Blog 7: I feel very ineffective in teaching my students reading. Common core requires students to contextualize and read (even in math problems!). For my students at lower reading comprehension levels this adds another challenge to math. I couldn't even tell you where to begin to help these students. I have a hard enough time teaching math, I don't know how I would incorporate reading into my lessons. In all my lessons I try to reflect common core standards. It helps that our school's tests and quizzes all aligned with common core. We also have received a curriculum map which aligns with common core. I use all these resource to help me plan (although sometimes I question how successful I am). The most helpful thing I could have in terms of support would be helping bridge the gap between my students who are ready for common core and my students who need more guidance. Scaffolding and differentiation have been really hard for me. Sometimes I feel like I give them too much guidance and sometimes I don't give them enough. I need to find a way to find the middle ground or away to reach both my high and low students better.

Blog 6:
The article I read was a discussion about a first year teacher's experience teaching seventh grade. Veteran teachers were responding to her struggles with classroom management. Some of the advice they gave included: greet students at the door, have task for them to complete everyday when they walk in so they have a sense of urgency from the beginning of class, understand and plan for the curriculum. The biggest item I took away from this list (and some of the other suggestions in the blog posts) where to have an activity for students to do right away when they walk. In theory I have had this since the beginning of  the year but in actuality this does not always play out because I didn't practice it enough with my kids at the very beginning of the year. Having my kids start an activity right away will save time and effort because they will (theoretically) start the class off being focused.

Classroom management has been my biggest struggle this year. At the beginning of the year I didn't fully understand the need to be consistent and the need to be very strict from the beginning. These two factors have hurt me because my students know they can take advantage and if they push me far enough I sometimes will break. My main struggle is that my students talk when I am talking or someone else is talking. My classroom is often loud and very hard to focus in if you are a student who really needs quiet. My biggest accomplishment is that students have large disruption in my class (normally) and that they do listen to me. My students always move seats when I ask them two (sometimes I need to ask them more than once but they do always move) and they will eventually quiet down if I do a countdown clock.

Differentiation Blog: Webinar 11

I differentiate my lessons by giving guided notes and trying different strategies during my group work time. As I mentioned in the webinar I like to do point systems during class. I have questions broken up into sections. Each section gets progressively harder and is worth progressively more points. Students must reach a certain number of points to complete the activity but they can choose any level of question they want. For my high students I sometimes challenge them by saying answer all the hard questions or I up the amount of points they must reach to end the activity. For my lower students I lower the amount of points they need. Beyond activities such as this my differentiation skills are lacking. I think that differentiation is really important in the classroom but I haven't found ways to be really good at it. My lowest and highest students get lost among my challenges with management. Currently I struggle more with my high students than my low. I can see them getting bored and annoyed with the classes paces and material. I usually give them their homework earlier but after they complete that I don't have anything else for them to do. I have tried doing peer tutoring but that only works with some of my high students. I think some of my management problems would be fixed if I could have my lower students understand the material better and my higher students be more challenge. I just sometimes feel overwhelmed by it all.