Goals & Outcomes

For the semester

My smart goal for the semester would be to concern myself with actually trying to learn the material presented to me. I love the idea that this class is ungraded. With that said, my goal is to treat my other classes just like this class, in a sense, I plan to focus on how much I can learn in my class/ from my teachers rather than focusing on my letter grade. I believe that viewing my class subjects in this new perspective will help me get comfortable with the materials enough to teach the subject to my classes effectively.

Reflection

Personally I feel like my strength as a student would be the fact that I'm not afraid to admit when I don't understand something and when I need help from my professor. My strength as a teacher would probably be my patience. I do believe that patience is a very helpful characteristic to have, especially when you are teaching any grade level. But with every strength, there are equal weaknesses. A weakness I have as a student would be the fact that I tend to do things last minute. Which means I don't put in as much as an effort into things as I should. And that could also lead to a weakness as a teacher. I am a little worried about how well I am going to perform in this class because how well I am capable of understanding the materials will effect the children in my classes. The better grasp I have on the subject will allow my kids to have a better understanding of what I teach. At the beginning of this class I underestimated how complex teaching can be, I'm slowly learning how structured and prepared I must be to be a(n) successful teacher. I am excited for the physical projects that I can teach the children so they can have fun ways to see what they learned in action! My smart goal for the class would to be capable of being on time when completing my assignments. I have the tendency to procrastinate and I know that the career choice I have picked requires me to be prepared at all times. So I have created my own deadlines in which I want certain things accomplished. Hopefully the system I have created will allow me to stay on top of all my assignments in a timely manner. The smart goal I have for the semester does differ for what I have for this class. The idea of not having a grade did bother me in the beginning because I tend to be hard on myself, and not seeing my grade in the class prevents me from doing that. But in a way it is also refreshing. The idea has actually taken a lot of stress and pressure off my plate. With that said, my semester smart goal is to try to view my other classes as a means of learning rather than a letter grade. I want to make sure that I am capable of not only knowing the information, but to understand how the information functions, that way I will be able to explain the process of things to my classes in way they can understand. So in order to accomplish this, I plan not to focus on the letter grade I have within the class constantly. If I don't understand something I will ask my professors for clarification rather than guessing the answers on an exam, and letting my grade on the exam determine my strengths and weaknesses. If I look at my other classes from a different perspective.

Midterm reflection

So far in this course I can see that I have exhibited my personal strengths within my eportfolio. In a sense, I can be comfortably creative when it comes to creating or practicing my teaching methods. For example, I noticed that I like to incorporate a physical lab the children can engage with to help them revise the materials. I believe this allows the children to become excited and gain interest with the subject. I'm starting to get an idea as to how I would like to teach. Although I may not be able to test my teaching methods at the moment, I at least have an inclination on how I would like to present the materials to the children. I think I am weakest at retaining every single piece of information of the materials I have to teach. I am the type of person who learns via repetition. Because the class is a little fast paced, I find it difficult to make the time to revisit certain topics that we have already learned. However, I tend to take it upon myself to relearn the additional information, in order to efficiently preform my job. When I look at the goals I have set myself in the beginning of the semester, I realize that I haven't made significant progress. As I mentioned before, I tend to feel as if I don't have enough hours in the day to go back and revise the information (besides the assignments provided in class). With that said, I have made a valiant effort to know information on the subjects to my best capability. I have always attended every class period. However, there has been a few times where I wasn't able to be punctual. I have become somewhat overloaded with assignments from my other classes. With that said, I haven't been able to commit as much time/ attention to this class as I would like to. I try to spend an average of 4-9 hours a week on this class. Although I didn't establish a large number of goals in the beginning, I feel as if I have reached my personal expectations. Along the way I created a new set of goals for myself that I intend to fulfill by the end of the semester. As of right now, I have been able to accomplish my newly established goals. From the work I have completed in this class, I would award the letter grade of a low B or high C. I am aware of my quiz scores that we take every morning in class. My quiz grades have become a mixed bag of acceptable and unacceptable percentages. Also, because our assignments are not graded, it's difficult for me to gage a letter grade depending on the effort I apply to this class. After doing some reflecting, I have come to the conclusion that I should change my learning style. I'm beginning to question the effectiveness of my methods. The process is time consuming and I'm unable to evenly distribute my focus on other classes. I should find new and engaging ways to help myself understand and know what I have learned. I feel like I could find other successful means of studying rather than re-reading or re-writing my notes. My level of comfort with teaching earth science has improved since the beginning of the semester. I know how to explain the material to my classmates (who are around the same age as me) however, I am worried how to translate the same information to children in a more simplistic manner. My everyday vocabulary might hinder me when it comes to explaining things. With that said, I am very proud of my eportfolio. I'm not exactly sure how sufficiant my teaching method will be, as i mentioned before. I tried to implement how I would have liked to be taught when I was in grade school. And i tried to incorporate that within my lessons. I'm uncertain as to which grade of children I will be teaching, so my lessons do range from simplistic explanations to a little more complex examples and activities. Overall, I feel as if I have a good balance. I would like to improve some things on it, for example instead of finding examples of igneous or metamorphic rocks, I would like to include pictures of myself presenting these items. Unfortunately with my lack of personal resources, I am unable to do that in present time but, I do have hopes in improving my eportfolio in the future.

