Week 11

     Well this week I completed my first ever edTPA lesson plan...17 pages later. I am hoping this process gets easier the more I write them. I am glad that we are starting to do edTPA now and not waiting until 435, even though it is a lot of work. This week in class we unpacked the different tasks of edTPA which was helpful. We learned that the steps in the tasks are to plan, teach, assess and then task 4 is math. This is what a good teacher should do every time they teach. They need to plan appropriately with differentiation which is NCPTS Standard 2, Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students, under “teachers provide an environment in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults” and “teachers embrace diversity in the school community and in the world.” After they have planned this lesson, they need to teach using these standards as well. Once they teach they need to assess and see how well the students have understood the lesson. If there is confusion the teacher needs to evaluate their teaching and think of a different way to reteach this lesson in a way that students might better understand this concept. Lastly is math. Teachers need to see where the students are struggling and identify a central focus based on the misconceptions. They will need to reteach and use 3 students as samples to show their progress. A commentary will then be written and an evaluation of their teaching will be preformed.
    Washington continues to be a great experience as well. This week was the first week I had my own small group for 45 minutes. We read about different household animals. We had great discussions and the students took their assessment after the reading the information about the animals. Some were short answer and some were multiple choice so the students could not just guess, they had to cite where they found the information in one of the questions. Lastly, they had a flower and in the middle they wrote the topic of what we read and in the peddles of the flowers, they wrote different facts they read in the story. I am learning a lot from being in Washington and it is great experience.
    For my outside research for the week, I researched the website called flocabulary.com. This is a great online website to practice vocabulary words. Instead of simply writing the vocabulary words on the board, on this website you can create vocabulary words with videos, animations and students can even create their own songs and raps to help them memorize different words. Kids would have a blast using this website and they would also be learning the words. For me it is much easier to memorize a song than it is to memorize a list of words, so why not put that "list of words" in a song so students can remember the words easier. There are also activities and assessment that are aligned with different standards that the students can play with. This would be a website the students would enjoy for sure.
https://www.flocabulary.com/plans/