Katelyn Provo
Which Path to Choose?
My Future as a Learner
I am a life long learner and I strive to learn something new everyday. Learning something new can range from learning something about one of my students abilities or home lives to learning a new technique for teaching reading, writing or math. Right now I am continuing to learn new things through my masters program, however as my program comes to a close I need to think about what I want to focus on next. I would like to explore how I can help my students become better writers. I am also looking for more ways I can support my English Language Learners. I would like to continue to work on the organization of my classroom. All three of these goals help me better meet the needs of my students. Which intern helps me become a better teacher.
One of my goals is to help my students become better writers. I am looking for new ideas to motivate and inspire my students, ways I can support them throughout the writing process and expert examples I can show my student's. I will continue to look for interesting writing prompts that I think will interest my students and motivate them to write. I will carefully consider the purpose behind writing assignments and explain to my student's why we are writing and how it is important. I found two websites below with over 70 journal prompts between them. I will use prompts from these websites to give my students new topics to write about.
I also want to research some writing tools to help my students. I came across this blog, which I think will be very useful. It is a blog created by a first grade teacher about developing a Writer’s Toolbox. I plan to thoroughly read through this blog and start a list of writing ideas and resources I can share with my students.
I also plan to use the resources I have available at my school. One of my co-teachers Mrs. G is a fantastic writer. We plan to co-teach some writing lessons this year. That way I can watch an expert teacher and see what techniques she uses to help her students with writing. I know I can learn a lot by observing her and bouncing ideas off of her.
I plan to read over the following PDF, which is entitled Teaching Elementary School Student’s to be Effective Writers. This document was developed by the state of Michigan Department of Education and I think it will give me a good set of writing expectations to reference.
A second goal I have is to learn new techniques to better support my English Language Learners (ELL). I think this is extremely important given that I currently and will continue to receive all English Language Learners in first grade. I want to find more ways I can support them and help them succeed in my classroom. There are numerous books available about working with ELL students. One book I would like to read is Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners By Jane D. Hill and Kirsten B. Miller. This book is research based and aligned with Bloom’s taxonomy, it takes into account the stages of language acquisition and provides tools to help integrate language development objectives into content instruction. This book provides strategies that are beneficial for all students. I would also like to read Best Practices in ELL Instruction edited by Guofang Li and Patricia A. Edwards. In this book best-practice guidelines are provided for reading, writing, oral language, vocabulary, it touches on assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students; and the importance of building strong home school partnerships. I think both of these books will provide me with a lot of new ideas that will help me better meet the needs of all of my student's.
My third goal is to improve my classroom organization. This is something I have been working very hard at, but I know I still have room to grow. I want to explore some different options for organizing my room, which will make my classroom run more smoothly and efficiently. One book I am very interested in purchasing is The Organized Teacher: A Hands-on Guide to Setting Up & Running a Terrific Classroom, Grades K-5 by Steve Springer, Brandy Alexander and Kimberly Persiani. This book includes numerous reproducible pages, forms and checklists. The overall goal of this book is to help make your classroom run more efficiently. I think this book will provide me with some great ideas about how I can reorganize and make my classroom run even more efficiently.
In conclusion, I have learned a lot in my masters program, however, I know I still have a lot to learn. I have set three goals for myself one to learn new techniques to improve my students writing, two to find strategies to further support my ELL students and three to work on strategies to reorganize my classroom so it can run more effectively and efficiently. I am excited to get started on these new goals and I can’t wait to use what I learn to help my students.
Image Sources:
http://journalbuddies.com/teacher-parent-resources/first-grade-journal-writing-prompts/
http://www.writingprompts.net/1st-grade/
http://firstgradewow.blogspot.com/2012/06/writers-tool-box.html
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/writing_pg_062612.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Practices-Instruction-Problems-Teaching-Literacy/dp/1606236628
http://www.amazon.com/Classroom-Instruction-English-Language-Learners/dp/1416616306