H4 – Honor family/community involvement in the learning process.

Teacher-candidates inform, involve, and collaborate with families/neighborhoods, and communities in each student’s educational process, including using information about student cultural identity, achievement and performance.

In order to support the whole child teacher-candidates must be able to communicate and work alongside families and the community in a respectful and professional manner.  The learning process for children requires a team of individuals who are dedicated to the wellbeing and education of the child. Those individuals are the parents and the teachers who above all should work as a team for the child but also members in the community who come to help with the learning and development of the students.

This week my class went on a field trip to the Seattle Aquarium as we have just finished our unit on animals and are about to move into our science unit on the ocean. As evidence of my growing competency in this area I have provided pictures of my students experiencing Seattle and the Seattle Aquarium.

Watching the ducks on the water front

pretending to be starfish eating some mussels

Touching animals as part of our class

Checking out the Sea Otters

These pieces of evidence show my competency in this area because in the planning for and attending this event there were many times that communication with parents and members of the Seattle Aquarium staff was extremely important. There were four kindergarten classes that went on the field trip each with 14-18 students and almost 20 parents. Communication and collaboration was so important because we wanted the students to not only have a great time and learn a lot but they also were expected to behave the same way they would at school if not better.  In the days before the field trip there were countless emails, phone calls and notes exchanged between parents and the teachers in order to coordinate for the grand adventure.

I learned that the more chaperones that you can have the better. There were a few parents who had their hands full, while our kids behaved very well they are still five years old and taking four children in a group is difficult any ways. I want to make sure that parents continue to volunteer at the school so making the experience equally pleasant for them is important.

This impacted students learning because when parents and teachers can communicate and collaborate effectively the students will benefit. All of my students who could go got to go. They all learned a lot about sea creatures and because they were respectful and polite to staff they got to learn even more about them.  This field trip was so good for my students who some have never even been to Seattle before and it could have not happened without the parent volunteers

The next time that I go on a field trip of this size I would like to make sure that I have enough chaperones so that I do not have to take my own group of students. This way I can take the time to focus on the needs of the individual groups and can be useful to all of the parents if they need me.

P3 – Practice standards-based assessment.

Teacher-candidates use standards-based assessment that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies to monitor and improve instruction.

It is important that teacher-candidates learn to properly use assessment to assess their students understanding of the learning target for the lesson. Teachers must be able to give assessments that allow multiple ways for students to show how much they know at the end of a unit or lesson.

In my internship placement classroom we were just finishing up our section on snails which is part of the Animals two by two. To wrap up our unit on snails which was all about the parts of land and water snails ad how they use those body parts we first had the students observe the snails and talk about what body parts are the same and are different. Than as a whole class we reviewed the parts of a snail. I used this as a formative assessment because I was able to gauge how well my students understood snail parts and their functions at that time. Finally as my summative assessments the students were asked to draw and label as best as they could a picture of a land snail and/or a water snail and write a fact sentence about them. As evidence of my competency in this area I have included the whole class drawing that we made and some samples of students drawing and writing about their snails.

These assessment examples are evidence of my growing competency in this area because I planned them out with the help of my mentor teacher and then I administered them with little difficulty. The whole class discussion gave students  a chance to evaluate their own misconceptions about snails and they were able to write things that were true about snails, as well as label their picture once they had to do it on their own.

What I learned while planning and administering these assessments is that formative assessments are a great opportunity to make in the moment changes to your teaching. If the students are not getting it, it is always okay to go back and reteach in a different way to make sure that every student got what they were supposed to out of the lessons.

My students benefited from these assessments because first I gave them an opportunity to put all their thoughts into words and in one place at the front of the board. This made it possible for them to put their thoughts down on paper. Sometimes in kindergarten writing assignments don’t go as planned because some students are still struggling with their letter sounds. The way that I laid out the assessment allowed all of the students to write something about snails and the students that could write more did.

Next time I would like the students to do some self-reflection and self assessment about how well they think they did on their assessment as well as understanding the lesson.