Task Description And Analysis Of The Double Talented 8th-Grade Class

As I have grown as a professional particularly over the past four years working with gifted learners, I recognize many lessons learned to improve my practice. My approach is less teacher directed and more student led blocks. I start with a brief mini-lesson for the topic of the day giving a few tips (as you can see in my whole group video clip). There is a short session of guided practice during this acquiring knowledge portion of the lesson. The bulk of the time then is given to investigations where I facilitate meaning making. Providing challenging tasks that I do not solve for or with them has given new excitement to my classroom. The level of engagement has skyrocketed. Conversations among students has given opportunity to build deep understanding on pre-algebra content. I have no students in academic support and none have failed their end-of-the year testing which is amazing given the complexity of our curriculum. Across the state, the 8th grade math assessment is one of the lowest performing end of the year tests. I am confident my experiences in the reflective cohort, balanced assessment committee, and gifted course work/Praxis time investments leading to endorsements had an impact on student learning.

I am going to be looking at and discussing how to improve on my own and team practice. Within this, I will be discussing why it is important to continue with my professional development and why team work is important in schools. I will also be describing why it is important to be respectful of the skills and expertise that others can bring to the team.

Supporting participation could be to invite parents into the class to share their child’s favorite storybook from home and be a part of that day’s circle time. The child will gain a sense of pride as they sit beside their parent as they contribute to circle time. Another example is the children

Explain how you plan to apply to your lesson planning on exploring water and gardens to each of the four (4) aspects of Learning Outcome 2?

Additionally, Paula struggles staying focused and on-task during class instruction. Paula frequently gets lost and distracted with the material in front of her, but Paula makes up for it with her dedication to answer the question correctly. Frequently, Paula observes her peers respond during whole class discussions and also answers some of the questions asked during these discussions. The teacher uses these opportunities as a learning opportunity to highlight the correct answer or guide the students into saying the correct answer. It is great that Paula wants to participate in classroom discussions because she remains fully engaged and frequently offered the opportunity to state his own understandings about the concept or skill he is being taught. Drawing on this observation and the use of intervention work, the teacher can plan future opportunities to allow the students to not only communicate their understandings about the content they are being taught, but to also further drive in the content he is being

Ms. Felkins started out with their read aloud, The Odyssey. The students were focused, but occasionally would get carried away with unrelated questions. After read aloud, the students moved on to their word study lesson. Each student had words to cut out and sort. After they cut their words they had a worksheet and made sentences that incorporated their words. As the students were working, Ms. Felkins was walking around the classroom assisting the students if needed. While the other students were working, I individually worked with a student who recently started third grade. First, the student read a short story book to me, and I assisted her with any words or sounds she was struggling with. She practiced her numbers by matching one through

My agency volunteer work takes place at Busch Middle School of Character, it is through Urban Future which offers after school tutoring, mentoring, transportation, and many other opportunities for the student’s education to be enriched. Busch Middle School typically enrolls around 300-400 6th, 7th, and 8th graders each year. Urban future relays mainly on volunteers to assist with the after school services they provide as well as project mangers that are in charge of running the programs at Busch Middle School. My volunteer work included tutoring 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in the resource lab, during this time the students worked on their reading skills in a program called Achieve3000. Achieve3000 is a program that steadily increases students’ ability to read, comprehend, apply, and communicate information derived from complex text. My role in the resource lab was to make sure every student was understanding the material, and if not, to sit down one on one with a student to help them with their current Achieve3000 lesson. In the resource lab, each student did their very best to engage themselves in the program and expand their level of knowledge.

Her flexibility is an important key in being able to reach every student individually. Mrs. Thompson mentioned in conversation although the children are grouped by the school based on commonality of skill level, she finds every year that the skill level is still very varied. With that said, it is imperative as a teacher that creative ways be implemented to allow each student to learn equally verses “teaching to the middle.” By “teaching to the middle” often times the children who fall behind continue to struggle while the students who are more advanced lack a challenge. Chanel mentioned one way to combat this would be to pre-plan agendas because organization is a key component to a successful classroom

