Leah Engle

Reflective Journal Placement 1

Week 1:
1/20/2016:
During my first day, I noticed Mr. Truckermillers control of his classroom and
relationship with the students. He easily quieted students and students
seemed to respect him. I began to realize that I would need to establish
myself when I takeover teaching the class and figure out what classroom
management strategies would work with these students. It is very different
than my professional semester placement, students seemed to automatically
respect me because I was in the teaching position. I have a feeling it will not
be that easy with these students. Mr. Truckermiller pointed out students that
caused problems with past student teachers and he said that they will
challenge me and talk back during class. At this point, I am not sure how to
handle that kind of behavior because it is completely unfamiliar to me. How
do I deal with blatantly disrespectful students? How can I establish myself as
a teacher and have mutual respect in my classroom.
1/21/2016:
Today, I had the opportunity to follow a section around to see how they
behave for other teachers in our sixth grade team. Mr. Truckermiller
mentioned that his classroom is very different than others on the team. This
gives me the opportunity to see what classroom management strategies
work or dont work. During the math class, students continued to talk quietly
throughout the whole lesson. The teacher asked them to stop talking
multiple times but the classroom never got completely quiet. From this, I
learned that I have to be consistent with these students and make sure
students are silent before teaching and have classroom management
strategies on hand to get students quiet that arent too disruptive. I have
experience with the counting down from 5 method, and as well as the clap
and repeat method. Mr. Truckermiller mentioned that students respond to
the clap and repeat method, however, he never really uses it. I saw the
math teacher use it and students did not respond well to it. After the teacher
clapped, only a few students responded by clapping back, and the class
never got fully quiet and attentive. Im not sure if I want to try it for myself.
If I do, I might have to practice it with the students so they know that I
expect a quiet and attentive class after this signal.

Week 2:
Unfortunately, Southwest Middle School had snow days Monday-Friday
during the second week. During these snow days, I did other things to stay
busy and productive. I was only at my placement for a few days previously
and did not have many lessons to get ahead on. My cooperating teacher
wanted me to take over the advisory period and the intervention period
during the school day. For these periods, he said students in advisory need
to review their multiplication facts, so during these days off I found some fun
math fact review games to play, such as multiplication bingo, around the
world, and jeopardy. During intervention, Mr. Truckermiller said I can do
whatever kind of lesson I want. Im planning on doing some sort of writing
practice during this time, however the period is only 30 minutes. I am not
sure where these students are as far as their writing capabilities, so it would
be possible that a few focus lessons would be necessary during this period,
but I want students to get practice writing because most of their language
arts class focuses so much on reading, both being valuable and necessary
skills. The first two days would be valuable spent giving the students a
writing prompt just to test the water and see where the students at with
writing. From there, focus lessons can be done based on what students need
to know the most.
During this week, I also worked on my unit. The topic of my unit is
the scientific method and variables. In this unit, the students will be
conducting their first experiments as scientists. The focus of this unit will be
on the variables in a pendulum or swinger experiment. While finding a text
set, I was surprised by the amount books about the scientific method and
asking questions. I also began working on my timeline, however I need to sit
down with Mr. Truckermiller to finalize it and figure out when I can start my
unit. I also worked on my concept map, which gave me a better idea of what
kind of activities and strategies I can include in the unit, as well as
interdisciplinary integration.
I also spent time finding classroom management strategies for inner
city schools that would work for me. I found a valuable article on culturally
responsive classroom management. The author mentioned the importance of
developing a classroom social environment in which students agree to
cooperate with teachers and fellow students in pursuit of academic growth
(Brown, 2004, p. 3). This can be done by having a caring attitude and
making the classroom a safe place for students. Knowing this, it might be
helpful to spend time getting to know my class and setting expectations for
them about how we treat each other. Another strategy involves establishing
and environment where students respect the teachers authority. I can do
this by clearly stating my expectations for the class, where no excuses are
permitted and inappropriate behaviors are dealt with as soon as possible.

