Chapter 2a, 2b and Chapter 3

Chapter 2a

          When becoming a teacher one must know that you will be making hundreds of decisions every day. Whether they are big decisions such as dealing with solving a conflict in the classroom or making a smaller decision such as which morning song you should use that day. Regardless, you will make countless of them. When it comes to the Decision-Making Phases of Instruction, one can see that the thought process can be divided into four different sections which are: (1) the planning or preactiive phase, (2) the teaching or interactive phase, (3) the analyzing and evaluating or reflective phase, and (4) the application or projective phase. All of these phases ensure that teachers are appropriately planning lessons that cover all needed learning aspects. In my future classroom, I can use these four phases to make sure I am well prepared to teach my lessons. For instance, I will use the first phase, planning or preactiive phase, to help select the content I would like to teach as well as my goals and objectives I would like students to take away from the lesson. In this step I also would be thinking about homework assignments and also taking students prior knowledge into account so I can appropriately plan for my lesson. The next three phases, the teaching or interactive phase, the analyzing and evaluating or reflective phase, and the application or projective phase, will all be helpful when it comes to making decisions when creating my curriculum. One thing I believe to be incredibly important for teachers is reflection. Teachers must reflect on the students responses to their teaching skills in order to continue to improve and increase student academic achievement. In the future if my students do poorly on an assignment I will take full responsibility in what I need to do to ensure they learn the necessary material. This will require me to reflect and adjust my lesson in a manner that students will be able to understand and better grasp the concept. I feel that issues such as these can be reduced by using individualized instruction. In my previous post I referenced a quote that said "Not every shoe fits," meaning that not every teaching strategy will work for every student. Some students may learn at a slower or quicker pace. Some students are visual while others are auditorial. By individualizing instruction, you can select a learning plan that will best suit each student and set them up for success. I feel that using facilitative instruction in my classroom, which is student-centered rather than the traditional teacher-centered style, will create a positive learning environment where students can develop the necessary skills they need to be prepared for the future.
           As one may begin to see, teaching requires a lot of skills and is a big commitment. A teacher must be committed to their students, their school and the school's mission statement, the district and the district goals as well as ensuring their students are safe.

Chapter 2b

          Chapter 2b focuses on characteristics of a competent classroom teacher. The chapter provides a lengthy list on skills that a teacher should strive for in order to be successful in the classroom. The list includes things such as:

1. The teacher is knowledgable about the subject matter
2. The teacher understands the processes of learning
3. The etcher uses effective modeling behaviors
4. The teacher is open to change, willing to take risks, and to be held accountable
5. The teacher is nondiscriminatory toward gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, skin color, religion, physical disabilities, socioeconomic status, learning disabilities, national origin, or any other personal characteristics.
6. The teacher organizes the classroom and plans lessons carefully
7. The teacher functions effectively as a decision maker
8. The teacher demonstrates confidence in each student's ability to learn
9. The teacher makes specific and frequent efforts to demonstrate how the subject content may be related to the students' lives.
10. The teacher is reliable


          As one can see there are many characteristics that a good teacher must possess. Out of the twenty one that were listed in the book Teaching Young Adolescents: Methods and Resources for Middle Grades Teaching, I  narrowed it down to ten, which I listed above. Not saying the other eleven are less important but the ones I chose are ones that stuck out to me and that I plan to use in my future classroom. Another thing that I really enjoyed reading about was a teacher's "withitness." A teacher's withitness is the teacher's ability to be aware of the entire classroom. It is their ability to stay alert and to quickly redirect student's misbehaviors. Guidelines to developing this withitness is being aware of spending too much time with anyone student (a general guideline is longer than 30 seconds with one student in a class of 20), avoid turning your back to the class (example: writing on the white board), keep students alert by calling on them, and maintain constant visual surveillance of the entire class. I felt that these were very good tips to provide to a teacher, especially first year teacher, to remind them that they must be mentally sharp at all times when in the classroom.



Chapter 3

           Chapter 3 touches on Teaching thinking for intelligent behavior. When I say this I mean teaching students how to think and as a teacher help them develop their thinking skills. When students develop their thinking skills they develop a type of confidence. They begin to believe that they can learn and start to enjoy learning as well. When a student enjoys learning they become hungry for knowledge and begin to make connections and apply their knowledge and ultimately become a life long learner. Some characteristics of "intelligent behavior" are things such as being able to draw on knowledge and apply it to the real world as I just mentioned above. Other characteristics are skills such as managing impulsivity. Especially for young adolescents, there are times when it is easy to act before thinking (acting on impulse). If a teacher can help a student manage their impulsivity the student will learn to do small thing such as think before speaking,  raising their hand, think before beginning a project and so on. When I become a teacher I think I can help guide my students to control such impulses by pausing after asking a question and asking students to raise their hands. Students must wait for me to call on them. This helps "train" these impulses. I also think it is important to remain open to continuous learning. Although at times I have been a person who likes to do things my own way, I will need to understand that intelligent thinking will open new pathways of learning whether it is a new way to solving a problem or looking at something from a different perspective. By doing this I can continue to encourage my students to learn and become the intelligent thinkers I know they can be.
          This chapter also focused on questioning and it's purpose. Not only did the chapter provide multiple types of questioning such as analytic questioning, clarifying questing, convergent-thinking questioning, evaluative questioning, socratic questioning, etc, but it also gave many positive reasons of why questioning is so critical. By using questioning in my future classroom I can review and remind students of classroom procedures (by reviewing rules and daily procedures in an elementary classroom I can cut down on misbehaviors and waisted time). I can use questioning to gather information about my students such as "who is done with their assignment? and who still needs more time?" One of my favorites is using questioning to guide student thinking an learning. By asking the right questions I can guide students to discovering the right answer without just telling them. Learning about the different types of questioning and the benefits they provide were very enjoyable and I plan to use many of them when I become a teacher.