Here is a copy of my year plan chart from the beginning of the year. If I have learned anything from the beginning of the year is that things do not always go as planned. At the end of September we quickly realized that our class was not doing very well learning two different topics in both LA and Math. So from there we decided we needed to get on the same page so the students were not needing to switch back and forth day to day. Doing this put us back in our year plan a little bit but the success we started to see in our students showed us it was the right decision. In our plans we set aside June to be our review month for PAT's and now that it is almost here we still have some curriculum we need to cover before we can start our PAT prep. I think the biggest thing I have learned this year is I need to be flexible and roll with the punches. As a teacher you can be planned to the minute and depending on the day it may or may not happen. And that's okay.
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Earlier this month we wrote our first PAT for the year. I was a little nerve wracking for me as well as the class. They were all very anxious to write their first one. We had done a lot of preparation and practice to make sure they were as ready as they were going to be. I was very proud of how they did overall. Many of my students had done their best piece of writing. Here are two excellent examples from my students. They took an idea from the picture prompt and created two great stories.
Here are two exams that I used for Flight. They are focused on the SLE for Grade 6 Science. I also incorporated some PAT level questions so they are able to get that exposure before they have to write in June. I have two exams because I have a few students that I have modified for. The modified tests include simpler language and fewer questions but still meet the same overarching learning outcomes.
Before going out for PSII we were asked to create a unit plan for classes we were going to teach. It also included our vision of what an effective gym teacher would look like. After completing PSII I still stand by the fact that being hands on, having good organization, and keeping activities engaging are major parts of being effective in the gym but there are a few more that I would add now. One that is very important is having high classroom expectations and making sure to follow through every time. In high school students are much more likely to push the boundaries and without having firm expectations a class can quickly turn in a different direction. This was difficult for me because every week I had new students. So every week I had to continuously relay my expectations. Another aspect that I found to be helpful was to implement consistency in every lesson with different sports. So whether that was meeting in the same place for attendance, or doing the same type of warm up. This way if I had a students one week and then did not see them until three weeks later it was still consistent with what they previously. This helped build structure in a space that is much more open and free than a typical classroom.
In PSI I generally planned one class at a time. I would have a general idea of what I was going to do throughout the unit but seldom written down in a concise format. I have found it very helpful in PSII to create a more structured unit plan for my classes. It gave me a better sense of what my goals were and also helped with my timing for my lessons. I would be able to see right away of lessons needed more activities rather than writting it out into a lesson plan and realizing later that I needed more content. I found it helpful to alter the way I wrote my lesson plans by highlighting the role of the students versus the role of the teacher. I found it gave me more room to state the activity, the questions I wanted to ask, and some assessments I could implement in the class. It is easier for me to see exactly what the students task is and all the other things that I need to be doing in that time frame.
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Miss. HamptonLinking learning and instruction to KSA's Archives
May 2017
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