"I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." - Abraham Lincoln In this section you will see one learning segment of me teaching from the beginning of the year, and you will see a second learning segment of me teaching during my spring lead teach. When I reflect on both learning segments I believe that my management and instruction grew. I became wiser from the beginning of the year to my spring lead teach through debriefs with my mentor coach and mentor, through self reflection, and collaboration with other residents. This is one of the very special professions where things are changing more often than we think, and if we do not change along with it than we will fail to become wiser today than we were yesterday. LEARNING SEGMENT A The YouTube video below is a short clip of a lesson I taught during my two day lead teach in the fall. I look back on this clip and I see a teacher who is talking too much, tries to engage all of the students, circulates and is too shifty with his movements which causes a distraction for the students, and is not having the information flow out clearly. This kind of instruction was not what I expect from myself and something that my students deserve better. If there was one thing that was always repeated to me from my MRC was, "Start having the students do the heavy lifting, and give them clear precise instruction." Not having my instruction scripted and not having the students do more of the talked, or "heavy lifting", is taking work that they should be doing away from them.
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LEARNING SEGMENT B
In learning segment B you will see a small clip of myself teaching. I am incorporating think pair share as well as a check for understanding method called over the shoulder. You will also notice that I am asking questions and expecting the students to do more of the heavy lifting and answer correctly. I also made a goal for myself to use more checks for understanding during my lesson to quickly evaluate my instruction and my student's understand of the information. Over the year my mentor and I had multiple conversations on how I can incorporate more strategies into my teaching and work on my instruction delivery. I believe this clip shows a teacher who is delivering instruction more effectively than in learning segment A, which in turn gives the students a better chance to succeed.
DATA COLLECTION & FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
Data, data, and more data. Data collection and data analyzing is not the funnest thing to do as a teacher, but this past year I really understand how important it is to be an effective educator. The teacher is able to assess where their class is within the unit, and the teacher is able to self-reflect on their own teaching as well. At first working with data is stressful and tiring, but like anything else teachers get better at using it and collecting it that it gets easier. When looking at data collected from an exit ticket the teacher can conclude many different outcomes. The material is too hard at this time in the unit, the material was poorly delivered, classroom management was poor which disrupted teaching and learning, or the students just need one more day to work on it. This year at NLU professors stressed the effectiveness data collection can have on impacting student learning as well as teacher planning and scaffolding.
The larger picture below shows a sample of data I collected from an exit ticket during our volleyball unit. The four smaller thumbnail pictures underneath that are examples of formative assessments that I administered to drive my instruction for the following week. Click on them to see caption and a larger view.