Amid this lesson, students will be set in pre-composed gatherings of two. The grouping will be based on the student's pre-test score. The thought is to put a high scoring student with a low scoring student, and together they will work cooperatively. My justification for putting students in this design is very basic. The student who didn't score as well on the pre-test will get assistance from their peer who did. The pair will read and finish their specific role over Franklin Roosevelt's March 9, 1937 Fireside Chat about reorganizing the Supreme Court. The student who scored higher on the pre-test will provide research of the document and read it so everyone can hear. While the student who scored lower on the pre-test will represent what is

el nino is a warm band of water that periodically develops in the Pacific Ocean near the equator off western South America. El Niño—Spanish for “the child” because it often occurs around Christmas—occurs about once every two to seven years. El Niño can affect the weather in large parts of Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and North and South America, causing both floods and droughts. An El Niño event is often followed by a band of colder than normal ocean waters called La Niña, which is Spanish for “the girl.” La Niña produces the opposite weather conditions. Both of these phenomena cause changes in air pressure in the western Pacific. Together these two events are known as ENSO, or El Niño–Southern

El Nino is a warm current in the Pacific Ocean that flows southward along South America’s west coast. It usually last nine to twelfth months and returns an average 4 years. Normally deep, cold Pacific waters well up to the surface of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian coast, bringing up nutrients and chilling surface waters and causing climatic changes worldwide. A powerful El Nino in 1982 and 1983 caused severe drought in Australia and Indonesia and an unusually large number of storms in California. During the 1997-98 El Nino, heavy rains caused flooding in Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina; monsoons and cyclones struck Madagascar: and severe storms pelted Texas and the Southeast. More recent El Nino events in 2003 and 2006 were not as devastating.

The classroom follows a partial day inclusion program. Ms. Welsh’s classroom on the second floor of Village School is considered their base area. The student’s belongings are all kept in the classroom upstairs and they spend the majority of their time there throughout the day. All students are taught by both teachers for math, science, and social studies. For reading and writing, Ms. Wilush teaches three students in a pull-out resource room on the first floor of the building. When it is time for students to review those lessons, the three students make their way down to Ms. Wilush’s classroom with the folders and other materials they may need. Once reading and writing periods are completed, the students either return to Ms. Welsh’s classroom or go to an alternate room for specials such as art or music. Ms. Wilush and Ms. Welsh’s relationship can be described as both friendly and professional. Ms. Welsh is currently going to graduate school for special education, so she is learning a lot from Ms. Wilush’s work. At the same time, Ms. Wilush is taking the opportunity to learn from such an experienced teacher as Ms. Welsh who has taught for ten years. They believe that the best way to work efficiently and achieve the most success for each student is

For the team activity, the role that I played was making sure everyone contributed to the presentation via group messaging and completing the slide on informing students of their progress. If any of my team members needed access to the PowerPoint, I made sure to share it with them along with the instructions for the assignment. As a team, we decided it would be best for all of us to contribute at least one resource for students not on track with their progress. A few of the resources I mentioned were MyOn, I-Ready, Accelerated Reader, and Pizza Hut Book-It program. The team had already talked about math resources, so it only made sense to throw in some reading resources. MyOn, I-Ready, and Pizza Hut Book-It program are programs used in Prince George’s County School District. Pizza Hut Book-It program rewards students who complete their reading goal for the month, a personal pan pizza certificate. Usher and Kober stated, “pursing a reward can change students’ behaviors in positive ways for the duration of the reward program and perhaps after the reward ends” (Usher and Kober 2012). Accelerated Reader is a program used at my son’s school as a way for individual students to compete in reading by acquiring so many points by the end of the month. He is a 2nd grader student.

Recently, the weather has varied greatly from traditional for many areas within the United States; the East Coast has had next to zero snow, while Midwest states have been hit by several heavy snowstorms. Although this change in weather patterns, compared to the average year, may appear unordinary and confusing, it can be attributed to the fact that a very strong El Niño is currently underway. El Niño occurs when trade winds in the Pacific Ocean decrease in magnitude, which in turn results in less upwelling in the ocean off the east coast of South America. Without the usual amount of upwelling occurring, not as much cold water is brought to the surface, and the water in the Pacific Ocean, particularly around the equator, becomes much warmer than normal. Although it may not be blatantly obvious why the temperature of water in the Central Pacific would have such an effect on the United States, ocean currents and atmospheric circulation are the backbone for climatic conditions worldwide.

We live on an incredibly large planet. Even broader than the size of the planet are the amount of changes and relationships between humans, animals, environment, weather, and the affects of each. Many times with busy schedules and modern lifestyles we forget the interaction that goes on between any number of concepts or idea's. We fail to realize that a specific weather occurrence in the Pacific Ocean can have an affect on every day life in the United States. El Nino is one of the largest scientific phenomenons that scientists have ever explored. The main concepts of El Nino are very simple and there are many variations, causes, affects, and relationships to study.