Week Six

This was my last full week at my seven week placement. I can’t believe how much time has flown by. I keep thinking back when I was sitting in orientation freaking hearing that I would be teaching a full day in a classroom. Now, I couldn’t imagine just sitting in the classroom observing or only teaching ten lessons like Novice teaching.

This week was filled with many great opportunities. Since my teacher has a busy week my final week of my placement, I observed four other teachers in my school this week instead. I found this experience very rewarding. It allowed me to see other teaching styles than my cooperating teacher and my own. It also allowed me to take in ideas that I would want to use in my own classroom.

The best part of my week was being able to be a part of creating the new goals and objectives for IEP’s for four students from my class. My teacher allowed me to have a say and to create the goals and objectives with her since she said I have been working so well with the students. Once we had finished writing them on a “rough draft” we went onto the computer system called “Easy IEP.” I was so excited to learn about this software because this could be a system that I could be using in my future classroom. My teacher allowed me to write in the information for the present level of performance, the goals and then the objectives. Once we had finished the information we printed out a copy and each took a turn proof reading what we had created. Once we were both happy with the IEP’s, we sent them to the office to be looked over before the actual IEP meetings that would be happening in April. We were able to complete the IEP earlier this year because our students had just completed taking the Aims Web and John Woodcock reading and math tests. This experience in the classroom made me feel more prepared as a special education teacher and I feel more confident to talk to a future employer on how I was apart of the process of writing an IEP, implementing the goals, and using the “Easy IEP” program. Writing IEP’s has always been something that I was concerned about once I had my own classroom. Even though I have done mock IEP’s and meetings in my special education classes, it never felt like I truly understood it. By being a part of this classroom and working with actual students who I am writing the IEP about, everything feels so much more natural to me. My teacher even allowed me to take an example of each IEP with me so I can use as an example (all names were whited out).

This week I also was able to be a part of an in-service for my school. On Friday we had a half day and the teachers were allowed to pick between two different classes. The first class was lesson on the interactive white board and a vocabulary lesson for middle school students. I wanted to learn as much as I could about technology in the classroom, so I ended up learning more about the interactive white board. We were shown by a certified teacher on the Promethean board, different ways of assessing our students. She handed out a “controller” to each of us that highly resembled a cell phone. The teacher could ask a question in multiple choice, short answer, or true/false. The students were able to write there answer how they do when they write a text message. What was great about the controllers is that they are numbered so that if any student would decide to be inappropriate the teacher would know because each student would be a specific number.

The best part of my week was that I was able to chaperone our Valentine’s dance. I was able to do with a fellow student teacher from Trinity and I had such a blast being with my students out of a classroom setting. I was a little worried in the beginning because I wasn’t sure how the students would behave but it ended up being a very smooth dance. There were some tears and drama but who are we kidding, I am student teaching in a middle school. The dance ended with a large amount of balloons falling from the ceiling and a graduation song for our 8^th graders. I had a great time seeing my students be themselves and free from a classroom.