Blog Four

“Reflect on your time in the classroom to this point.  How are you feeling emotionally, physically?  Do you feel that you are getting through to your most difficult students? What strategies are working?  What strategies are not?   What are your next steps with student engagement within your classroom?"

Teaching is definitely a challenging endeavor.  I am both emotionally and physically exhausted, but it is worth it because I believe I am making a difference.  With regards to my most difficult students, some days I feel like I successfully get through to them, and other days I feel very lost and confused on how to reach them.  I have certainly created better relationships with my students in general, but I am still struggling with investing and motivating a lot of them.  Some strategies that have been working are doing stations: one station students work with a paraprofessional, one station they work on a math program on chromebooks, and then the third station is instruction with me.  This has been effective because at my station I am working with much smaller groups of students and it is a lot easier to get them engaged and to make sure I am addressing the needs of all students.  One strategy that I have not been able to effectively implement is playing games in class.  I thought review games would get students more engaged, but with any I have tried it ends up just being a select few students doing the work and many students not participating.  In order to encourage more student engagement I want to do more partner work.  I find that in larger groups not everyone gets involved, but I would like to do some partner projects. My students seem to be more engaged when they work with others, but I want to make sure that each student is contributing, thus why I want to have them work in pairs.