It is great that you should mention humor as one of the five traits an effective teacher needs to succeed. I completely agree. This is in fact one of the things I wrote in my Effective Teacher Essay. I believe that students respond best to something they can relate to and care about and if a student can be engaged immediately, the enthusiasm will last throughout the class. I am so glad that you are enjoying your time as a student teacher. It makes me look forward to my turn.
Sorrel Kaspszak
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Effective Teachers...
My first student teaching placement is in a 4th grade classroom at a close to idyllic grade school. The students come from many different places, most are at grade level in math and reading, the parents are greatly involved in their children’s schooling, the community supports the school and the staff is strong and active. My classroom is made up of 17 boys and 10 girls-it gets truly wild sometimes. I am working towards my masters in education through the Weekend College program. I will be licensed for elementary education with a middle school social studies specialty. My experiences thus far in my own 4th grade classroom have helped me to realize that 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, with my own classroom, might be perfect for me. We will see.
I can use five words to describe what an effective teacher is. They are: sensitive, humorous, organized, level-headed and resilient. An effective teacher will live out all of these traits during every day of teaching. These traits are also necessary for an effective teacher to keep going and stay strong and focused on educating and empowering students.
An effective teacher is sensitive to student feelings. This sensitivity involves being discrete when having personal conversations with the student—whether they are positive or negative, being aware of non-verbal signals from your students about frustrations or woes and being cognizant of the types of reactions you have to student responses or questions. An effective teacher is also sensitive to the needs of colleagues and parents, but only to a point that can be maintained—your students should always be your biggest focus.
An effective teacher is humorous. Having a sense of humor in the classroom lightens the mood when it needs lightening, helps you to establish connections with your students and can help you to refocus on your day if it has taken a sour turn. Laughter and giggles might not always be appropriate in your classroom, but they are necessary to keep the classroom climate positive.
Organization is an effective teacher’s strongest asset. Not only is organization necessary to keep your lessons, your day, your classroom and your students on track, but part of your responsibilities as a teacher are to be organized for other people. Specialists and coaches need to know who to pull for enrichment or re-teaching, which means you need to be on top of your assessments and recording them. Parents or siblings might need to take homework or work that is not yet done to sick students. This involves knowing what each of your students has yet to finish, and what they need in order to finish that task. If you team teach or team plan with other teachers, they expect you to be organized and ready to plan and pull your own weight in planning, copying and getting supplies ready.
If a teacher is to take all of the surprises and unexpected events that happen each day in school in stride, they must be level-headed. No day is ever the same in school. An effective teacher is ready for everyday to bring something new and does not let unpredictable events send the day off-track. Your students and your classroom depend on you to be ready for anything.
An effective teacher is resilient. This characteristic in a teacher is not only important for their students and their classroom, but also for the teacher themselves. If you are having a bad day or something goes horribly wrong, you need to be able to bounce back from it. You have to have a shell that you can rebuild so that you still seem strong for your students—but this shell needs to break sometimes. You can’t hold your feelings in all of the time, or you will burn out. An effective teacher can keep going and keep going strong, but they also know when to give themselves a much deserved and needed break. This resilience will also help you to focus on your future in teaching. Staying strong and in touch with your own needs will give you the strength needed to grow as a teacher.
I can use five words to describe what an effective teacher is. They are: sensitive, humorous, organized, level-headed and resilient. An effective teacher will live out all of these traits during every day of teaching. These traits are also necessary for an effective teacher to keep going and stay strong and focused on educating and empowering students.
An effective teacher is sensitive to student feelings. This sensitivity involves being discrete when having personal conversations with the student—whether they are positive or negative, being aware of non-verbal signals from your students about frustrations or woes and being cognizant of the types of reactions you have to student responses or questions. An effective teacher is also sensitive to the needs of colleagues and parents, but only to a point that can be maintained—your students should always be your biggest focus.
An effective teacher is humorous. Having a sense of humor in the classroom lightens the mood when it needs lightening, helps you to establish connections with your students and can help you to refocus on your day if it has taken a sour turn. Laughter and giggles might not always be appropriate in your classroom, but they are necessary to keep the classroom climate positive.
