Team meetings

One of my goals this year was to communicate with my paraprofessionals on a bi- weekly basis. We met as a department during the first week of school. It was nice to touch base with everybody and to be able to discuss our goals and expectations for the year. We also were able to remind everybody the importance of confidentiality.

I have sent out emails to all of the paraprofessionals. This tool seemed to work very well, as I received a lot of positive feedback from most of them. I think it will be a great way to connect with them. I will not only be able to give them pointers or suggestions but also compliments.

I am looking forward to continuing my communication with my staff.

Ipad

I am very excited that I have had the opportunity to use an Ipad in my classroom. I have found many apps that have enhanced my lessons. In math, I have found several apps that have reinforced learning targets for my students. I have a student that is working on adding and subtracting and have several apps that focus on this. I have another student that is working with number recognition and he also has several apps to access to practice this skill. I have found that the Ipad also keeps the students engaged and on task better than any other activity.

I have experienced some frustration with the Ipad as well. We are suppose to have wireless internet in our school and I am not able to access it. This can create problems as some of my apps require internet connection. We will be having another training tomorrow during our inservice so I am planning to inquire about this.

I am excited to be able to explore more apps and to continue to integrate this piece of technology into my classroom.

1st weeks of school

This school year is off and running. The first couple of days seemed to be chaotic as not all schedules were in place (students and para's). After getting schedules in place, it is now trying to get lessons underway. With having new students and new classes to teach, it is finding the right placement and curriculum to use. I am also trying to find new ways to document IEP goals that is convenient and accessible. I have ideas in mind and now it is trying them out to see what works best. I am excited for the year and looking forward to having new students and new classes.

Summer Trainings

This summer I had the opportunity to attend three trainings that will hopefully improve my instruction. The trainings that I attended were: Promethean Board, Ipad, and Modified block schedule.

Our special education department has a promethean board within our department for all of us to share. The training I attended went over how to care and clean the machine. We also touched on the basic maintenance and tools of the board. During the afternoon, we were given a quick run down on how to utilize and implement the board. I was very impressed with what the machine is capable of doing. I felt the training was beneficial; however, all of the information that was covered was a little overwhelming. I am excited to be able to use this with my classes. The only obstacle that I will encounter will be getting into the classroom where the board is located. It is installed in another teachers room so I will have to coordinate with him and the other special education teacher times to use it.

Our district also has provided Ipad's for all of the special education teachers. The first training that I attended set me up with an itunes account and gave me a quick run down on how to download apps. We then were given time to go home and download more apps and familiarize ourselves with the device. At the next training we were able to share the apps that we found. This was very useful because most of the apps that people had pertained to classes that I teach. I am looking forward to using the Ipad in my classroom.

This year the high school has decided to go to a modified block schedule. Last year we tried it for a 2 week period. It seemed  like a success for teachers and students per the survey monkey that was completed. This training gave us an opportunity to get ideas on how to break up the 82 minute class period. We also were able to discuss as a staff things that worked well and things that did not go so well last year in order to work out the flaws before we begin the schedule. Again, I am looking forward to being able to teach a longer class period. However, I knot that it will be difficult for some of our students and we will need to work together to get through it.

I am excited to have 2 new tools to use within my classroom. I am also excited to see how the modified block schedule will work.

Feedback

How do I want to receive feedback:

- For this community I would like to receive honest, concise, concrete, and prompt feedback. I want to know when I am off base with something or if I am not making sense. I also want to people to ask me for clarification. Being the only special education teacher in our community, I would want people to ask questions or for clarification if something does not make sense.

How will I do to give meaningful feedback:

- I plan to provide honesty and positivity. I think acknowledging people is important but it is also OK to disagree. I also think raising questions in order to get another train of thought or view point is also important. We need to have open minds and be willing to provide suggestions. I plan to provide this type of feedback to the community.

Reflection Rubric Scores

For the rubric scores, please use the appropriate rubric (assignment and/or discussion) to give yourself the appropriate score(s).  Reflections could be anywhere from three to ten sentences.
Teacher Leadership
            Six Hats Activities/Discussions
                        Reflection: For this activity I feel that I did a nice job with reading the selection and responding on D2L. I was able to come up with examples and share them with the community. I also expressed my thoughts about other community member’s comments. The area that I struggled with the most was carrying out the activities within my department. I tried to implement some of the strategies but was not very successful. I am hoping to utilize some of the techniques through my SMART goals.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment submission- 3, Demonstrate understanding- 2, Resource- 2, Participation- 2, Online Etiquette- 3, Quality of writing- 2

