AAAAHHHHH!!!!

It's hard to believe that i'm actually a senior and that i'm just about to start my last field and my student teaching. Life is so crazy busy, i'm not sure what i was thinking when i decided to get married thanksgiving weekend. The weekend before all of our assignments for field are due... I don't think it will be a very relaxing weekend unless i finish all of my assignments way before, which i think i can do if i use enough self control. It just seems like there is always so much to do and between my fiance, friends, school, family, and wedding planning that i'm spreading myself too thin. I feel like i have not been giving my best in anything.

I'm really excited for this field experience, (just not for the assignments) but i will also be so glad when it's done. Just another step closer to student teaching and having my own class. I'm so excited and i'm ready to just go on in and give anything a try. I might fall flat on my face, but that's why i have a cooperating teacher, a superviser, and my dad to give me feedback and help me become a better teacher.

It's really quite simple...

"It's really quite simple. Effective teaching is responsive teaching. It begins with creating ties to each child. It begins with taming the fox." The ideas we learn about through differentiation are just NO DUH answers. They make sense because they are an effective way to help every student to succeed and do the best that they can. In theory they are "no duh" and "really quite simple" but they can be difficult. We have so much resting upon us as teacher as the text explains, it's hard to be responsive and connect. It's hard to support each student and hard to teach well, but it is so worth it!

I don't know how to say it any better than Carol, so here is my favorite quote from this book, " If we allow ourselves to fall in love with what we do, we will be reborn countless times, almost always in a form stronger and more fully human than the one that preceded it. Thus it may be that to teach more responsively, more effectively, we ultimately need to accept two challenges. First, we need to cultivate passion for what we do. Second, we need to remove our protective armor and allow our students to shape us, reflecting on and learning from what we see." WOW that is powerful... i want to be a responsive teacher and i already know that i absolutely love it. As i begin teaching i will have the opportunity to be reshaped and be reborn and i try my hardest to "tame my students" they will tame me and we will learn and grow together. I love the opportunity that i have to start fresh each day and take on challenges and just try my hardest to be all that i can be. There is nothing else that i could possibly do with my life. I am a teacher and i will do whatever it takes to be the best teacher that i can be!

Curriculum

I really like the facets of curriculum that were defined in our reading. Curriculum that is Important, Focused, Engaging, Demanding, and Scaffolded. It really just wraps everything that we learn in our methods classes right up. We have discussed those 5 parts seperately, but it was really nice to have all of those elements brought together and to see how important each one really is. And once again with these chapters, it showed the concept, but then broke it down for us to take it from rationale to practice. Not only is what we need to learn explicitly explained to us, but then we are given examples and scenarios. Without even saying it, this book is giving us a good model of teaching. I also liked that the chapters carried the theme of the fox-taming teachers. This also showed another good teaching practice without saying it by further linking ideas that we had already learned. The stuff that we are reading for this class relates to everything that i have ever learned about teaching and as i read it i feel like i already knew what they were talking about, but now i have a reminder of what to focus on and how to do it. Not that i don't enjoy my reading for other classes... but i feel that the reading for this class is so much more relevant and will help me to succeed no matter what content i am teaching.

From Rationale to Practice

This reading was definitely what I was looking for. I have been eating up what we have been talking about and have been seeing connections of differentiation throughout all of my other readings and classes... but still have been unsure of how I would specifically implement many elements of differentiation in my class. Part of the reason I have been unsure and struggling with it, is because I always seem to take on too much, I want to differentiate everything and meet all of the students needs all of the time. What i think i am slowly learning and will continue to learn through my experiences this semester is that I can only do so much, but in the way I set up my classroom and my attitude I will be differentiating already. I felt that the scenarios offered in chapter 5 really brought some better understanding and I feel that I understand differentiation in a more practical rather than and idealistic way. I am ready to learn more strategies and ways to do things that will benefit my students. I know that there are so many people that I will be able to learn from and so many activities that I do this semester that will help me to better understand how to be a differentiating teacher. My understanding is just going to come a little at a time and I have to be patient enough to know that as I continue in this class this semester and that as I begin teaching I will continue to better understand exactly what differentiation is and how I can do it.

Interest Surveys

The information that you can get from the student surveys would put you at such an advantage when you are trying to differentiate. It gives you information like whether they like to move a lot, what noise level they can tolerate, whether they like to work with people or make things. I love the format of the first survey where students are able to take phrases and decide whether they sound like them or not. I like that format because a lot of the time students can struggle with coming up with things to say on the fill in the blank surveys. Even though the phrases aren’t really personal, you will be able to get just as much information about the student by the things that they may think that are like them or are definitely not like them. I also like the other survey and feel like the information could also be very useful, like knowing the things that students would like to learn about or what is hard for them, what they are good at, how they think they learn best, and some of their favorite things to do. This can give you good insight and can guide your instruction by what they say, but through observing the student you will get to know even more about them and who they really are through they way they act compared to the way they answer the questions.

