One of the hardest parts of teaching for me is meeting all students where they are at at all times. Because all of my students have different strengths and areas they need more support, designing effective lessons takes a lot of thoughtful planning. As I mentioned earlier, the state standards guide teachers to know what content to teach, but they do not tell how to teach it. The strategies that may work for one student could be very ineffective with another. It is thinking like this that affects all decisions I make in the classroom from seating, to groups, to how we transition between lessons. For example, in the middle of this semester, my cooperating teacher, Vicky, and I talked through a new seating chart for the class. By this time, I had an idea of what students worked well together and who would be best supported at the front of the room rather than the back. After that discussion and moving students around, some of the students who are now sitting near the front of the room are those who benefit from quick check-ins and reminders and many students in the back prefer to work independently (4.1). This small change made a big difference in my ability to support all students throughout the day. That being said, there are other factors like groups and transitions also play key roles in my planning process.

Groups to Differentiate Instruction

I have been blessed to have been able to work with wonderful classroom aides and support staff this semester at Vieja Valley. Because of these people, the class has been able to split into small groups a few days a week in math and almost daily in literacy. This has helped me feel confident that I am providing challenging and appropriate material for all students. During math, there is an aide that comes to support two of my students with IEPs which allows me to take another group of students who need extra support or re-teaching (4.5). There also are two parent volunteers that each come once a week to provide math enrichment to the students that are needing a challenge. In these past few weeks, there have been a few days that the parents have been unable to make it, so I have been able to work with this small group of students (4.4). It has been encouraging and exciting to see how much these students want to learn and tackle something that feels difficult. It is amazing what students can do, especially when you meet them where they are at. I know I will not always have all of this help, but I will keep finding ways that I can incorporate small groups and one on one practice in my lessons when possible and differentiate instruction during whole group lessons.

Planning in the Gaps

In the fall, I wrote quite a few lesson plans in my classes, however there is something very different about writing lesson plans for a full day of teaching. I found that I needed to plan for the in between times throughout the day. 2nd graders, and students of all ages, need brain breaks; they need to get up and move. Once I realized that my students were becoming antsy during lessons, I listened to what their behavior was telling me and broke up the morning work. We went from starting the day with writing, phonics, and math to phonics, get up and move, and then math. Many times this break was just standing to say the pledge of allegiance, and I saw even that helped. However, there were also days we had longer breaks and did Salamander Yoga, Ram-Sam-Sam, music tracing, or the coconut stretch. The coconut stretch became a class favorite. There was one day a student raised his hand after phonics and asked if we could do the coconut stretch because his back was hurting. He knew his body needed a break so that he could be his best self during math (4.2).

Using Technology

Planning instruction also involves knowing and using the tools you have. Epic was one of the tools I utilized this past semester. Independent reading is something very important for students to be doing, but I also think it is important for students to be read to. Epic is an online program that all students at Vieja Valley have access to where they can choose a book that will be read to them as they follow along. I think this enhanced literacy instruction because it allowed to students to read books that they were interested in and hopefully led to students becoming more excited to read themselves (4.6).

I also often used technology for students to share their work with the class. In math, I would call students up to the board to use the doc-cam to show how they solved a problem. Much like with the Sudoku image above, having students explain their thinking to their classmates helped both the speaker and listeners build a deeper understanding of the concept (4.8).