than when I was in school. I remember times when the class would go out for a pick up kickball game or play heads up seven up just for the fun of it. These are fun things that allow you to talk and connect with your students. I might search for some games that are more about getting to know each other at the beginning of the year, but I still think it will be important to take time to play with my students.

What are at least three steps you will take in the fall to learn about your school and its surrounding community?

1. The same teacher that I had above also had a unique way of getting to know her student’s families. I plan to incorporate this if I manage to get a job in my hometown. If not it can also be done in the classroom with an electric griddle. My idea is to invite all of the families, parents and their kids, to a pancake dinner. This would still be done one or two families at a time over the course of many weeks. I’m a believer that conversation flows better over food and parents are much more unlikely to turn down an invitation to talk over dinner. 2. I expect that my field placement will be somewhere very close to where I have lived all of my life. I realize that individual communities have slight variations even in this part of Michigan, but I have lived in and travelled among many of them over the last 35 years. I’m trying to say that I think I will have a slight bias towards thinking I already know what I’m getting into before I do. I want to make sure I visit the school I’m placed in and talk to a variety of the teachers about what they think the community is like. I also want them to tell me how they think the community has changed. I have noticed in some of my more recent travels that some communities have changed quite a bit since I was in school. For example Waverly was the place to be in Lansing when I was in high school, but doesn’t have that reputation as much now. 3. I would love to be able to start some kind of after school program in the community I am in. This program doesn’t need to be just for my students. It will help to give me insight into what the community likes. I have found that with my tennis program here in Portland I have a hard time going anywhere in town without running into someone I know. This is aggravating to my kids, but great for my involvement in the community. If I have the chance, I may start an after school tennis program wherever I go. I have the supplies to play anywhere so I just need the time to do it.

What are at least three steps you will take in the fall to learn about your literacy curriculum?

1. I have learned from this year that one of the most important steps is to find out if the school has a basal reading curriculum and which one it is. Most of them will so I also need to find out how strictly the teachers are expected to follow it. I will also have to take the time to thoroughly explore the teacher’s edition of this text and know what concepts I will be expected to cover. 2. I will also have an in depth conversation with my CT about how he/she handles the reading curriculum. Some teachers seem to want to follow it to the letter and hand out every worksheet. Others seem to like to use it as a guide. I will need to know which aspect is expected and try to convince my CT to let me explore more of the latter is he/she is inclined toward the former. 3. It feels like I should also check my curriculum against the GLCE’s. My current school’s textbook claims that it covers all of the GLCE’s for Michigan and even lists which one it covers at the beginning of each week’s lesson. Right now I am taking this at face value, but it seems important to me that my students should meet all of the standards set forth by the state. This means that I want to check and make sure the curriculum really covers all of these expectations to the degree I am comfortable with.

If you were writing a letter to introduce yourself to your students' parents and families (which you should all do), what are three things you would want them to know about you as a person and/or a teacher?

1. I think I have some personal connections at my age that will make families much more comfortable with me working with their children. These will be important for me to share with them. The first is that I have three children of my own that are about the same age as the ones in their classroom. I also want to let them know that I delayed my education to be a Stay at Home Dad. I hope that these two items will show that I have a deep commitment to children and take a great interest in what they do and love. It should also help them feel more comfortable that I have more experience with children than most beginning teachers do. 2. I also think that talking about my background as a professional tennis coach is important. Especially the fact that most of my work was with youth programs. This has given me much experience in creating lesson plans and working with groups of children. This is a valuable skill that I have found transfers to the realm of school teaching. 3. I also feel it’s important to tell them that I have a strong commitment to their child’s education. I believe that with the right connections every child can learn and wants to learn. I feel that it’s my job to try to find those connections. I want to let them know that open communication with them will help me achieve that goal and I hope to work together as partners for the rest of the year.

Once you get to know your students as people and as learners, what are three concrete strategies you will use to differentiate instruction?

1. I like the idea of using centers. By varying the difficulty of each of the centers and which ones I require each student to complete I will be able to meet a wide range of needs while not making a big deal about each student’s varying abilities. I would probably do this by creating mission cards for them to complete. I like making and creating games so I may even send them on different secret missions that involve completing each of the various tasks. 2. It seems to me a no brainer because most teacher I have seen do this, but I will definitely work with small groups of students with more individualized mini lesson plans. This can occur when the rest of the class is working at centers or when they are spending their time on silent reading. These lessons will give different children a chance to explore the topic we are working on at a level that is more suitable to their needs. 3. Something I don’t think is done enough is for teachers to modify their expectations in response to their student’s performance. I have noticed many times in my field placement that some students struggle to finish work they don’t understand while others breeze through it. I have wanted to tell individual students to concentrate on the easier parts, but not in those words, so that they can get the basics down. This is an adjustment I’d like to be able to make for my students in the future.

Revisit your work in this class (blogs, logs, New Literacies, etc.) and the topics covered in this class (leading discussions, comprehension, writing, emergent literacy, and so on). What is the one area that we have talked about this semester that you feel you need to grow in the most? What are three specific steps you will take to foster that growth?

Topic: Emergent Literacy 1. All of my field placements have been in upper grades. I have not had much experience with emergent literacy except for my own children. My daughter learned to read with minimal help and was fluent by age 4. My son in still struggling at 7, but has a speech delay. I have some experience there, but haven’t figured out how to really help. My first step will be to just gain some more experience. I need to talk to more early learners and see talk about their thought processes. I need to understand what they think so I will have more tools available to help me. 2. If I am placed in a younger room I will talk to the CT more about this topic. I will ask what she uses to help struggling learners. I know we have talked about strategies, but I have found that some teachers have picked up tricks or key sentences that they tell children that seem to work better over the years. 3. I feel like our text from this year would be an asset to me in the future. This is a suggestion for below too. It is one of the few texts I will keep. Before beginning any teaching that involves emergent literacy I will reread the areas of the text that concern it. I will try to generate ideas from these sections that might benefit my students and I will try them so I can evaluate their usefulness and my understanding.

Reflect on your learning in the course. What are three pieces of knowledge, insights or beliefs that you have gained from this course specifically that you would want to pass on to future TE 402 students?

1. I am surprised by how powerful curriculum can be in schools today. I came in thinking I was going to have a lot of leeway in how I approach LA. Some schools do not give teachers the ability to do this because they are so worried about meeting state mandates. I would encourage students that want leeway to find a school that meets those needs for them. I would also encourage them to see if their CT will let them use the curriculum as a tool not a fact. Use a basal reader, but in new ways that weren’t intended by the authors. 2. I learned that technology can be exciting and fun in the classroom. I would encourage them to put effort into their technology project because it could be very useful in the future. I am looking forward to continuing my website in the future. I also found that writing wasn’t as much work when I was exploring a new way to do it. It was exciting and we all know time flies when we’re having fun. 3. I was interested in how book talks added to a deeper understanding of text. I think this is one suggestion that could improve my comments in part 1. Just by taking a basal reader and conducting a book talk about it the teacher can add to the curriculum and how students think about books. This doesn’t change the curriculum it just adds a short conversation every few days.