Organization is an effective teacher’s strongest asset. Not only is organization necessary to keep your lessons, your day, your classroom and your students on track, but part of your responsibilities as a teacher are to be organized for other people. Specialists and coaches need to know who to pull for enrichment or re-teaching, which means you need to be on top of your assessments and recording them. Parents or siblings might need to take homework or work that is not yet done to sick students. This involves knowing what each of your students has yet to finish, and what they need in order to finish that task. If you team teach or team plan with other teachers, they expect you to be organized and ready to plan and pull your own weight in planning, copying and getting supplies ready.
If a teacher is to take all of the surprises and unexpected events that happen each day in school in stride, they must be level-headed. No day is ever the same in school. An effective teacher is ready for everyday to bring something new and does not let unpredictable events send the day off-track. Your students and your classroom depend on you to be ready for anything.
An effective teacher is resilient. This characteristic in a teacher is not only important for their students and their classroom, but also for the teacher themselves. If you are having a bad day or something goes horribly wrong, you need to be able to bounce back from it. You have to have a shell that you can rebuild so that you still seem strong for your students—but this shell needs to break sometimes. You can’t hold your feelings in all of the time, or you will burn out. An effective teacher can keep going and keep going strong, but they also know when to give themselves a much deserved and needed break. This resilience will also help you to focus on your future in teaching. Staying strong and in touch with your own needs will give you the strength needed to grow as a teacher.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Characteristics of an Effective Teacher?
My student teaching experience is in collaboration with a fourth grade classroom in a prominent suburban district. The class I work with has twenty-six students. Three of the students qualify for special education services and seven students receive extra instruction from the gifted and talented teacher. As for my experiences, they vary quite a bit. I have worked in a middle school as a special education paraprofessional, and I have worked in a preschool as an assistant. This is my second degree, and I completed most of my education classes through the weekend program.
An effective teacher needs to be willing to ask questions constantly. These questions could consist of the following: What were the effective and ineffective parts of my lesson? What should I do different next time? How well did the students learn the information? Why did the majority of the class not do well on that test? These questions help to access the effectiveness of my teaching. An effective teacher also recognizes that each class is very different. What might work one year won't the next. To stay effective, teachers need to constantly assess their own teaching methods in relation to the students they have in their classrooms.
Effective teachers need to know the content. A teacher could know all the methods in the world, but if they don't know the content, they are useless. Teachers become more familiar with the content the more they work with the material, which is part of the reason teaching gets easier with more experience. Because teachers need to know the content, it is important for them to continue to take professional development classes to expand their skills.
The best teachers learn to balance their lives with teaching and personal activities. Teaching is a career that could take over your life and create the hazard of burnout. Effective teachers learn to use their time while they are at school. They understand that some work needs to go home, but they can't work all day and night. Effective teachers enjoy activities outside of their professional careers.
After looking over my comments, I know my idea characteristics of effective teaching have changed since starting school. These ideas will constantly change depending on the circumstances. The most effective teachers realize that their thinking will transform. Therefore, effective teachers need open minds to look at new ideas from all angles, and I see that my ideas have started to transform. This is only one transformation with many more to come
An effective teacher needs to be willing to ask questions constantly. These questions could consist of the following: What were the effective and ineffective parts of my lesson? What should I do different next time? How well did the students learn the information? Why did the majority of the class not do well on that test? These questions help to access the effectiveness of my teaching. An effective teacher also recognizes that each class is very different. What might work one year won't the next. To stay effective, teachers need to constantly assess their own teaching methods in relation to the students they have in their classrooms.
Effective teachers need to know the content. A teacher could know all the methods in the world, but if they don't know the content, they are useless. Teachers become more familiar with the content the more they work with the material, which is part of the reason teaching gets easier with more experience. Because teachers need to know the content, it is important for them to continue to take professional development classes to expand their skills.
The best teachers learn to balance their lives with teaching and personal activities. Teaching is a career that could take over your life and create the hazard of burnout. Effective teachers learn to use their time while they are at school. They understand that some work needs to go home, but they can't work all day and night. Effective teachers enjoy activities outside of their professional careers.
After looking over my comments, I know my idea characteristics of effective teaching have changed since starting school. These ideas will constantly change depending on the circumstances. The most effective teachers realize that their thinking will transform. Therefore, effective teachers need open minds to look at new ideas from all angles, and I see that my ideas have started to transform. This is only one transformation with many more to come
Monday, October 12, 2009
Any questions?
