When last I left this story, I was about to embark on my recounting of my second observation.
In my district, Category 1 and 2 teachers must be observed twice during the school year. It’s part of the Individual Professional Development Program (IPDP) that is designed to calculate a bunch of pieces of data/assessments to determine if you’re a teacher who is unsatisfactory, needs improvement, meets expectations or exceeds them.
I had my first observation in December and did pretty well for the first time.
Being the anal person/overachiever that I am, I wanted to do especially well.
I had primed my students last week, practicing the activity I’d selected for the lesson.
Hey, it’s not cheating. 😀
Still, I was nervous.
My IPDP focuses heavily on vocabulary development, which I’d noticed was lacking in a select group of my students. So, for the day’s lesson, we did a Vocabulary Carousel activity. It’s a modified version of the lesson you can find here.
The kids, working in groups, moved from one station to another. Each station consisted of a sheet of paper taped to the wall (or TV or door, depending on the location). A vocabulary word was written on each sheet. Students had to use that particular word in a sentence. As they moved to the next station, they had to continue the “story” written by the previous groups, continuing to use the vocabulary word on each sheet of paper in context.
It was loud in my class, to say the least. Try to imagine twenty students walking around a classroom, engaging in discussion, laughing as they went.
Oh, it was so much fun!
My principal kept himself busy entering observations into his iPad.
Meanwhile, I rotated from one group to another, offering advice, pulling things from my students’ brains, keeping them on task, providing positive feedback and encouragement.
When we finished, my students worked with their groups to select the word that had been used most consistently and properly throughout the “story.” They had to provide justification for their choices.
Then, we broke into groups for station work.
What a smooth transition! Though we’ve only been doing stations for about a month, my students are finally getting the hang of it. They kept the noise level to a minimum, and I was able to work with my own small group of students more one-on-one, which studies have shown to be the most effective way to help students improve their reading comprehension.
My principal stayed for about forty minutes. I hardly noticed when he left because I, myself, was engaged with my students.
As the bell rang, I exhaled a sigh of relief mingled with joy.
I felt that things had gone well.
Part 3 of this post will detail my principal’s findings.
Stay tuned!
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