Post 5: Bringing It Together

My first goal was about initiating conversation with my CT about any aspect of teaching I had questions about or wanted to learn more about. I have been extremely lucky this semester to have developed a close relationship with my CT. She has been open to answering any and every question I have had about teaching. I have learned to voice my questions because it will only help me in the future. Any question I had about her teaching, her classroom, or anything else I was wondering about was always answered. She also supplied me with some great resources and awesome materials. Anytime she felt like I could benefit from worksheets, activities, etc. she would make a copy for me as well.

Unfortunatly, I did not incorporate any attention getters into the classroom that we have learned at ISU, however, I used some of the attention getters that she would occassionally use in the classroom.

I accomplished using my classmates, CT, and other resources to help me throughout the semester. As I said before, my CT was awesome, so she was very helpful whenever I had questions on lessons I was preparing for or questions about the classroom in general. Also, asking my fellow classmates was helpful as well because we were all going through the same thing, so we could help each other and guide each other through this process.

After this semester, I can definitely say that my lesson plan writing skills has improved greatly. They are obviously not perfect and they never will be, but I have learned a lot from writing them this semester and how to make them stronger!

Knowing that I was able to accomplish 3/4 of my goals, will only help me next semester for student teaching. I know that I will be more confident in communicating with my CT, I will continue to write strong lesson plans, and I will use all of the resources that are available to me. Also, I will feel much more comfortable next semester incorporating everything I can from ISU, such as the attention getters. Once I know that I am taking over the class, I will incorporate more of the aspects to teaching that I feel strongly about.

I want to continue working on incorporating more aspects of teaching I have learned from ISU into the classroom. My biggest struggle with all of my clinical experiences was bringing in the things I learned at ISU because it is not my classroom or students. I want to have my own classroom where I can impliment all of the things I have learned at ISU!

Overall, this has been an amazing semester in third grade because my students were amazing and my CT was so helpful and caring. My students really made me feel welcomed into the classroom and my CT allowed me to help and teach throughout the entire day. I was petrified to go into a third grade classroom and now I have come out of this experience opened to any grade between kindergarten and third!