I think of questioning as the connecting force during instruction. You can ask questions to begin a lesson, to transition a lesson from section to section and to either initiate closure of the lesson or preview lesson content for next time. Specifically, questioning serves at least three purposes during instruction. Using wait-time during questioning or prompting for further input can increase engagement of students who aren’t always the first to raise their hands to respond. Questioning can be used to check understanding. If I use a word during instruction or a word comes up in the content, I can use questioning to check for prior knowledge, but also to make sure the students are on the same page in order to advance the lesson. Finally, questioning can be used as a tool to think more critically about an activity, topic or discussion. I can use questions in my classroom to extend my lesson by feeding off of student comments.
This fall, I have discovered the usefulness in questioning while helping students to figure something out. We have done several poetic activities to begin the year and as fourth graders, they often struggle with what to write-especially if it is about them or their lives. We recently did a project in which they wrote about idioms their family uses and had to do a four line poem with at least two rhyming verses to complete the activity. Some students had such a difficult time with it. I started asking questions to them to give them ideas when I realized that is how I started writing my own idiom rhyme. What does this idiom really mean? How do you feel when someone says this? What do you do when someone says this? When they would hit on a word that was easy to rhyme with, I would then prompt them for words that rhyme with it, etc. So, questioning has helped me to be successful in guiding rather than telling my students.
I would like to improve my responses to student questioning. When I use questioning to extend a lesson, my students can sometimes get taken off track or deeper than I expect and I often find myself in territory I can’t always respond to confidently. I need to improve my reactions to questions I don’t know the answer to without disappointing my students. In addition, I find questioning difficult when my students are tired and I need it to work in order to properly introduce a lesson and only two or three of the same people are raising their hands to answer the question. I need to think about rephrasing my questions on my toes or working to engage my students more with my questions. I am also not a fan of cold-calling on students to get other responses, but I will do it to bring some of my students back to reality-especially in math when the answer is simple.
It was my first day teaching full-time today. What was I so worried about? Nothing horrible happened. It was just a normal, unpredictable day at school. The one thing I forget to think about while planning my days is that I do have time to think. When my students are working independently, I can work too. They still know I am available to answer their questions, but I can take the time to tidy-up my desk or the room and to get myself organized for the next subject or hook up my computer to the projector. I can also take the time to simply sit down and watch the kids work and take a good chug of water. Even if it is only a minute or even 30 seconds, it is so utterly satisfying. The kids are working away, I feel confident and prepared and every once and a while, one of them will glance up at me and I can smile at them. And man, does it feel good when they smile back!
This fall, I have discovered the usefulness in questioning while helping students to figure something out. We have done several poetic activities to begin the year and as fourth graders, they often struggle with what to write-especially if it is about them or their lives. We recently did a project in which they wrote about idioms their family uses and had to do a four line poem with at least two rhyming verses to complete the activity. Some students had such a difficult time with it. I started asking questions to them to give them ideas when I realized that is how I started writing my own idiom rhyme. What does this idiom really mean? How do you feel when someone says this? What do you do when someone says this? When they would hit on a word that was easy to rhyme with, I would then prompt them for words that rhyme with it, etc. So, questioning has helped me to be successful in guiding rather than telling my students.
I would like to improve my responses to student questioning. When I use questioning to extend a lesson, my students can sometimes get taken off track or deeper than I expect and I often find myself in territory I can’t always respond to confidently. I need to improve my reactions to questions I don’t know the answer to without disappointing my students. In addition, I find questioning difficult when my students are tired and I need it to work in order to properly introduce a lesson and only two or three of the same people are raising their hands to answer the question. I need to think about rephrasing my questions on my toes or working to engage my students more with my questions. I am also not a fan of cold-calling on students to get other responses, but I will do it to bring some of my students back to reality-especially in math when the answer is simple.
