The Third Week

While we are on our third week of classes, my students at Washington are completing their second week of school. In the school this week, I got the chance to meet with the guidance counselor and talk about my students and their needs. I really enjoyed having this meeting because it allowed me to get a closer look into my students' lives. I have such a diverse group of students so to be able to talk with the guidance counselor and plan my instruction based on their individual needs was very neat. This also aligns with standard 2 of the NCTCS in several different ways. Teachers embrace diversity in the school community and the world, and teachers adapt their teaching for the benefit of students with special needs. I feel that I am really getting to embrace having a diverse group this year, while also trying to mend my lessons to each individual student's needs. It was very satisfying to get to be involved in a meeting such as that with my CE.

This past week in 435, we wrote our first edTPA lesson plans of the semester. This was the largest thing I have struggled with because I still feel like edTPA is a foreign language at times. To deal with this struggle, I found a website that I think will be a wonderful resource for all of us as we continue to use edTPA. http://www.edtpatips.com/ is a website that provides so much helpful information regarding edTPA. It has definitions, tips, and easy to understand explanations. I know it greatly helped me this past week!

I think I have FINALLY gotten on top of all of my work for my courses and this has definitely brought me the most satisfaction this week. It is a feeling like no other to be organized! It has also helped me feel like I have contributed to the class more since I am not overwhelmed with what I have to do. In science, we went down the river to build our ecocolums. This was a fun field trip, especially when Grace brought back a baby snake! As a group, we have all worked together to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to catch critters for each other's projects.

In current events this week, astronomers in Japan think they have found the second largest black hole in the Milky Way Galaxy. Since I am in third grade, the solar system is a big part of science education standards. Like we have discussed in science methods, it is fairly easy to connect everything around us to science in some way.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/04/supermassive-black-hole-discovered-near-heart-of-the-milky-way

Top Tweets:
My first tweet this week is a quote that I took from an article that Dr. Parker shared with us talking about inquiry. I liked this quote because I think too often we get too caught up on the standards we must address and forget that we aren't supposed to be teaching to the standards. We are supposed to be teaching to our students.

My second tweet is from NASA and is a gif I found of some up close pictures of the solar system. I thought this was neat because we are working on science through our lens this week and these pictures are the true definition of science through a lens!

My final tweet this week is a goal that one educator set for herself. I like the idea of this because by setting this goal, you are going out of your way to insure that you make your students feel more confident and comfortable.