My name is Eva Ticknor and I am a senior Early Childhood Education major at Illinois State University. I grew up in Crystal Lake Illinois and decided to attend ISU because I knew it had a well-respected College of Education. Initially, I thought that I wanted to teach preschool or kindergarten-aged children. But throughout my clinical and personal experiences, I have come to realize that I enjoy working with second and third graders. This is my last semester at ISU before student teaching and I am looking forward to learning all that I can before I leave! This blog will follow my thoughts about this semester as I participate in my clinical setting of a kindergarten classroom.
As I am in my clinical setting this semester there are four goals I have set for myself to achieve by the end of the semester. My first goal is to improve on building professional relationships in my clinical setting. Last semester, I felt as though my cooperating clinical teacher and I did not have much of a connection. I want to get to know my cooperating teacher better this semester so that I can feel more comfortable talking with her about her students, her coworkers, and teaching in general. I know how important it is to have an open path of communication with coworkers and I hope to begin practicing forming relationships like this by working on my relationship with my cooperating teacher.
Another goal that I have for this semester is to become more comfortable with teaching science and social studies to children. I feel like I have had plenty of opportunities to teach reading and writing lessons but I have not had much experience with these other subjects. I know that through the classes I am taking this semester I will learn strategies for teaching science and social studies in fun and effective ways.
The third goal I have made for myself is that I want to integrate relevant technology into my lessons. Last semester I worked on becoming more comfortable with using Smart boards and now I want to continue to expand my knowledge. There are so many websites and resources for teachers to incorporate into their lessons in order to make them more engaging, visually stimulating, and interactive for students. I want to explore some of these resources this semester and make sure that my lessons are fun and involve relevant technology in an effective way.
My last goal for this semester is to work on my classroom management skills. Classroom management is something that I find to be tricky and somewhat uncomfortable at times. I work in a school over the summer, and I find that I have an easier time with classroom management when I personally know the students. I think that this is some of the reason why I find it difficult in a clinical setting. Some things that I plan on doing in order to improve my classroom management skills are that I am going to make sure to tell student my expectations, have an attention grabber to use throughout my lessons, and make my activities engaging.
Here is a quote that I love and reminds me how important it is to make learning
fun and interactive for kids!
Eva, I really appreciated reading your first blog post. I just recently moved to Mchenry and find myself in Crystal Lake quite frequently! Three of your goals aligned with mine, oddly enough. I talked about classroom management in my blog and reflecting on what you said, I feel as though we will be able to connect with our students really well considering we will be starting with them at the beginning of the year. This way we will be able to grow with them throughout the year. Also, I would liked to become more familiar with Science and Social studies this semester too. We have placed a heavy emphasis on Math and Reading and I would like to further my knowledge and learn more about Science and Social Studies. I'm excited to see what we will learn this semester. Technology is also a goal of mine for this semester for this semester. I think it will be a great learning experience to see what Dr. Husband presents us with. :)
ReplyDeleteEva,
ReplyDeleteI also appreciated getting to know you a little better in this post. I especially loved how you set some specific goals for your classroom management. I know firsthand how tough establishing your management in the clinical setting can be--you're only there one day a week! The ideas you've mapped out will definitely help you with the strangeness of trying to establish strong relationships with just one day's interactions. I would have loved to know more specifics of how you'll attack the other goals, so know that I'll be pushing you to consider them in the weeks to come!
:)Kira
Eva,
ReplyDeleteI loved getting to read a little bit more about your background and your thoughts and preferences on teaching! While reading your goals, I kept thinking about how important I thought all of your goals were. One goal that I personally keep in mind is the building professional relationships with my cooperating teacher and colleagues. I feel that in my first clinical setting my coopering teacher and myself did not connect very well, but last semester I feel that I really connected with my teacher and teacher's aide. I found that when I felt more comfortable with the cooperating teachers in my classroom I was more comfortable with taking initiative in the classroom and asking questions. This is why it is something I also strive to work on! I also agree that I am really nervous to work with Science and Social Studies. I just feel that since I have not gotten as much experience working with those subjects I will feel a little out of place. I'm hoping that Dr. Osorio, Kira, and working in our clinicals will make us feel more comfortable with these topics! I could also relate to wanting to improve on classroom management skills. I would really like to figure out a classroom management system that is more preventative and less about punishment. I also really enjoy the quote you included in your blog post. It is very sweet and also a very good reminder of how important it is to make a child's learning interactive!
:P Kristina D'Andrea
Eva,
ReplyDeleteI think your first goal of wanting to connect more strongly with your CT is a great goal! I know last semester I had a great connection with my CT and it really helped me feel encourage to be involved in the classroom and empowered me to want to know how I could more efficiently work alongside my CT. How do you think you can connect better with your CT this semester? Maybe you can look back at the questions in your "All About Me" sheet from last semester and see what kinds of questions you could add or change in the sheet this semester. Also, maybe you can meet with your teacher before or just discuss with them right away before the first day starts and explain that you want to get to know them well and support them in working alongside them for these next weeks so that your CT understands that you are interested in learning more about your CT and their classroom.
I too have a goal this semester to implement more science and social studies into my clinicals and learn more about these subjects. In our last two semesters of clinicals and also my past experience at my community college did not give me much experience or teaching in these two subject so I feel that it is important for us to learn as much as we can and implement the ideas and activities that we can use in our clinicals this semester so that we can be as prepared as possible for student teaching.
Lastly, you had stated that you wanted to integrate more technology in your activities and in your clinical classroom? How do you think you will supply tools and materials for your lessons in case the school may not be fully equipped? And do you have any ideas of age appropriate and developmentally appropriate programs or technological tools that can be used in the classroom? I think it would be helpful for you to make a list of tools based on technology or apps that you can use for lessons and activities and make sure to research everything you list so that when you want to integrate some of these tools in a lesson then your have done your research and know what tool will be most effective for you to use. I think this is a great goal to have because we don't get enough practice in integrating new technology and tools and it would be great for you to have this practice before student teaching.
Good luck with this semester and I hope you accomplish your goals!
Chantal
Eva,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your first blog post. I was able to connect with your post so well because our clinical experiences are so similar. Last semester, we were both in 3rd grade and now we are both in younger grades. (K and 1st) It is not surprising that we have in common a goal about establishing professional relationships this semester. I was in the same situation as you last semester at our placements so I’m excited to see how our placement goes this semester. It was really hard not being comfortable asking important questions about the students, colleagues and parents. We can only hope that this semester we will finally be able to answer these questions and the answers can better prepare us for student teaching and eventually a job! I love how we are pushing forward and not letting negative past experiences halt us. I think it would be helpful if we shared our new experiences with each other and share tips for building these relationships.
Also, I struggle with classroom management during some of my lessons as well. I think my issue has to do with lack of comfort in some classrooms. I am definitely going to use some of Kira’s attention grabbers when implementing my lessons in the future. I think it greatly help the classroom management problem.