RaeLynne Ferden-Challenges of the Internship Year
Without doubt, our internship year is going to be a
challenge for us in several different ways. I think the first major dilemma
that I am going to face is developing my professional identity. It is weird to
think about the fact that I am no longer a student at MSU; I am no longer
taking classes that go toward my bachelor's degree. However, in order to
prepare myself for the transition from student to teacher, I have had to change
my mind set. Instead of saying, "I am senior at MSU studying Language Arts
Elementary Education with minors in Spanish and Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages," I now say, "I am teaching Kindergarten at Marble
Elementary for my internship at MSU." Also, to prepare myself, I had to
change my wardrobe, my lifestyle as well as do some of my own professional
development. I highly recommend reading The
First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher by Harry K. Wong. I read this book
along with a few others to prepare for the internship. How have you prepared yourself professionally for your
new role?
I think a
challenging aspect of this year will be learning the curriculum and assessing
students in a meaningful and productive way. Luckily, I believe we all follow
the same curriculum for both math (Everyday Math) and reading (Reading Street).
Hopefully we can work together and support each other while designing our
lesson plans throughout the year. I know I need to look more in-depth at the
curriculum and see the types of assessments they use. I think my biggest
struggle will be balancing the school's curriculum with MSU's curriculum when
creating teaching units and lesson plans. What do you know about the
curriculum? What types of assessments have you seen?
I feel
very confident in teaching reading comprehension. I think that our book Strategies that Work has a
lot of good information in it. In the past, I've had a lot of success with
these types of lessons, especially in TE 402. I believe that I will be
successful because I really take the time to model connections with text, make
sticky notes as I go along as well as tell short stories related to the text. I
liked that in the book, they asked the question, "What is reading?"
and that they built on the definition throughout the year. I would like to
improve on the types of assessments that I tend to use. I'm only familiar with
quick writes and informal assessments so I would like to come up with some
different ways of assessing my students.
At this
point, I am not sure how I want to finesse or hybridize my literacy practices since
we haven’t done anything with literacy yet (we’ve been focusing on procedures).
However, throughout the year, I will learn what works strategies and activities
work best with my class and from there, I can finesse and hybridize my literacy
practices.
The internship is going to be an exciting adventure and I have learned so much already. Some ways that I prepared for my internship was to brush up on child development curriculum, and ways to talk to students. I thought this would be beneficial since we are working with kindergarteners. I believe that the books I used at MSU were very helpful in communicating and understanding students at that age group. Personally, I have not read "The First Days of School" yet, but I have heard very positive things about the book.
ReplyDeleteI think implementing Reading Street and Everyday Math will be difficult but after reading Kersten and Pardo (2007), I think that by using finesse we can create our own lesson plans with unique twists and personal touches. I have seen a little bit of Reading Street and I think it is a very good program and helps keep all teachers on track with their students during the school year.
Some things that I look forward to learning more about is assessing students, especially in kindergarten. I want to find ways that are fun for them to share what they know. I think assessments are extremely important but I want to know what individual learners know and understand themselves, without working in groups. I think this goes hand in hand with explicit instruction, and explaining to my students what is expected from them. Maybe I should stress the importance of them working individually and that it is okay if they don't know?
What do you feel the most confident about this year? What do you want to practice and learn more about?
I also believe that the internship year is going to be a huge transition and a challenge. We should now look at ourselves as teachers, which is difficult because it is something new to all of us. We are not longer just observing, we are teaching and becoming a major part of the kids school day and lives. I had to change things about my mind set too. I now look at myself as being a teacher. For me, this means the way I act, dress and present myself. Instead of being a friend or someone who is there for extra support, I am someone who makes sure the kids are behaving, helping them to become better learners, and making sure they are understanding lessons.
ReplyDeleteA challenge that I had last year in both TE 401 and TE 402 was making us lesson plans. I had a difficult time just coming up with a lesson out of nothing. This made me nervous to come into my fifth year. It was difficult for me because I had never done a lesson and although they told us what to include, it was hard to me to decide how to teach and what to say for the reason that I had never done it before or been taught how to do it. I am very happy that we follow Everyday Math and Reading Street for that reason. The books give the content and different lessons to teach, but I think that we can use those and build off of them to make them better and more enjoyable for the students.
I am confident in my ability to help the students learn. I think that I can create lesson plans and make sure that they are thorough enough for the kindergarteners to understand. I like to explain lessons and subject matters in different ways so all of the students have an understanding. I think that it is vital to do because kids learn in many different ways. This is something that I plan to do with my lessons and would like to learn more about. I would like to learn more about teaching strategies that work and ones that are outdated and not relevant anymore.
In addition I am more confident in being in front of the classroom. Teaching lessons in both TE classes last year really helped me. I am not longer nervous before I have to get up in front of the class. I am very happy for the work that was done to prepare me to be in front of the class last year. I think that as time goes on I will become more and more comfortable being in front of everyone and coming up with things on the spot, which I am really looking forward to.