It was my first day teaching full-time today. What was I so worried about? Nothing horrible happened. It was just a normal, unpredictable day at school. The one thing I forget to think about while planning my days is that I do have time to think. When my students are working independently, I can work too. They still know I am available to answer their questions, but I can take the time to tidy-up my desk or the room and to get myself organized for the next subject or hook up my computer to the projector. I can also take the time to simply sit down and watch the kids work and take a good chug of water. Even if it is only a minute or even 30 seconds, it is so utterly satisfying. The kids are working away, I feel confident and prepared and every once and a while, one of them will glance up at me and I can smile at them. And man, does it feel good when they smile back!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Questions
Questions used during instruction have many purposes. The main reason for using them is to engage students. We need higher-level questions to keep the higher-level thinkers interested. I could use more of these questions throughout my lessons. Sometimes I feel like the higher students get bored. In addition to engaging, questions can be used to connect material to their prior knowledge. I use these types of questions when we start a new reading. Along with the two previous examples, questions are used to check for student understanding. After we have talked about a topic, it is beneficial to see if the class as a whole understands the material. Maybe I didn't do a great job covering a topic, so we need to review the concepts again.
My questioning skills are not great yet, but I taught a social studies lesson about scale and legend that had some good questioning components. At the beginning, I presented maps of the world before Columbus's voyage to the new world. I asked inquiry questions about why the people thought the world was flat in the 1400s, and I asked the students to talk about the differences between the maps. The students seemed interested, and I was getting a lot of the answers to the questions from the students. My main job was to direct the conversation to the topic of scale towards the end. By looking at the maps from Columbus's time, the students could see how much land was undiscovered. It gave them a real reason for creating maps with accurate scale. Then they connected the concept of scale to their lives. They could see that an error in scale could mean a trip taking double or triple the amount of time when traveling. This lesson had a real purpose for them.
I know I need to work on developing a variety of questions in my lessons, but my main obstacle is the time it takes to write out these questions. I find that I use the questions provided by the teacher materials much more than creating my own questions. I should create a goal to force myself to focus on this aspect. For each lesson I create, I need five questions of different thinking levels. This might be a time consuming goal for myself, but it will benefit the students learning and understanding.
To move on to a new subject, I have a moral dilemma, and I would like your opinions. I have a fourth grade student who qualifies for special education in reading. His fall test scores in mathematics were the lowest in the class. Last year he struggled in math, so the special education teacher tested him to qualify for services in mathematics. He did not score low enough, so a decision was made to have him repeat the second grade math curriculum in the third grade classroom. Now he is in forth grade and needs the third grade mathematics curriculum taught to him. My dilemma is that he has a paraprofessional to help with organizational issues during mathematics. She is not there to teach him new material, but I don't have time to teach the fourth grade curriculum and pull him aside to teach him the third grade curriculum. What do I do so that he is not taught by the paraprofessional all year? I have an obligation to teach all the students in the room. Some days the class only get five minutes of work time and that is not enough time to teach a new concept to a struggling student. Does anyone have any suggestions?
My questioning skills are not great yet, but I taught a social studies lesson about scale and legend that had some good questioning components. At the beginning, I presented maps of the world before Columbus's voyage to the new world. I asked inquiry questions about why the people thought the world was flat in the 1400s, and I asked the students to talk about the differences between the maps. The students seemed interested, and I was getting a lot of the answers to the questions from the students. My main job was to direct the conversation to the topic of scale towards the end. By looking at the maps from Columbus's time, the students could see how much land was undiscovered. It gave them a real reason for creating maps with accurate scale. Then they connected the concept of scale to their lives. They could see that an error in scale could mean a trip taking double or triple the amount of time when traveling. This lesson had a real purpose for them.
I know I need to work on developing a variety of questions in my lessons, but my main obstacle is the time it takes to write out these questions. I find that I use the questions provided by the teacher materials much more than creating my own questions. I should create a goal to force myself to focus on this aspect. For each lesson I create, I need five questions of different thinking levels. This might be a time consuming goal for myself, but it will benefit the students learning and understanding.
To move on to a new subject, I have a moral dilemma, and I would like your opinions. I have a fourth grade student who qualifies for special education in reading. His fall test scores in mathematics were the lowest in the class. Last year he struggled in math, so the special education teacher tested him to qualify for services in mathematics. He did not score low enough, so a decision was made to have him repeat the second grade math curriculum in the third grade classroom. Now he is in forth grade and needs the third grade mathematics curriculum taught to him. My dilemma is that he has a paraprofessional to help with organizational issues during mathematics. She is not there to teach him new material, but I don't have time to teach the fourth grade curriculum and pull him aside to teach him the third grade curriculum. What do I do so that he is not taught by the paraprofessional all year? I have an obligation to teach all the students in the room. Some days the class only get five minutes of work time and that is not enough time to teach a new concept to a struggling student. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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