Feedback and Reflections from Students and Faculty

Thoughts from Student/Intern Teachers

On examining student learning:

The assessment piece [of the Teaching Event] was good...I could probably do this more often…, really digging into their work and looking for what was going on. I should make that more of a habit next year than I have this year.

On adjusting instruction based on assessment results:

I’d observed that when we did the energy unit that we would read it as a group. They just really had a hard time figuring out what the main idea was, versus the details.. I was just going to do this unit today and then keep moving on, but I think they need some more of it. That’s really hard for them, so I think the next two days I may go back and do another section of the book, which I hadn’t planned to do…And then last night when I checked their work, I noticed that a lot of them had answered the question, but they’d done it with details, and not with the main ideas…That’s why I led them through it so much today because a lot of them sort of missed that yesterday.

On connecting implementation with coursework:

…one of my target students is ELL...so it changed how I would do the instruction…They [master teachers] don’t like the children to talk amongst themselves. They want them really quiet. But one of the big things for ELLs is they need to talk, and they need to have conversations. The English Only children can scaffold. It’s been shown…they’ll take their conversation down to a level that the ELL can [understand], and then help bring them back up. But if they can’t talk, and the class is supposed to be quiet, there are no opportunities… And that was one of the reasons I did this, because they could talk more and interact more.

It’s helped me get focused. I think it’s helped me to see the need for continuity, and to find continuity in the lesson. But also to look at where they are at the end of the day, and maybe change things a little bit to find out where they need to go the next day.

I think, for me, the most valuable thing was the sequencing of the lessons, teaching the lesson, and evaluating what the kids were getting, what the kids weren’t getting, and having that be reflected in my next lesson...the ‘teach-assess-teach-assess-teach-assess’. And so you’re constantly changing – you may have a plan or a framework that you have together, but knowing that that’s flexible and that it has to be flexible, based on what the children learn that day.

On improving student teaching practice:

I think in our classrooms particularly, we tend not to do all that much formal assessment. We tend to have kids do activities. If there is a written result, usually we give it a cursory examination to see if they did what they were supposed to do, and then it just gets sent home. But we don’t normally really do all that much rigorous assessment…I had to do the various assessments, particularly with the math. It really made me think, ‘Gosh, I really should be collecting them, the kids’ papers, and actually doing something with them.’ I actually did start doing that more.