            District Item of Pride
                        Reflection: I feel that I did a nice job with this activity. I shared details about a few different items that are implemented in my school. I did not have an actual example of some of the ideas but thought they were all worth mentioning. I also was very excited to share how we are able to involve our students with special needs into our school environment. I was also very excited to hear about what other schools/ teachers are doing. There are many great ideas out there and I am hoping to bring some of them back to my classroom/ school.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment- 3, Demonstrate Understanding- 3, Resources- 3, Participation- 3, Online etiquette- 3, Quality of writing- 3
           
Learning in Community
            D2L Strand input
                        Reflection:
                        Rubric Scores:
            True Colors, Chaos to Community article sharing
                        Reflection:
                        Rubric Scores:
            Classroom Video
                        Reflection: For this activity, I was able to post my video fairly early. I am not sure how well the video quality turned out but I think it was ok. I tried to adjust it but I think it was due to uploading it from the camcorder to the computer. I think I explained the layout of my classroom well and addressed the questions that the communities members had. I also made comments to other community members about their classrooms. It was very interesting to see the different layouts of every classroom.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment- 3, Demonstrate Understanding- 3, Resources- 2, Participation- 3, Online Etiquette- 3, Quality of writing- 3

Curriculum Development and Assessment
            PDP work (SMART GOALS, Baselines, Vision Statement)
                        Reflection: I have a vision statement, SMART goals, and baselines written. I took time to think about the SMART goals and vision statement but not sure that what I have is everything that I want. I might still have to do some tweaking. I think that I have a good start with my SMART goals but I am not sure. I also am not about the length or if what I have will work very well as I will be taking 10 weeks off in the middle of the data collection. I took time to think about that and wanted to create goals around that to an extent. I may need some more guidance to make sure that I am on the right track.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment- 3, Demonstrates Understanding- 2, Reflective- 3, Quality of grammar- 2, Overall writing- 3, APA style- 2
Educational Research
            Article posting & sharing (Month 1)
                        Reflection:
                        Rubric Scores:
            Power Of Questions work
                        Reflection:
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            Mini-Action Research
                        Reflection: For this project, I think that I did a nice job. I chose something that I could easily implement in my classroom. I was honest with my results and was very interested to see how it would turn out. I was interested because the research that I did shows no correlation to academic progress with doing brain gym activities. I also was able to track progress towards an IEP goal, which is of great benefit.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment- 3, Demonstrates Understanding- 2, Reflective- 3, Quality of Grammar- 3, Overall writing- 3, APA style- 2
                       
Technology in Education
           Blogspot work
                        Reflection: I believe that I fulfilled all requirements that were asked of us with the Blogspot. However, I do feel that I could have done some more self-reflecting on this site. I also could have spent more time reflecting on other’s sites.
                        Rubric Scores:  Assignment- 2, Demonstrate Understanding- 2, Resources- 2, Participation- 1, Online Etiquette- 3, Quality of writing- 2

Democracy, Diversity and Social Justice in Education
           Alchemist work
                        Reflection: For this assignment I feel that I did a decent job of fulfilling the requirements. I responded to a lot of the online discussions that took place. I also did some self- reflecting after reading the book. I thought this was a good selection and really made us look at things in a different light.
                        Rubric Score: Assignment- 3, Demonstrates Understanding- 3, Resources- 2, Participation- 3, Online Etiquette- 3, Quality of writing- 2

Fujishin work

                        Reflection:
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Best Practice Pedagogy
             Constructivist work
                        Reflection: After completing the assignments and readings for this book, I feel that I have a good foundation to work from. I was able to look at my different teaching methods within my classroom and ways I can try to improve my techniques. I also like that I was able to self- reflect and write down ideas so I can visually see my thoughts. I also am happy to have a plan in place to reach my dream victory.
                        Rubric Scores: Assignment- 3, Demonstrates Understanding- 3, Reflective- 2, Quality of grammar- 2, Overall writing- 3, APA style- 2

Debate

I have a student that I wrote an IEP for and I think I over did it on the goals. I think when I had the meeting I was in the mode of 'saving' the world. The things that I wrote are all very appropriate but now it is finding the time to incorporate all of it into his schedule and have some consistency. I also tend to forget what I need to cover and sinse this one is so extensive I need to make sure that I try to address all the areas. (On my other IEP's most of the goals are things we do weekly so I don't have to know the IEP's by  heart so to say). My debate is that in my history class I have 3 students. I can pair 2 of them together to work on certain things but then I have the other student that I need to work with as well. I started working out of a history book that is at the 9th grade level and he has been apart of this. My struggle is- how much is he getting from this and am I wasting his time when we could be working on more functional things (address, phone number, positional words, months of the year, days of week, etc- all things listed on his IEP). I get excited when I work with him and see his progress and then feel like I am doing him a disservice when I have him join our group as I don't know that it is appropriate. However, I know that I can't give both groups the attention that they need if I keep them seperated. I think I will continue to try to do my best with keeping them together and also seperating them when appropriate. I will try to remain positive that everything will work out for everybody.