I cannot believe it has already been a week! A single word by itself could not describe my experience. It was sort of scary but fun, interesting and refreshing; but, most importantly it was a great learning experience. In this short period of time, I feel like I have gained a vast amount of knowledge. A lot of this knowledge has come from information and advice Karen has shared and then from just observing the daily activities in the classroom. Many different things have stuck with me and I have been keeping a daily journal so that I could keep a record of all my learning. For this reflection I will share two points of learning that seem most important to me.

One of the really interesting things I learned about on Thursday was “Freshgrade.” Freshgrade is a new form of reporting Karen is looking into and I was able to sit in on a meeting between Karen, two other interested teachers and the principal. I felt like this meeting was really inspiring because it sort of exemplified the importance of evolving and what inquiry looks like. Some teachers feel like the current reporting methods need to be improved to more accurately reflect students’ performance so they are seriously considering the switch over to Freshgrade. This program basically allows for parent-teacher communication throughout the year as teachers are to “selectively” send parents images and descriptions of student work. “Selectively,” means teachers must pick and choose between student work that best highlights performance. This way parents are not just receiving updates when report cards go out. However, even with this program there are normal report cards three times a year – they just look a little different. They have less to do with percentages or letter grades and are more like individual student portfolios based on performance standards like the 6 principals of formative assessment and core competencies. What was really interesting to me was the fact that because the district has not made Freshgrade mandatory, teachers must gain permission from parents before actually using the program. This means teachers have to educate parents about the program, its values, and its benefits. This just goes to show that evolving and inquiring requires a lot of hard work and effort, it is not something that happens just because you want it to. That being said, with my beginning understanding off Freshgrade, I feel like it aligns quite well with what we have been learning about diverse student learning and the importance of holistic learning. I believe Freshgrade will expose student learning in more areas than would a standard report card. As a result, everyone involved (teachers, students, and parents) will more likely understand what areas students are performing well in and those in which they need assistance. Karen has submitted an application to join the pilot program of Freshgrade and it will be interesting to see how everything plays out. I definitely feel like assessment and more specifically, Freshgrade, can be a point of inquiry for me if our class does end up using it. It will be a great learning experience as there is a high chance of a program like Freshgrade becoming mandatory sometime in the near future (Maple Ridge is already using something similar).

Moving on, classroom management has been something I thought about a lot this week. For me classroom management is specifically about student attention and student engagement. In terms of getting students’ attention, the most important part of my learning has to be the fact that you really cannot begin teaching or giving instructions if students are distracted or not listening. That being said, I have seen that students do not always listen right away the first time you ask. After a discussion with Karen, we concluded that I could use different ways of getting student attention. However, we think it will be better if I stick to one or two initially so the students understand I am serious when I ask for their attention. Karen already has a strategy where she counts down from 5 and the students clap when she reaches “1” and freeze. This has worked for me; however, I believe I need to also directly tell the students “I need your attention” as they are only beginning to understand that I am also a teacher in their class. I believe student engagement, in action, is participation; that is how much students are participating in various class activities. I mainly focused on participation in terms of discussion and answering questions. Through asking my own questions and observing Karen ask questions, I have seen that there is a group of students who consistently raise their hands and the rest almost never do or only sometimes. In some sense I have already sort of inquired into this as I brought it up with Karen and we talked about some ways to get more students to participate. For example, think-pair-share seems to work because it, in a way, takes away the fear of talking in front of the entire class as you first share with just one person. Like I mentioned above, I feel like sometimes you just have to be direct with the students – whether that is for their attention or their participation. So, being direct would mean telling the students you require everyone to participate and if you see some are not participating, you will call on students. I have seen Karen do this and I actually remember this being done in my own classes and it can be effetive. I believe classroom management is something very complex and it branches off into many different sub-topics like student attention and participation and because of this, effective classroom management can only come with my (or any other teacher’s) hard work and practice. It seems like something that develops with time and experience and so I feel like this would be pretty ideal for inquiry. More importantly, it is something I am actually interested in learning about because I feel like without effective classroom management on the teacher’s part, student learning will easily suffer. One night I did some research and I was not surprised when I found many articles discussing how modern-day technology has affected student attention spans – essentially use of technology has resulted in shortened attention spans. So it was interesting to read that teachers need to “adapt” to this change by incorporating more interactive activities and group-work. Again, this area really has caught my attention already and I hope to be able to incorporate it into my inquiry – and if not, I believe just learning about methods of gaining student attention will be very beneficial.

I would like to briefly mention the other areas of interest I noted on this week. My class has a class meeting once a week where they discuss anything important to them. They have an anonymous jar in which students can drop ideas (“wishes” for topics to be discussed in the meeting. And from what I have observed, students do like to voice their opinions and feelings. I actually think this ties into my classroom management area above as the class meeting is a very important time to have students participate. Also fitting somewhat into classroom management is how we as teachers ask students a question; that is the wording of a question. This too can be really complex as the way we ask a question determines how students will answer. I have learned that beginning a question with “can you tell me…” may sound like you are asking for a yes or no answer so sometimes you need to take off the “can you” and just ask students “tell me a time when…” The idea of negative and positive wording in instructions was also something really interesting. Instead of telling students “not to interrupt when others are speaking,” it might be more beneficial to tell them “when others are speaking, you quietly and respectfully listen.” Basically, from what I have observed and spoke with Karen about, it is sometimes more important to tell students what they should be doing rather than what they should not be doing.

In the end, I would just like to say this week has probably been one of the most enriching and fun weeks of my life. I have easily realized that there is so much to learn and this has just reinforced my dream to become a teacher – there will almost never be a dull day, I will always have something to learn or someone/something to learn from!