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Success Story

Take over is off to a great start.  Students have transitioned well with the take over.  Students enjoyed learning about fractions. We even started signing songs as attention getters.  My entire class did an amazing job at citing quotes from nonfiction text.  It took some time as this was a long writing assignment.  Students wrote an opinion piece, introduced their topic, took a stance and supported it with evidence from the text.  I’m extremely proud of the hard work they put in.

Significant Child Interaction

I truly enjoy being in fourth grade and feel like this is where I belong.   My class does writing prompts a few days a week.  This allows me to engage with students and learn about them.  We usually spend a few minutes talking about things.  Students are now trading in their class dojo points and making a silly activity for me to do. Dressing up in a princess costume may be in my future.

Challenges

I have a couple of students that are tired of using pear decks. Unfortunately these students are remote so it’s hard to see what they're working on.  Pear deck allows us to see if they’re working on their assignment.   I’ve given students options on ways they can turn in their work.  But honestly I feel as the school year progresses  students lose focus.

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Success Story

I received a special thank you note from a parent as her child talked about our interactions in the class. The parent mentioned that her child is excited to come to school and looks forward to working with me. The note has been a highlight of my week and truly made all the other hard work worth it.

Significant Child Interaction:

I had my observation this week, and when my supervisor was leaving the room, she was telling my CT that I did well. A student overheard her and said, good job Mrs. Sakhi. We helped you pass 😊

Challenges:

The current challenge that I have is not student teaching. It’s due to the month of Ramadan I am not sleeping enough, and I want to make sure that my work and student interaction are not affected by it. Overall, it’s been a great two weeks.

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Success Story:
With each day and week, learning how to navigate a new way of teaching students remotely and in-person synchronously has become easier and easier. While it is not ideal, we are all learning and adjusting as best we can.

Significant Child Interaction:
I do not have one significant child story, but more of an entire class success story. I taught an entire unit Math lesson and assessed the students on what they learned, and they all did a great job! We all cheered together for their success. A student's success is a teacher's success!

Challenges:
Continuing to remain flexible and roll with the constant flow of new changes. I remain positive and roll with each new change with a smile. A positive attitude and a smile will help you get through any school day!

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Success Story:My team is finally have a steady flow on the new and very complicated Spanish Language Arts curriculum that we are piloting.  The curriculum is great, but is very overwhelming with the amount of information it has.  It consists of a reading workshop with word work and comprehension, writing workshop, a bridge to reading, a bridge to writing, science components and socia studies components.  Phew!  Just typing this is a lot.  The curriculum is designed as a "pick your path."  Our training was a two hour workshop, which consisted of the essentials.  While my fellow team teacher wanted to quit, I urged her to continue.  Now we have found a steady and consistent pace and are able to get the lessons in.  Given our time allotted for Spanish Language Arts, we aren't able to incorporate the writing workshop, but the students still get rigorous writing assignments.  The more I play with it the more I am finding new things that make it much easier to use.  I recently found the standards related to each lesson instead of having to guess at them. Yeah!Significant Child Interaction: One of my students is struggling with remote learning.  He has two older brothers that he looks up to that are in high school.  Their school hours are different than ours and therefore, my student feels he doesn't have to be on Google Meet as much because his brothers aren't. I spoke to mom and she stated she was struggling with him and the new attitude to try to be like his older brothers.  His older brothers try to encourage him to pay attention in school, but my student responds with "Well you aren't in school right now." I took Mom's concern (as well as mine) to our assistant principal who has an undergraduate in social work. She is going to talk to mom and give her suggestions on how to encourage her son.  Our principal will also work with him on the weeks he is in school.  As the saying goes, "It takes a village!"Challenges: Trying to get my not so new student to remain in attendance. 

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Success Story:My team is finally have a steady flow on the new and very complicated Spanish Language Arts curriculum that we are piloting.  The curriculum is great, but is very overwhelming with the amount of information it has.  It consists of a reading workshop with word work and comprehension, writing workshop, a bridge to reading, a bridge to writing, science components and socia studies components.  Phew!  Just typing this is a lot.  The curriculum is designed as a "pick your path."  Our training was a two hour workshop, which consisted of the essentials.  While my fellow team teacher wanted to quit, I urged her to continue.  Now we have found a steady and consistent pace and are able to get the lessons in.  Given our time allotted for Spanish Language Arts, we aren't able to incorporate the writing workshop, but the students still get rigorous writing assignments.  The more I play with it the more I am finding new things that make it much easier to use.  I recently found the standards related to each lesson instead of having to guess at them. Yeah!Significant Child Interaction: One of my students is struggling with remote learning.  He has two older brothers that he looks up to that are in high school.  Their school hours are different than ours and therefore, my student feels he doesn't have to be on Google Meet as much because his brothers aren't. I spoke to mom and she stated she was struggling with him and the new attitude to try to be like his older brothers.  His older brothers try to encourage him to pay attention in school, but my student responds with "Well you aren't in school right now." I took Mom's concern (as well as mine) to our assistant principal who has an undergraduate in social work. She is going to talk to mom and give her suggestions on how to encourage her son.  Our principal will also work with him on the weeks he is in school.  As the saying goes, "It takes a village!"Challenges: Trying to get my not so new student to remain in attendance. 

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-Diana

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Success Story:
I've taken over math and ELA and the best lesson I had was when my supervisor observed me for midterm eval. The stars were totally aligning that day. The lesson was really well executed, I was using money apps and other tech well, I was asking the kids what different money combinations were, reviewed where the dollar sign went, cents sign went. They were engaged, interactive and my CT gave me a virtual high five when it was done. Even she said it went really well.