Brown also suggested that some urban students respond better to explicit
instructions, which I can incorporate into my classroom management.
Overall, the article was very helpful. I now have different strategies to try
and figure out what works best with me.
Week 3:
2/2/16:
The past two days, I had the privilege of getting to know the students
more and building rapport with them. The past two days I became
familiar my homeroom, section 65. This class is with me for thirty minutes
in the morning, and about half of them have advisory in my room after
homeroom. This gave me the time to get to know them better. While
playing multiplication fact review games with them, I was able to joke
with them and they became more comfortable with me and got a better
sense of who I am as a teacher. The result of this comfort was more
participation in science class. This made teaching them so much more
enjoyable; students actually volunteered their answers! Specifically, one
student that had been most quiet in class previously volunteered to
answer the first question of the lesson! Managing the classroom became
easier because of this rapport with the students. I want to build this
rapport with the other sections, but this will have to be done during
science class. I do not spend as much time with other sections as I do my
homeroom. My goal this week is to grow this rapport and mutual respect
with all four sections.
2/5/16:
Today there was an early dismissal schedule so the students can have a
dance. During this time, I was able to interact with more students and
build rapport with them. It was valuable to see how they acted in this
scenario, I was able to see who the students were as young adults. This
time also gave me the opportunity to build relationships with students
throughout all sections. At the end of the day, I had students who I had
little rapport with before this saying goodbye to me as they left. I am
eager to see how this will affect class participation on Monday.
Throughout the week, I have worked on adapting lessons and teaching for
the lower sections; sections 67 and 68. This week, I have been mirroring
Mr. Truckermillers lessons. The students were doing worksheets on
asking scientific questions, turning questions into hypotheses, and finding

the manipulated variables and the controlled variables. With the higher
sections, the students picked up on concepts very easily, so need for
further explanation from the teacher was limited. They were able to
complete worksheet independently. When working with lower sections, I
had to think of more examples for the class and do the worksheet with
them. I also had to anticipate words or phrases they might struggle with
and put them in terms they would understand. Earlier in the week, I
focused too much on trying to explain these words or phrases instead of
putting them in simpler terms. By the end of the week, I improved on
this. During the first section of struggling learners, section 68, I figured
out how to explain the worksheets to them and explain the examples
through some trial and error. After teaching section 68, I was able to do
the same worksheet with section 67 smoothly, using explanations I found
worked best for section 68. I also learned to help these classes connect
the new information to their schema by providing more direct links and
scaffolding. This is not something I need to do as often in the higher level
classes because they have the ability to make the connections for
themselves. My goal in the following week is to improve my instructional
delivery for these lower sections by anticipating where they might
struggle with content or making connections. This will come with more
familiarity with class and their abilities.
Week 4:
2/10/16:
I began my first science unit this week. It focuses on variables and is based
on the FOSS Science kits. The first experiment focuses on pendulums and
the different variables that might change the number of swing cycles it
completes in 15 seconds. The first day of the unit, Tuesday, students spent
the class period completing the pretest. Today, I instructed the students in
creating their standard pendulums. I thought this would require instructional
differentiation for my sections, so I planned on modeling how to create the
swinger (made from string, paperclip, masking tape, and pennies) for all
sections, but going into more detail for my struggling sections. Today, when
instructing students on creating the pendulums, I found that if I told students
to turn to the page in their packet with the instruction then modeled the
construction of the swinger, students tended to jump right into creating their
swinger without looking at directions, attempting to do it from memory. The
first class required some further clarification instruction to follow directions.
When getting to the later sections, I had them follow along with the

instructions while I was modeling the creation. This worked better for the
later sections. When one of the lower sections came in, I decided to
construct the swinger with them step by step, so everyone was on the same
step and I could provide clarification about a step to the whole class.
Looking back, these could have been prevented if I had assigned group roles
to the students. The leader, or reader, could have read the instructions to
the groups and made sure their groups were following the steps. Knowing
the value of assigning group roles, especially in lab settings like this, can
prevent this confusion from happening in the future and lead to less direct
teacher instruction and more collaboration and communication between
students.
2/12/16:
Today, students conducted their experiments to test their hypothesis. The
hypothesis looked like this; A pendulum will swing _____ times in 15 seconds.
In groups, students made a careful guess about the number of swings. I had
gone over all of the controlled variables we talked about last class and
modeled part of the experiment for them multiple times. With the first two
sections, they had no problem controlling the variables and counting the
swings. They all got the results the first or second try. The last two classes,
the lower level classes, struggled more with controlling the experiment.
They did not count swings properly because they were all counting together
and did not look at their pendulum. Some also released sooner or did not
stop counting when I said stop. I did it another time and told them to control
their variables and count in their head so they dont distract other people.
This is a scenario where instructional accommodations would have
benefitted students in the lower sections. Instead of having a timer on the
board, I would have told them when to start and stop to avoid confusion. I
would have one person from each group standing instead of both students in
the group. These are things that did not affect the higher level groups ability
to perform well, however, it did affect the lower levels. These are the things
I need to keep in mind when preparing lessons.
Week 5:
2/15:
Going into this week, I knew planning was going to be difficult. Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday were all 1:15 dismissals for parent teacher conferences.
With this schedule, the class periods are very uneven. The shortest time I
have with a section is 25 minutes, with another section having the normal

