5 Elements of Teaching
Overall, based on my experience throughout my teacher assisting, I have realized that giving a reward rather than taking something away is a way more effective strategy for discipline. The student may still give you a hard time, however the incentive to do better is there, instead of getting something taken away that they may not care about. Teacher assisting has also helped me learn that the curriculum can not be determined by yourself. Collaboration is key, and working with the other teachers in your grade will make life much easier than trying to do everything on your own. However, I will individualize my lessons and assignments, I will still collaborate with other teachers to swap ideas. Finally, my classroom management class has helped me determine how to make sure that students know the expectations in the classroom.
- Culture: The students in my classroom will feel comfortable, and loved, however they will know that I expect a lot from them. Everything will have a place in my room, and it will be very organized. My students will pick up on this and have to put things back where they found them. Also, they will have to clean out their desks and make sure it is organized before they pack up each day. This way my work habits and organization skills will rub off on them. I also will have many classroom routines, but one of the big ones will be that the students are not allowed to enter the classroom unless they tell me a sight word for the week, and give me a hug or a high five. This way, they are learning a sight word and seeing that I care about them before they walk in.
- Expectations: On the first day of school, the students will make a list of rules that they think should be set in a classroom. They also will discuss what sorts of consequences there will be if the rules are broken. We will come up with individual behavior rules, classroom rules, what I should expect from them and what they expect from me as a teacher. I will go over certain situations and show youtube videos of bullying and the students can tell me what they think is wrong in the video, and what the person could have done differently. This way I will know the students know what good behavior is, and can hold them accountable when they misbehave. I also can remind the students of these videos throughout the year if we have to have a conversation about behavior. I also will go over classroom expectations, how I expect every student to be working their hardest on everything, even if they do not believe they are doing well on it. I hold all of my students accountable for doing the assignments in class, and if they do not finish them, they will be put in a bin to work on if free time is available.
- Curriculum: the team of first grade teachers and I will be collaborating throughout the entire year about all subjects. We will follow the common core and state standards, to come up with the assessment we need to present for each unit of each subject. Based on the assessment I will come up with different lesson plans that follow the assessent, however I will make the lessons engaging and fun for the students. If the students do not understand a lesson, I will work with them one on one during centers, or if needed during recess.
- Strategy: Each lesson will be taught in a different way that keep the students engaged. I will use videos, IXL for math practice (using the internet), songs for phonics, days of the week, months and skip counting. I will have science projects that the students get to make, social studies projects the students get to color, and phonics lessons where the students cut and paste letters into a word. The students will be engaged in their learning in each lesson in different ways to help all sorts of learners.
- Discipline: Considering my students made up a list of class rules and expectations, they will be held accountable for those rules. Depending on the rule broken, the student will be disciplined. For example, if the student is supposed to be walking in the hallway and they run, the student will not miss their recess, instead they will go back to the end of the hallway and try again. There will also be a lot of love and logic in this particular aspect of my teaching. If a student does not want to do a certain assignment, I will give them the choice to finish it now, or at their recess, but either way they will complete the assignment. If there is a student who is continuously misbehaving and disrespectful, I will implement a reward system rather than taking something away. For example, if the student can go three days without moving their magnet down, or having it back to where it started at the beginning of the day by the end of the day, I will come up with a reward based on the students likes.
Overall, based on my experience throughout my teacher assisting, I have realized that giving a reward rather than taking something away is a way more effective strategy for discipline. The student may still give you a hard time, however the incentive to do better is there, instead of getting something taken away that they may not care about. Teacher assisting has also helped me learn that the curriculum can not be determined by yourself. Collaboration is key, and working with the other teachers in your grade will make life much easier than trying to do everything on your own. However, I will individualize my lessons and assignments, I will still collaborate with other teachers to swap ideas. Finally, my classroom management class has helped me determine how to make sure that students know the expectations in the classroom.