I also liked a lot of the forms that I read in the pre assessment file and I think that I definitely will be able to use some of them in my student teaching. In all of our classes when we talk about lesson planning they talk about taking anecdotal records and different points throughout the lesson, but I never really have known exactly what the write. Having a list of focus questions for the different levels and subjects would be so great in helping me to know what to look for while I am ‘evaluating.’ There were also observation charts that I really liked and I will definitely use the writing sample that was described. What I liked most about that format was that it talked about not judging the students, it is just a way to gather information that will help you to scaffold their instruction. The ‘writing sample’ is something that can be seen as their opportunity to put down anything that they want and they wont be graded on their conventions or their ideas, it is a time to be completely themselves. That’s what I liked best about the questionnaire that we did for this class because I knew that no matter what I wrote I wasn’t being judged or compared to other students. Because I knew you as a teacher from last semester I knew that we were doing all of those questions so you would know how to help us instead of just wasting our time like some get to know you assignments seem to do. I think that my students can feel that same way if they can tell that I genuinely care and that whatever they say is going to help me to be a better teacher and know exactly, or to just have a better idea of how to help them learn best

Why Differentiate?

Why Not? The only reason a teacher wouldn't want to differentiate is that they are not willing to put in the time and effort to understand the needs of learners and more specifically the needs of the actual students in their class. I was very impressed with the reading this week and there are many sections of the book that are marked up in my hot pink pen and orange highlighter. I felt that I was able to understand the content which is something I have been struggling with in some of my other readings. This book doesn't go over your head. The authors have, in a way, differentiated this text to their audience, potential teacher and teachers, and have made it interesting and easy for anyone who works with children to understand. We have been taught that if we want our students to do something or to exhibit a certain behaviors we need to first MODEL it. If the content in the classes that we as educators take are over our head, then what kind of example is being set for us as go into our own classroom... Not only was the information in the book at the level of the readers, but it was presented in an interesting way. My favorite section was where they had metaphors to guide thinking about instruction. I learn so much better through metaphors. I remember in my EDEL 1010 class we presented metaphors for our journey through the class and I felt that I learned more in that one assignment than through the entire semester because of the reflecting and the perspectives of other students. The metaphors included in this book also helped to deepen my understanding of what differentiation really is. Now I have a visuals in my mind and explanations connected to them-- the taming of the fox, the three interrelated and interdependent cogs, and another one that I picked up on, was that the elements of differentiation will be our compass and guide us in our decisions. As I continued reading another metaphor caught my eye, that offering differentiated instruction activities to teachers is like giving them a cookbook. Once they have used up all the activities there is nothing left to do, or without understanding with they are doing they might tweak the recipe in such a way that would completely ruin it. In cooking you have to have a knowledge and understanding of the many ingredients and the way they are used together to be able to make the recipe your own. The same is true with differentiated teaching. No two activities for any number of teachers or students will be exactly the same. It all depends on who the teacher and the student are and where they have come from and then a huge emphasis on the teachers understanding of what differentiation really is, the nitty gritty way of applying strategies and being about the modify things they have learned to fit their style and their students way of learning. Metaphors always help me to expand my thinking and help me to draw connections to other areas of my life and experience. Now as I continue through this class I will be able to reflect on the metaphors explained in the reading and I will be able to continue to create my own metaphors for what differentiation really is and why it is applicable to me. I want to differentiate because I want to have that connection with my students that bond of the 'taming'. I want my students to feel the way that I feel right now that things are connecting and make sense, but if they don't, they eventually will and that no matter what the circumstance that I won't give up on them, that like we talked about in class, that I will offer work and opportunities where they are challenged and validated no matter where they are and they will be able to get the support that they need.

*Sorry for the long run on paragraph- I didn't realize I had so much to say, but I'm glad that I was able to get out some of the ideas that I was thinking and make better sense of what I'm learning.

Differentation, a choice that appeals to me!

I feel like what I have learned in the education program up until this point has been focused on differentiated instruction, just without telling us that’s what it was. In Curriculum Design we focused on accommodations, in Classroom Management we learned about creating a community of learners and having students be involved in the responsibilities and rules of the classroom. In Intro to Education and Multicultural we discussed equity and equality and meeting the needs of our individual students. We have learned a lot of elements of differentiation and now we have the opportunity to reflect on that and be able to create a coherent idea in our head of why and how we will differentiate our instruction.

Some of the choices that appeal to me regarding differentiation are phrases right out of the portion I read in Differentiation in Practice. First of all and most importantly that education isn’t and doesn’t have to be one-size fits all each student has their own unique needs and as teachers WE CAN meet those needs. It is a difficult thing for me to think of how I can possibly meet the needs of all of my students, in a section describing being aware of who we teach it said, “ With each passing year, Ms. Johnson becomes more aware that there are a variety of factors shaping her students as learners” As I begin and continue teaching I will keep learning and becoming aware of all of my students and aware of how I can meet their needs. We also had the reading about morning meeting, and what better way is there to get to know our students than in that no stress environment that really builds a community of learners. The who, what, and where factors are very important and have to be addressed to be able to differentiate, but it is really all about the how, how we are teaching. This is what excites me about this semester, we will continue to learn HOW to differentiate, HOW to meet the diverse needs of all of our students whether they are social, emotional, academic etc… I am also really excited about the morning meetings and definitely want to go watch a few in action. I have participate in morning meetings in my dad’s classroom and have always loved them. It really does help to create the community of learners that we have discussed in so many of our classes and by having that safe environment students will feel free to be themselves and take risks and that is a great place to start with our students, somewhere that they are willing to just try and maybe try again. I really do want to be a teacher who tries my hardest to meet each students’ needs. I understand that I will not be able to be everything to everyone every time, but I am going to try my hardest, and as I continue to try and probably feel inadequate I will learn and grow and be a more able and better teacher.