Blog #6

4.2) Chapter 4 is all about teacher responses to student needs. Throughout the chapter there are multiple bolded subheadings (scenarios, specific strategies, and ideas for classroom routines). Choose three of them that you believe you can work on or that you would like to do in your own classroom, and explain why you chose them.

In the chapter the three headings that I found that I feel are important and that I want to have in my class are:
1)The Classroom Environment
I want my environment to be what I am teaching. I want there to be posters on the walls that can stimulate my students minds. I want the walls to be congruent with what I am teaching. I want there to be clean organized tables and desks that make the room feel like I have a handle on what is being taught and what is being received back from the students (even when there might not be).
I want there to also be and an emotional environment that is consistent and predictable for my students. I want to have the same consequences for the same actions every time that my students misbehave. I want my students to know that I love them and that is why we work so hard in my class, because I want them to succeed.
2)Communication
In my classroom I want there to be a good communication. I don't want it to be teacher-teacher-teacher, but I want it to be teacher-student-student, in other words I want to teach once and then have my students feed back to my teaching, then the most important I want my students to teach each other. Having my students teach each other is the most powerful type of teaching. The communication will always be open in my class. I will treat my students with respect and they will treat me with respect. That is one of the reasons why I want to have morning meetings in my classroom. having morning meetings creates a soft, warm, and open atmosphere that allows my student the want to communicate with me and others in there class.
3)Classroom Routines and Classroom Operation
This step and the one before in are so close to me in my mind that I almost some that in the same category.
Having routines in place is essential to the flow of the classroom. This shouldn't be something that the students should guess but a path that is drawn with heavy lines that doesn't leave my students guessing. I want them to know that when I give them warning to clean up it is because I actually want them to clean up! The reason why I say this is because my daughter Kenya had a third grade teacher that had a Troll doll on her desk (these are the dolls that have the bright colored hair that stands up from their heads). If this doll had its hair up then the kids could play and if the hair was down then that told the students that their teacher was grumpy and that they needed to watch themselves. This was difficult because if the student wasn't watching the desk then they would get in trouble for not paying attention to "Mr. Moody." How ridiculous this was for the students to have to guess how to act on different days. I pulled my child from this class the 3 week when I came to the school on a "Mr. Moody" day and found the students marching back and forth in lines till they got it right, uncalled for!


5.3) On the bulletin board that I face as I sit at my desk in my office, I have posted, just above eye-level, the following:


Are my assignments…
· Important? (authentic)
· Focused? (students know what to do)
· Engaging? (interesting)
· Demanding? (challenging)
· Scaffolded? (students aren’t left hanging)
I think this sign is helping me improve, but it’s a lot to work on. Some things are easier than others. For instance, I think I’ve come a long way in planning focused assignments, largely through gentle suggestions from students and colleagues. I think the one in which I’m “better than the others” is “demanding assignments.” Obviously, these come from Figure 5.1 on page 59. Take a look at them, with their bulleted explanations, and list them in a prioritized order for yourself… from the easiest for you to the most difficult for you. Briefly explain your ranking.

I really want to do this for myself to see what I need to work on some of these are at the same level for me but I will try do rank them.
Scaffolded
Engaging
Focused
Important
Demanding


Scaffolded is the easiest for me because I automatically think in my mind, what steps do my students need to do to get to this point? for example I found out that I will be able to have my students be pen pals to a different country. The first thing I thought of was, What do they need to know before my students write some where else? They need to learn etiquette for letter writing, how to write, how to write open ended sentences, how to respond, what to do with the letter. Then how to write on line, do they know how to email? I came up with a word the other day instead of etiquette, Netiquette. This means do my students know how to write to people online? do they know how to treat new friends online?
The hardest for me, but not really, just the one that would be the one that I need to work on more it Demanding. It is difficult for me to not be a softy! To listen to the sad little stories and just let the assignment go to easily. The rest is understandable and I can do easily.