Zinzer - Week 5

Collaboration and Creativity!

It was a busy week filled with collaboration and creativity.  I attended my first all staff meeting which was held in the auditorium.  The main focus was about getting creativity back in the classroom.  My mind kicked into overdrive thinking of all the various ways to weave creativity into my student teaching experience.  That's my favorite part of lesson planning and offering opportunities to students to get creative.

It was also a week of collaboration with my cooperating teacher (Mr. Sanders).  We taught the "The Melian Dialogue" together.  It was a ton of fun and I do enjoy the co-teaching experience, but what I really enjoyed most was collaborating during planning for the lesson, during the lesson and then even after.  Standard 8 - Collaborative Relationships was the key standard here.  Throughout this particular lesson, we had a virtual dialogue taking place that Mr. Sanders and I switch off motoring and participating in.  Simultaneously, while the outer circle (virtual experience) was taking place, there was a smaller group within having an actual discussion/question format.  This was reflective of the fishbowl style learning experience.  The outcome was successful and we were able to assess the students on speaking and listening as well as writing.  Standard 6 - Reading, Writing and Oral Communication was a perfect fit here for this exercise.

It was the first time I had used Backchannel Chat which is an online discussion board.  I loved how simple it was to set up in order to provide students with a link and code in order to access our discussion board relating to "The Melian Dialogue."  The conversations that took place were relevant, informative and even got silly sometimes, but in a positive and refreshing way.  Luckily, all the students used this tool appropriately and respectfully.

I've got a stack of AP practice essays to grade using the College Board AP Exam rating scale.  Even though these are practice essays for the students, they will receive points for writing.  I'll be stepping out of my comfort zone here while grading these essays, but I've been supplied with a clear and concise rubric to follow.  Alan will be grading and scoring them and I'll be back grading and scoring them and we will come back together to see if our scores were somewhat in sync.  Although this is going to be challenging, not only because of the number of essays and the time-consuming aspect of it all, I'm looking forward to pushing myself as I know it will only better prepare me for when I have my own classroom.

I navigated through a tech issue while I was teaching this week even though I triple checked to make sure all was working properly.  I couldn't have predicted that this was going to happen; however, I just have to keep reminding myself to stay calm and have an alternative plan if the tech portion of a lesson doesn't work out.  It's always good to have a Plan B.

To end the week, I experienced my first fire alarm!  Luckily, we were able to go back into the building within five minutes.  Even though this was a false alarm, it was a good test in order for me to understand the procedures and processes in order to keep my students safe and secure.

~Kirsten