McConnell-Doidge Week 4

             This was an interesting week. Monday and Friday we had late starts and Wednesday and Thursday were snow days. We had a weekend within the week. With that being said it definitely through off any sort of routine not only for myself but for my students. You could just tell on Tuesday that their minds were already on the fact that they had two days off. I used Monday as my day to try and be as productive as possible with my Freshman classes and do a peer assessment of all the skills we learned thus far in the Basketball unit. This was also the day I had my second observation, which given the fact that it ended up being a late start and I wasn't able to get through everything that I had planned out due to it being a shorter period than usual I think I adapted the lesson well to ensure our time was used efficiently and the students were still able to complete the peer assessment. Which I was very pleased with it kept the students active and engaged throughout the class period. It allowed the students to read aloud the directions as to how to correctly perform each skill. They then could verbalize to their partner what they did well, and what they needed to work on. It was also a great lesson to do right before starting games, to ensure students felt comfortable with the skills, and felt confident in applying them in game situations. Standard 6 - Reading, Writing, and Oral Communication – The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge. Standard 7 - Assessment – The competent teacher understands and uses appropriate formative and summative assessments for determining student needs, monitoring student progress, measuring student growth, and evaluating student outcomes. The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student. Based on my own observations of student growth and using the partner assessment I was able to use that information to pick teams to ensure the teams would be matched up fairly based on the students varying skill levels. Students were also given an exit slip at the end of that lesson to think-pair-share on what they wish to accomplish by the end of the unit in basketball. This gave me a good idea of what the students goals were and allowed me to determine a focus for upcoming lessons based on those goals.
              I had planned on using the two days off to start working on my edTPA however the internet had other plans and was not working. Not working internet + 2 kids = not very productive. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, and the same goes for the polar vortex and I think the internet not working really allowed for us as a family to just spend quality time we have been missing out on since I started student teaching and really just enjoy each others company so that's what we did. That being said coming into this weekend will be all about planning for the edTPA.  This was a week full of not everything going according to plan. Yet I was able to go with the flow and make it all work. It will be nice going into the weekend planning for my edTPA and for a full week of class. As well as getting back into the swing of things. This week there isn't as much to say since it ended up being sucha short week.