Classroom Goals

Classroom Goals

In ED640, I established goals for myself that I hoped to work towards during ED645. The first goal was to establish classroom rules and procedures that I can take with me when I become a teacher of my own. I’ve been fortunate to work with two great mentor teachers that have helped me become a better classroom manager, and I can confidently say that my internship experience has provided me with rules and procedures for the future. For one, I like having students start each class by writing the learning objectives in a log and answering a warm-up question. That immediately gets students thinking about science when they walk in the room and it provides me with an opportunity to activate student background knowledge. I also like placing papers that the students need to pick up at the front of the room near the door and bins for students to turn-in their work at the the back of the room. This allows students to flow into the room easily, collecting papers they need for the day, and turning in papers for me to collect. As for the rules, I’ve learned about the importance of developing rules with students and being consistent when enforcing those rules. For example, discussing what it means to be respectful with your students on the first day of class is a great way to ensure that everyone is one the same page regarding appropriate behavior. I want to have a similar discussion about the use of phones when I become a teacher of my own. I think phones are amazing technologies that can certainly enhance education, but in my experience, phone are mostly a distraction in the classroom. Therefore, having a discussion with students about appropriate phone use could be potentially invaluable in the future.

My second goal for my internship was to familiarize myself with the curriculum and start to develop my own lessons and units. Carroll County fortunately provides teachers with a curriculum that has lesson plans, PowerPoints, activities, assessments, and other resources to make this process much easier. My mentor teacher has also allowed me to use many of his own resources so that I have many options to choose from when planning lessons. I’ll usually look at what the county provides, what my mentor teacher has, and resources I have created myself and decide which ones I want to use during class. The scope and sequence provided by the county has also given me a good idea of what topics to cover and how to pace myself. So far, I think I have done a good job in progressing to meet this goal. I have been using the 5E model to plan all my lessons and have my resources organized very neatly on my laptop, on a flash drive, and in a binder so that I can reuse them as needed in the future. I was initially concerned with how I would decide what to teach, when to teach it, and how, but my mentor teachers have given me excellent guidance in curriculum planning.

Setting goals and reflecting on one’s progress towards meeting those goals is important in any setting. This is especially true for an inexperienced teacher. Teachers use feedback from student assessments to improve the learning process, and it’s similarly important to recognize that teachers must continue to learn and grow concomitantly. Upon reflection, I think that I have done a good job of meeting the goals I set for myself at the end of ED640, but there are always ways in which I can continue to improve.