Maddie’s Journey to the Classroom

  https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fe/14/d3/fe14d3da42aa5262c51a59653a4a45cd.jpg SECTION 1: STOT Assessment Reflection   What is the primary purpose of this assessment? The purpose of the STOT is to guide teacher candidates to meet the national standards to ensure their successful completion of a teacher licensure program. How can you use this assessment to inform and guide your learning in your student teaching experience?   Using the STOT as a guide will help you develop an awareness of your pedagogy, behavior, and mentality toward students. In addition, utilizing the STOT as a roadmap to gain proficiency in content area instruction, differentiation, collaboration, and all other ten areas will support our growth as professional educators. The STOT allows us as student teachers to apply our learning in a way where we can use feedback on the assessment to better our teaching before we become lead teachers. It’s helping to develop us into great teachers by focussing on all these various areas.

  When completing the graphic organizer/thinking map I noticed that it forced me to pull out the key points. Often when note-taking, I tend to take too many and can lose the main points. With this organizer, I was able to find the main points and then show how all the subtopics connect and relate back to the main ones. I noticed that I was beginning to understand the information in a deeper way through the connections I could see visually. I didn't think that I would notice a big difference with this method of note-taking so I'm pleasantly surprised. I think I will be using this note-taking method in the future. Seeing how this helped me, I can see the importance with students in the way it allows them to see the connections between points and also note which points are grouped together. Although I'm somewhat of a visual learner, I can see how this could help any kind of learner. In the moment, students may be able to make connections, but when they go back to the material

  ASSESSMENTS Definitions: Interim/Benchmark: FastBridge Benchmark Reading CBM-R  This assessment helps show reading fluency as well as speed. It also allows teachers to see how well a student is able to track while reading. The assessment is a 1-minute read of a grade-level passage. The assessment tracks errors, skipped lines, and the last word a student read. This type of assessment is used in the Fall, Winter, Spring, and at the end of the year for a total of 4 times. It is helpful as it shows how a student has progressed throughout the year and how they compare to their grade-level peers. It also helps flag students who may qualify for reading intervention. If a student is already receiving a reading intervention,l it helps to see if it is helping or not.  Formative #1: Exit Tickets This assessment would be used at the end of a lesson and can be done daily. Exit tickets allow teachers to check for student understanding/learning. They are also a way for students to ask questions and

  https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f9/c9/2c/f9c92cb3361915151ac6fd034dcf333f.jpg Part 1: Content Connection What is intelligence? What do you think about your own intelligence?  Intelligence is defined by Merriam-Webster as the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations. Before looking at the actual definition, I would have probably told you that it went along with being smart or having a high IQ. I’m learning that is not the case. All students are intelligent in their own way. They are asked to try and learn things every day. They problem solve, theorize, and collaborate with others to garner more knowledge. I think there has been a disconnect in the way we view intelligence. Intelligence is an ever expanding thing which at first was hard to grasp. It was hard because I recall it being a word associated with smart people when I was younger. What I’ve learned through life, is that intelligence is something that can grow with new learning opportunities and experien

  Part 1: Content Reflection Describe how you believe teacher "WITHITNESS" (Jennings, p. 43) reduces teacher bias and improves the culture of a classroom. What does "withitness" look like in a classroom setting? What does it feel like?             I believe that teacher “withitness” reduces bias and improves the culture in the classroom in the way that teachers are present and aware. When a teacher is with it, they get to know their students and can sense when something is off with them. When a teacher isn’t present or doesn’t take the time to get to know their students, they run the risk of seeing a student’s behavior as negative and think that they don’t want to learn. This is not always the case as students may be struggling with things we don’t always recognize right away. When teachers take the time to compose themselves and see where the students are at, they are able to help the students learn instead of reprimanding them for behaviors or being off task.

Section #1 “One of the most powerful things about compassion,” she says, “is it makes you feel safe and calmer. Instead of just feeling empathy for your students—which is essentially feeling their pain—self-compassion allows you to embrace that pain with loving-kindness, which makes it bearable,” (Zakrzewski, 2012).   Through engaging in self-talk and taking the time to reflect on self-compassion exercise, I discovered how important it is to set aside some time to check in with myself and be my own cheerleader. I am very much a people pleaser and have been told by people that I need to get a backbone. Through these exercises and self-talk, I was able to come to terms with the notion that I will not be able to say yes to everything and please everyone and that there is no need to go down the anxiety spiral as a result. When I take on too many things for others on top of what I need to do I often find myself not in a happy or peaceful place. When I took the time to go on walks or just si