Setting Goals

The past two days teacher assisting have passed in a whirl wind of review games and tests. Since our CT was gone this week it was up to us to lead the class for the two hours that we're there. This proved to be a bit more taxing than I initially thought it would be. We started the class by telling student when we needed their attention instead of yelling or counting down like most teachers do we would raise our hands and say "raise your hand if you can hear me", the students responded really well to this and would quiet down relatively quickly after we did this. This didn't matter when it came to reigning the students in before the review game though, after a lot of flustered "raise your hand if you can hear me"'s we finally got the review game going and were able to get the kids focused on something productive. I learned that middle schoolers REALLY enjoy review games and to be prepared next time for a very rowdy classroom by the end of the game; especially if it comes down to one questions worth of point separating the teams. All this being said, and as taxing as leading the class was, I'm still just as in love with what I'm doing and the fact that I can make a difference in students daily lives.

After two days of discovering which methods worked with the students and which didn't work it was really great to finally sit down and figure out my goals for this semester. I went into the coaching conversation with no idea of where it was really going to go; being asked 'what are your goals this semester' is such a vague and daunting question. Throughout the conversation I slowly made sense of what my goals really were and began talking about what it might mean to see those goals being accomplished. I realized that what I really want to accomplish this semester is to find a method of teaching which allows my students to interact with not only me but each other in a productive manner. I want to find a way to create an environment where I don't have to constantly ask students questions to get an understanding of where they stand in regards to their comprehension of the material. But rather, students are free to converse about the material and the classroom is more of a discussion rather than a lecture at students.

I also want to try and incorporate activities into my lessons in which students get to work collaboratively to come to a deeper understanding of the material. This goal came about after observing my students working together on a worksheet using material they had just been taught and appeared to understand. But, once they were asked to apply this knowledge to a context other than how it was originally taught, they got confused and did not understand how to do this. Observing this really got me thinking about how I would like my students to have a deeper understanding of the lessons they're taught. It through more activities and hands on applications of the material my students might be able to achieve this deeper level of understanding that I would like them to.

With all these goals in mind it's easy to say I want to do all of these things in my classroom but it's still up for debate on how I can accomplish this. I know what I want my classroom to look like and how I would ideally like it to function the only thing now is accomplishing this. And I think it's important through this whole process that I try new things and test a variety of methods in order to see which work best to achieve the type of classroom I want. But! It's also important that I don't overwhelm the students or my CT with too much change. Too much change will lead to the opposite of what I want to accomplish in the classroom. I also need to work on finding new methods of instruction and activities to use with my students in order to for them to achieve a deeper understanding of the material. Any good resources and helpful hints throughout this process would be greatly appreciated!

Next step, lesson planning this weekend and giving my first lesson Monday. Hopefully the first lesson is more of a hit than a flop!