#10

Best

• My cooperating teacher gives each student at number at the beginning of the school year and they write that number on their papers along with their name. This ends up saving her A LOT of time. She puts the papers in number order to file or put on the grading sheets. When she is passing out papers she calls them by number and they come up to her desk on the right side, the students are like little soldiers. I liked this as far as filing and the grading book because she already has all the information in number order and make sit a lot easier than putting their names in alphabetical order.
• The students dissected owl pellets while I was there. Even though it was discussing and I am pregnant with a weak stomach it was fun to see how much the kids enjoyed this hands on experience that related to the unit they were learning on owls.

Worst

• This was by a long shot my least favorite field experience. I felt like my teacher did nothing at all that I have been learning for the last year and a half. Such as Words Their Way, creative writing, literature circles, guided reading (well any literacy instruction at all), differentiation, morning meetings, science, her social studies was not even on grade level, investigations math. OKAY OKAY I'LL STOP BEING SO MEAN but I didn't learn a thing.

#9

For this blog, I'm asking you to have a "What if?" experience. Think of one of the strategies you've learned about, and a realistic application in, let's say, math, in your specific field experience classroom. (If not math, you choose the subject area... but something you really might be teaching during field!). This does not have to be lengthy... just state the content you're talking about and the strategy you can envision using.

The only that I can picture differentiation math, my topic is multiplication, is by creating a learning menu. I would instruct all the students with the "meat" the same and then let them do the "dessert" on their own level. I think I would do the dessert by letting the students explore the topic in different ways, manipulative, algorithms, problems at their level, maybe problems that they have created themselves. Unfortunately the cooperating teacher I am with right now does not differentiate AT ALL so I have not been able to see any thing in practice.

#6

Please find someone's blog in the other class (not yourclass, the other one) and read their blog about the hero unit. In YOUR blog, tell me whose blog you are discussing, and then tell me what you learned or confirmed about differentiation from reading that idea for the hero unit. Don't critque the idea; just tell me what you learned or confirmed about differentiation.

I read Brianna Young's blog and I liked how she said that for her choice of a differentiated strategy to work with this unit would require a creative teacher. She chose to do a RAFT chart and let the students pick a way to represent and explain their hero. I thought it was interesting how she said that simply having a chart was not going to suffice, we have to be creative and make sure that the options on our chart are going to be something the students are proud of when they finish.

Blog #5

For this week's blog, please look over the variety of strategies and unit structuring ideas I have posted for you on Blackboard (in a folder that says, "Strategies and Ideas for Differentiating"). Then write and tell me about one of those ideas that you can see would work in my unit on heros. Tell me a little bit about why you think it would work for my unit, and why kids might feel the work is engaging and respectful for all.

I thought that students choice process and product would work great with this idea. The students can each pick their hero and the book that works best for them and their level and then create their own way to represent that to the class. I like how there are two rows for 4 options for the students to chose from, this way it is still teacher directed so we can make sure that their work is going to be worthwhile yet the assignment that they chose will be engaging and respectful to them.