hour of class time. Monday is a full day and Tuesday is a field trip. I planned
to get every class on the same page Monday, and take advantage of the one
full day I had this week. However, once again proving that teachers much be
flexible, SWMS has an early dismissal today for bad weather. I saw each class
for 30 minutes and got as much done as I could. By the end of the day, each
section was at around the same spot, but I knew it might not be the same at
the end of the week. While speaking to Mr. Truckermiller about this, he
mentioned that the section that have the hour class on an early dismissal
also happens to be the lower level section. He said this is beneficial because
a 25 minute class would be detrimental to them because of how long need to
understand concepts and complete work. I planned a reading activity for
Tuesday into Wednesday, so that hour will most likely be spent completing
the activity. For this week, it was difficult to plan ahead without knowing how
much each section would complete, however I had lessons ready and
approved for when I needed them.
2/18:
Section 68 is the lowest class, therefore it has the most struggling students,
student with behavior plans, etc. While teaching them the past few weeks,
my struggle has been wording questions in a way they will understand and
keeping the class on task. Mr. Truckermiller suggested being more strict with
them and giving demerits more often. It just so happened that this was the
worst behaved this section has been for me. This section usually has
multiple students absent, however today every student was there. This
meant the most poorly behaved students were in attendance. At the
beginning of class, I got them quiet and began teaching, however they
quickly started talking again. I warned them, told them I expected them to
be quiet, and went back to teaching. They started talking once again,
beginning with a few students who I told to get quiet, but it spread. I told
students to get out their demerit sheets, which I considered the next step up
from the warning I previously gave them. One student immediately called
out that she did not have her sheet , who also happened to be one student I
didnt have much in class so we didnt have much rapport. I knew the policy
was a lunch detention if you did not have your demerit sheet, so I just said
we will talk after class. I had to give two demerits to two students who kept
talking while I was teaching. Mr. Truckermiller mentioned that once demerits
are given, students usually straighten up and pay attention. Unfortunately,
this was not my experience. The student without the demerit sheet
constantly disrupted class, and when students were supposed to be working
independently on the reading activity, she was not. I have not experienced

this kind of disrespect from students and I was not sure how to handle it. My
goal next week is to set clear expectations for this section and work on
building more rapport with them.
Week Six:
2/23/16:
Starting this week, my goal was to set expectations for behavior in certain
sections, particularly section 68. This is because of their poor behavior the
previous Friday. I set these expectations by talking to the section at the
beginning of class and following through the rest of the period. When
students misbehaved, talked out of turn, or acted disruptively, demerits were
given. This follow through has been a key element I had been missing. This
will have to be something I uphold throughout the rest of my time there.
2/26/16:
Im finding myself having a harder time getting the higher sections quiet.
Originally, these sections were the best behaved ones for me. Now, I realize
that my lack of follow through with these students means they do not listen
to me as much when I instruct them to be quiet. These sections are difficult
to follow through with punishment because it is difficult to pick out only one
student who is misbehaving to issue a demerit to. I will have to choose what
student or two to give a demerit to. Next week, I will need to set similar
expectations with these sections as I did earlier this week with other
sections.
Week Seven:
3/2/16:
Wednesday was the beginning of the first set of lessons after the swingers
unit. I chose to do another experiment to further students knowledge of the
scientific method. It is a gummy bear lab, taking different questions through
the scientific method. Students were excited to do a different lab, because
the only experience they have had with science experiments have been with
pendulums. Going into the lessons, I knew that classroom management
might be a challenge with these lessons because students will be doing a lot
of group work. I set expectations for student behavior early in the lesson,
before group work began. I had students repeat rules back to me to make
sure they remember, and I separated groups that I knew would be an issue.
The sections group work in two out of the three sections went well and

students worked quietly and efficiently. The last section had to be reminded
of the rules once or twice while working. Overall, the group work went well
for each section.
3/4/16:
Students have been working on their gummy bear lab, and they are getting a
lot of experience taking a question through the scientific method and
manipulating variables. The first variable, salt water, was tested Thursday.
Today we measured the affects of salt water and compared them to the
affects of tap water. Students were really excited when they saw the results
of the variable, however they had more problems focusing in groups during
this class. They needed to measure the growth of the salt water gummy
bear in millimeters, however, many groups were distracted while measuring
and I needed to keep redirecting their attention. After the second
redirection, students quieted down and got back on task. I think this was a
result of their excitement for the experiment and the weekend.