Monday, December 9, 2013

16th and Final week of my Internship

The start of my final week began with a two hour delay. While growing up I always hoped for delays and cancelations, I found today to be crazy, and chaotic as a teacher. I was constantly having to redirect students, and had a difficult time accomplishing my plans. Some students did not even come for their scheduled pull out due to the change in schedule. I felt completely opposite about the delay than I would have if I were a student. I strongly disliked the change in schedule!

However, I am super excited for the upcoming week. I have been able to sit in on many IEP meetings as an active participator. I even will be given the chance to run my first meeting on Wednesday. Today, I witnessed an IEP meeting where the parent spoke up and voiced his concern for the change. The team responded well and worked together with the parent to satisfy the concerns and needs. I thought it was interesting that the parent didn't want the team to be upset, and voiced his opinion in a concerned way, instead of a stern way. The team worked together to come up with a new plan of keeping the times that were followed before, and to have an additional meeting in the spring to discuss how things are going in the regular education classroom with the students new assistive technology. I was very impressed with the overall outcome of the meeting, and was pleased that there was no hostile environment mood when a concern was voiced. I hope to conduct my meetings in a similar fashion if I ever was put in this same situation.

Friday, December 6, 2013

week 15 of Intern year

This week during an IEP meeting for one of my students, the parent began explaining during the math portion of the goals how much more fluent the student had become in math fact fluency. I was very excited because I had been working on this every day to help build his understanding. I felt so excited that I was making a difference. I explained to the parent that the main thing to help build this fluency is using hands on games, such as "I have..Who has..." The student loves participating in this game and even higher leveled students enjoy the game as well because they get to work together and build teamwork. I also told the parent I feel this was occurring because the students were participating in number talks. I try to have the student build the relationships of addition and subtraction by talking about how to get to the answer in a variety of ways. I knew the student was learning this more fluently through timed addition tests, as well as the student's quote during the meeting. Someone on the team had said, "For example, what is 5 + 4," to which the student jumped up and said,
9!" Everyone was tickled with how well he knew the fact, and the parent said this was a huge improvement from just the beginning of the year. It was an amazing feeling to hear that the student made a huge jump in just a small skill that will build the rest of the skills. I also feel that he has learned most effectively through authentic assessments using the Interactive Notebook. I thoroughly enjoy using this assessment in the class because the students don't view the assessment as a test! This was a very exciting meeting for me!