Significant child interaction:

For the most part, this class is really well behaved. This past week was the first time I had to use my classroom management skills to reinforce expected Zoom behaviors - keeping cameras on, viewing children's head and shoulders (no 'groundhogs" as we call them). I told them if I had to tell them three times to put their camera on, I would be messaging their parents on Dojo (this was ok'd beforehand by my CT - she wanted to see how I handled this). After they heard the expectations, after that, everyone was fantastic.

Challenges:

The second grade math curriculum is inconsistent. They have different dates on their intranet when assessments should be given, and another area on the curriculum intranet page where the updated pacing guide is posted. I just found out about it today during the team PLC. This means I have to re-plan my math lessons for the remainder of this week and most likely next. I know the teachers are used to inconsistencies, but I feel frustrated sometimes that little things like that I wish I would have known about earlier.

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Montserrat  Huerta              Success Story:                      It is good to see that my groups are engaged. My students were participating in excited to know more about edible bugs.                  Significant child interaction:  During ACCESS testing, one of the students got really frustrated. I talked to the student and I was able to show him some techniques to deal with his emotions. It was a success. He was able to finish his test and I also made a new friend.  Challenges:                             I feel that we have almost no time to teach. Testing is taking place and we will continue until the end of the school year

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Montserrat  Huerta              Success Story:                      It is good to see that my groups are engaged. My students were participating in excited to know more about edible bugs.                  Significant child interaction:  During ACCESS testing, one of the students got really frustrated. I talked to the student and I was able to show him some techniques to deal with his emotions. It was a success. He was able to finish his test and I also made a new friend.  Challenges:                             I feel that we have almost no time to teach. Testing is taking place and we will continue until the end of the school year

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Success story- We’ve been ACCESS testing for the past 3 weeks and tomorrow is finally our last day!!!

Significant child interaction- I haven’t had the chance to work “in person” with my students due to testing, but I’ve been testing them in person. It’s been great to see our 1st graders learn to yet navigate another new set of technology, per say. They’ve been using iPads (touch screen) and they had to test using chromebooks. It’s been amazing to see how fast they have figured it out and have successfully completed all 4 language domain areas of testing (listening, reading, speaking and writing).

Struggle- Hybrid. Working on zoom with multiple people who are also on zoom continues to be difficult.

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Success Story: I have taken over for the most part with teaching duties in the classroom. Although next week marks my official takeover. I have also implemented prizes for the best journal writings because I noticed that motivation was lacking when it came to students writing. This completely turned things around. Students were motivated to complete their daily journals, share them, and submit them to maybe win a prize at the end of the week.

Significant Child Interaction: I would say that my most significant child interaction this week would be with one student who struggles with reading aloud and engaging in Guided Reading. Every day he has been really excited to join me for Guided Reading and asks me "Is my group going to meet with you today?" It is a nice feeling when you know you have a student engaged who usually struggles in that area.

Challenges: My biggest challenge this week has been navigating my first week doing all of the teaching, and also getting all of the things I need to do into one day. It has been feeling a little bit hectic, I have been up lesson planning every night, but I think the kids have been having fun and they have grown in their respect for me, which is a great feeling.

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Success story- I was able to get my midterm and 2 observations done. They all went well. Tomorrow will be my last day of full takeover and everything has gone good, I had a couple bumps but overall I feel I have learned so much from seeing and FEELING the weight of all the work that goes into teaching all the content (hybrid is not easy but I am pushing through).

significant child interaction- Today one of my students who typically has a hard time in class (on zoom) had a great day today when he came into the actually classroom, I could really see the difference that it has made the days that he comes into the school and how much his work has improved. I was super proud of him.

Struggle - One of the biggest struggles is having to depend on the teacher to help share content because everything has to be online and the textbooks that we use is also online and I cannot login to her account we continuously have to swap out my computer for hers.

It has also been a struggle to be on zoom at the same time and one of use has to be mute and volume off when teaching because the waves from the sounds crash and make a horrible noise.

Some of the assessments that we have had to do have also been difficult because they have to sue it through seesaw instead of in person, so some of the students have become very distracted with the features of seesaw and losing time on the assessments.

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Success Story

I have had the difficult task of trying to teach 5th graders about poetry. Some are naturally into it, but most are pretty indifferent. We do our ELA at the beginning of the day, so some are still tired and still waking up. But, through using a couple different techniques (only revealing the poem one stanza at a time then pausing for questions/predictions/wonders/reactions, having them guess what the title of the poem is (or what they think it should be), and trying to make connections to some of their interests, I have been able to get some hand raises and engagement from students who I wouldn’t have expected to lean into poetry.

Significant Child Interaction

This is significant child interaction in the sense that it was a student who was encouraging me. As we were walking back from specials one day, a student asked “Mr. Bahorik, is it true this is your first year teaching?” I chuckled and replied, “Yeah, is it pretty easy to tell?” And the student said, “Well, on your first day, I could tell, but now you’re like an expert!”  :)  I told her I appreciated that and told her that I still have plenty to learn but you all (the students) and Mrs. Rocha have helped me learn so much already.”

Challenges

Still struggling with technology. Connecting to the speakers in the room, projecting to the right screens, navigating my presentations from my computer and the smart board. Also, having a hard time responding to students who give incorrect answers, or answers that are way off. I know with time and experience I’ll get better about redirecting and encouraging, but it feels pretty clunky and almost disingenuous.