How does middle school compare to elementary school for you?
I really liked my elementary students. Now being in eighth grade I feel like I am in a high school class. My cooperating teacher seems really good, so I am excited to be under someone with so much passion and expertise. My cooperating teacher is around my age. She has taught for seven years, and I am her first student teacher. She is really active in school initiatives. She is finishing up her master's degree. She leads a book group on grading authentically once a month, and the eigth grade team is pioleting a new grading system that bases everything on 5 points instead of letter grades.
She is on the NUA committee, which is a group of people who learn new teaching stratigies. Then eventually they teach these stratigies to the rest of the teachers. Does your district utilize the strategies from NUA? I learned many of them in my first placement. I even bought the book the teachers recommended because I liked to stratigies so much. Both the middle school and the elementary school talked about these new stratigies often.
As for the students, I am still trying to learn their names. I have a hard time with names, so it might take me until my fulltime teaching weeks to have all their names reserved to memory.
When I started this placement, the students were finishing up a poetry unit. As a result, the last few days have been spent in the computer lab. They were given time to write an analysis on a poem. I am excited to start teaching again. Sometimes it is hard to sit back and watch.
How are things in the social studies world?
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Rose,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you have such an engaged and energetic teacher-they do make a huge difference in your confidence level as a student teacher I think.
I don't even know what NUA is...can you fill me in? But today at a meeting I did learn PLC (Professional Learning Committee) and SIP (School Improvement Plan).
Good luck when you start teaching!
Hi Rose,
ReplyDeleteI e-mailed you this morning before I noticed that you'd already blogged--and that Joanna knows that you're blogging! Silly me.
Anyway, I'm also unfamiliar with NUA and I'd love to know the title of the book you bought that so many teachers were enthusiastic about.
Your cooperating teacher sounds like an excellent role model for you in terms of her interest in best practice and her engagement with school leadership. I'm impressed that the school understands how to identify instructional leaders right in the building and then use those people to lead in-house professional development. Always a better model than bringing in an outsider to tell everyone what they should know. Soak it all up, Rose! You're in a good place.
I'll look forward to hearing about what you're teaching when it's your turn to take over.
Thanks for writing.
S.
The book I was referring to that all the teachers had was "Thinking Strategies for student achievement: improving learning across the curriculum, K-12" by Denise D. Nessel and Joyce M. Graham. Some of the strategies in the book are ones that we learned in our methods courses like cubing, jigsaw, KWL, and anticipation guides. There are some new strategies found in the book that I hope to use in the future.
ReplyDeleteI also had a teacher recommend any book written by Evelyn Rothsein. The two books that he mentioned were "Writing as learning" and "Write in Mathematics." I have them both on my list for the future. The teacher that told me about these materials showed me some of his math lessons that used these ideas. I was intrigued with how he used many thinking strategies to help the students think more clearly about the math concepts. He had his students use charts, maps, and graphic organizers to display math ideas. His method combined writing and math. For one of my elementary lessons, I looked into research with science notebooks. I found that when students write about their ideas in science or math there test scores improve in math, science, and reading. What a great way to cross the curriculum.
I asked Ms. R, my middle school cooperating teacher, about NUA strategies, so I could share more information with both of you. NUA stands for the National Urban Alliance. She loaned me a book with a chapter that does a fairly good job of explaining the organization and its objectives. It is fairly long, so if either of you would like a copy, I can bring it during finals week. I will include the NUA website, but it is not a great resource. It will just give you a little more information about their mission. http://www.nuatc.org/TESTONE/aboutus.html
Ms. R also mentioned a few southern and western suburbs that used this organization and their ideas. The Minneapolis School District also uses the NUA strategies.
At the middle school, we just finished conferences, and it proved to be an intense time for the teachers. On Thursday, the teachers had to be at the school from 7:30 AM until 7:30 PM. They were sure tired on Friday. I stayed for a small portion of the time. Ms. R. was very organized and handled herself very professionally. It was great to see the procedural way she went through the conferences. Since the eighth grade language arts teachers are piloting a new performance-based grading system. She spent a lot of time explaining the new system to parents. I am a huge fan of this new grading process. I can bring some of these resources during finals week if you're interested.
I will try to explain the process, but it might be easier to show with an example in person. Every rubric for assignments and assessments are organized by the standards. The students may get more than one grades on an assessment or assignment if it covers more than one standard. In their report card, all of their grades are organized by the standards. When looking at the student's grades, a teacher or parent can see their strengths and weaknesses.
For example, the students wrote a poem. They were graded on grammar and usage, ideas, organization. (These are three standards in the eighth grade curriculum that this assignment covered.) The students will be graded in each area. They might get an A in ideas and organization and a C under grammar and usage. These three grades get entered into the report card three separate times. This data tells the teacher, student, and parents that the student needs more practice in the area of grammar and usage. The student still gets an overall grade. The major difference between this method and the traditional method is that the report card is just organized different and assessments need to be meaningful and purposeful.
I am learning tons of information, and I hope to learn more as the six weeks progress.
Rose