Capstone Reflection
Name of Preservice Teacher _Linsey Roth______
Name of Mentor Teacher ___Katie Wright______
Email of Mentor Teacher ______
Dates of Capstone __1/7/14-1/10/14_____ Grade(s) Taught __10th___
Location ___Crete High School______
Subjects Taught ___English______
Brief Summary
Present a holistic description of your Capstone experience. Include a profile of your students so that the university supervisor has a better understanding of the context.
The size of my classes varied from 8-28 depending on the period. I only had one class that had students with IEPs and they were not an issue while I was there. My class was very diverse; I would say it was about 50% Hispanic and the other 50% Caucasian.
Analytical Reflection
Please reflect on the components listed below. Note strengths as well as modifications for the future.
- The “hook” or the “bell ringer” that I had wasn’t really either at all. Since I was going over details to a bigger lesson on the days that I was there it was hard to have a hook each day. What I did was they had a certain task they had to do like, hand in the homework from yesterday. I personally didn’t like not having a bell ringer or a hook to start my lesson, but also when I have that time in my classroom when the students are writing research papers it is a little difficult to have a lot of fun things to do.
- Tapping into prior knowledge was definitely easy for me when I was teaching about thesis statements and their outline. Being freshmen their previous teacher ingrained the information in their brains, so they were well prepared.
- Setting a purpose was also easy because they were working on research a paper which is 25% of their grade, and they know that doing the process that Mrs. Wright does is essential to turning their paper in on time. If they don’t follow her directions step-by-step they won’t get full points and will have a bad grade because of it.
- The vocabulary strategy that I had was basically making sure they knew what a thesis statement and an outline were. They had already covered most of this when they were freshmen so it was a lot of review.
- Comprehension strategy is something I think I just naturally do. Whenever I am talking to a student and answering a question that they have at the end I also ask, “Does that make sense?” This helps me know that they understand what I am saying. I did this a lot when I was helping the students write their thesis statements.
- The methodology that went along with my teaching really was: jog their memories and help them in any way that I could.
- My lesson plans were organized by using the Concordia long form.
- My assessment was checking in their thesis statements. It was their homework assignment from the previous day.
- The class management was fairly easy. I only had to get on a few kids for not using their time wisely, but otherwise they worked hard the whole time.
- It is hard to talk about pacing because the goal was to give the students as much time to work as I could. Most of it was review so I didn’t need to go into full detail.
Holistic Reflection
What did you learn as a result of this experience? How has this experience impacted your perception of self as a teacher?
What I learned from this experience is that the first time students write a research paper I should use the steps that Katie Wright does. Her students respond well to the process and they also learn a whole lot while doing it. I also learned that I either need to tell students certain topics that they can’t choose to write about or learn to be unbiased when reading the research papers of the topics I don’t agree with. I also learned that I need to slow down when I talk. When I was going over the power points about thesis statements and an outline I talked pretty fast. Not that the students couldn’t understand me, but I do need to take a breath between words. I also learned that I need to be more prepared for diversity in the classroom. I grew up calling Crete “Little Mexico,” and I knew that the town had a high population of the Mexican heritage but the culture shock threw me for a loop on my first day. I am not sure why I was so surprised, but my guess is I have never experienced it before.
How this experience has impacted my own perception of myself as a teacher is I need to learn to not say “umm” or “uhh.” I know it is going to happen, because we all do it, but if I could use it less often that would be good. Something else I need to overcome as a teacher is my perception of students that are different from the normal student. There were a few students that are transgender at the school and I felt a little uncomfortable around those students and I need to learn to love and respect my students regardless of who they are. I don’t have to accept it and like it, but love and respect are different from accept and like. I also realized that I don’t have a lot of the content knowledge that I should. I realize that it will come with teaching and re-teaching, but there are little things that I need to look back on and refresh my memory. An example is where to put a semicolon, I know generally where you put one, but it is now so easy to rely on a computer to tell me when.
Something else I learned about myself during this experience is that I am going to be an old-school type of teacher. No, that doesn’t mean I am just going to lecture at them until they are blue in the face, but rather that I don’t put up with the crap the students pull. I am not saying that teachers now do, but they are definitely more tolerant that I would be. Katie Wright does a fantastic job of letting the students figure stuff out on their own. There was one student who wasn’t handing in her homework on time and Katie Wright just gave her zeros. When the student came in angry about her grade Katie had a perfect example of what the student needed to do in order to get her grade up. Majority of the students have finally figured out that they have to do their homework because if they don’t they get a zero. I like that policy that she has, which I know I will use. If the students don’t bother to hand in their work on time then they don’t deserve to get a grade for it. I also understand if you are sick and miss school or if you had a bad night and didn’t get a chance to do it, I understand those circumstances as long as he had proof of it.
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The reflection paper is your “golden ticket to student teaching”. This document must be in the field experience prior to student teaching.