Final Reflection

Class/ teacher interaction

During this semester I was able to attend almost every day of class with the exception of missing one day. So, I would say I was present for about 99% of the class lectures. I consider my participation in the class to be decent. There were times when I didn't have the best mornings, so I wouldn't interact with my classmates as much as I should have. And there were most days where I was actively listening and participating in the classroom assignments. I would give myself a solid 90% for participation this semester. Outside of class I would spend about an average of 10 hours a week committing time to this class. Although I didn't spend as much time dedicated to this class outside of the classroom, I feel like I was able to interact and ask for clarification quite often. I know I have asked for clarification or advice on a topic more than ten times this semester. I feel like my participation with my professor and class projects helped me understand and provided me with better clarification because I was able to view the topics from the perspectives of others. It allowed me to understand the materials in a clearer way and that enabled me to improve my lesson plans.

Practice work

During the semester we were handed an ample amount of practice work to help us understand on a more indepth level. Out of all of the assignments given to us, I managed to have turned in and corrected all practice work with the exception of one. I only have one practice work assignment with an incomplete on it. And it was due to some graphing issues on my end. I just didn't find the time to fix and resubmit the paperwork. All but two, maybe three assignments were submitted as late. If I remember correctly. Because I actively participated with the activities, I feel like my knowledge on the topics we learned is pretty solid. I feel comfortable with teaching or informing others about the topics we learned about in class. I definitely believe that the practice work helped a lot. I used a few of them for information references when I created some lesson plans.

ePortfolio

In the beginning I was experiencing some technical difficulties because I'm not very tech savvy. I did have some trouble publishing the ePortfolio. With that said, I believe I was a day late on the submission because I needed the help. I was able to receive feedback on almost all of my objectives. It helped because I was able to update and resubmit the objectives. So during the last two weeks I managed to complete all of my lesson plan and resource page objectives. I actually feel accomplished and happy with how my ePortfolio turned out. I have put a lot of stress, sweat, and tears into this project and I think my hard work shows. The quality of my ePortfolio definitely reflects the hard work I put into my participation and class work.

Overall class

Reminiscing about my time in this class during the semester makes me realize a few accomplishments. For one, I have advanced when it comes to technology. I have learned a few things from trial and error (with my ePortfolio) and a few of my classmates have showed me a trick or two. Now I shall cherish these newly founded gifts forever. My second accomplishment from this semester would be the development of my teaching pattern. Creating the lesson plans and presenting in front of my classmates allowed me to get comfortable and uncomfortable with different ways of teaching. However, looking back, I do wish I changed how involved I was with the class outside of the classroom. There were unofficial field trips that were held throughout the semester that I wanted to attend but I didn't. The experience of seeing how the different systems we learned about in class works in real life, would have allowed me to appreciate the topics more. I believe my overall grade in this class should be a low A or a high B. Looking at my answers for this reflection makes me realize how much I have done for/ in this class. And my assignments/ ePortfolio show the efforts I have implemented throughout the semester. I managed to complete every day prior to the due date. And if I wasn't so lazy, I'm positive I was capable of turning everything in a week prior. I believe the grade you have for me will reflect that of what I expect for myself. I don't believe I did the bare minimum but, I don't think I did exceptional work either. Because I do have one incomplete assignment and I turned in a few things late.

Final thoughts

This class was definitely a new experience that was challenging in its own way and yet eye opening. I aspire to improve my knowledge so I am capable of becoming the best teacher I can for my students. And I definitely believe that this class showed me my strengths and weaknesses as a future teacher. And a valuable lesson I learned is that there is always room for improvement.