Video from My Grammar Class...Downright Hilarious

Captain's Log 8

Captain's Log Week 8

This past week in the classroom students have started working on their Social Studies Curriculum Based Assessment essays. The challenge with this work is that students are at this point in the quarter- the last two weeks- where they have disengaged, mentally checked out and a good portion are completely resistant to participating in class. I can’t really blame them because I feel the same exact way with my own college courses.

            The challenge in my class is the learning gap. There is a defined group of students who excel and do well, but its marginal from the larger group that does not fully comprehend the objectives nor do they speak up when they need help until they are asked. With this range in the class, my coordinating teacher and I find ourselves spread thin, trying to re-explain how the lesson that had just been taught. Some students catch on to what were telling them, but a handful just brush us off and say “I have to go to summer school anyways!” and that fact can be discouraging not only to the students but to us, the teachers, as well because it feels fruitless- we want to see them succeed and its difficult to see them just give up!

            Another challenge is the lack of alignment between the CBA essay and the English class content. The ability to brainstorm, research, and write an essay is lacking so much so that I had to teach a lesson of formatting an essay in addition to previous lessons taught over the quarter. Its very redundant for students who get it and remember talking about it but news to those who don’t. The best alternative is to separate the class and develop depth to the essays of those who are at the finish line and aid those who need the basics discussed more.  Having the two learning groups together really prevents students from wanting to admit that they’re not part of that top group.

            I learned that unfortunately everyone, students and teachers, all feel that end of the school year drag and it is killer to trying to finish up leftover work and lessons. My greatest take away is making sure to lesson plan all first year of teaching because its important not just to stay on track but to know how to adjust to requirements like the CBA. Rushing the essays at the end is crippling for students who don’t finish and I don’t want to put my students or myself in that position. 

Captain Raschko, signing off. 

Captain's Log 5

Captain's Log 5

            Over the course of the past week not too many exciting things have happened in the classroom. I’m at the middle part of the quarter and my overall feelings are that I have far too much on my plate. If it wasn’t for the years I’ve spent procrastinating assignments from when I was a freshman in high school to present day, even as I write this, I wouldn’t be able to handle the stress and demand. I’m being pulled in different directions: college studies, middle school hours, my part-time job, running, family, friends and the extra stuff including graduation applications which have yet to be found. If my parents question my frequent trips to coffee shops I might just send them my course load in the mail as a response. Now days I don’t drink shots unless they’re espresso shots. I’m also confident I haven’t slept more than five hours since spring break- I miss those days. I also haven’t made a home cooked meal in weeks- unless a sandwich counts, in which case I cooked on Monday. I don’t even know if it’s about balancing everything anymore. I feel like I’m just struggling to stay on top of the water and whenever I make a gain somebody tosses me a brick: “don’t forget this!”

            In the classroom I’m trying to cope with the stress I have overall in my life by ignoring it. Ignorance is bliss, and I don’t want the stress to taint my enjoyment of time spent in the middle school. I’m trying hard to drop everything at the door and keep things separate. So far so good! I was having difficulty this morning with a bad start of spilling coffee and slow drivers that nearly made me late (thankfully I didn’t get a speeding ticked). I lucked out and my coordinating teacher gave me an organization task in which I got to just work on mindless items- exactly what I needed. I think the more this quarter goes on, the more I realize how important it is to focus on the task at hand. I can’t do everything, and some things have to just have to be let go. I know my coordinating teacher has said that a million times, but only now, when I am feeling spread thinly across my responsibilities, do I realize how important that advice is.

            In my first few years of teaching, especially in my student teaching quarter, I will be working to organize my own life in a manner that things stay separate. I don’t want stress or issues from other halves of my life to affect the other. My home life shouldn’t affect a child’s performance in school; they already have their home lives doing that for them. For myself, I don’t want school to follow me home or home to follow me to school. That will be the balance I’ll focus on most so I don’t end up feeling like I’m drowning, with too much to handle. 

This is Captain Danielle Raschko, signing off. 

Tea Time

A birthday gift I received: "I Only Date Super Heroes"

Introduction to Immigration in the PNW edTPA

TPA Lesson Plan

Teacher Candidate __      Danielle Raschko___                  _                 Grade(s)  _  7__          _   

Content Area ____Social Studies                                               Length of Lesson _51 minutes__

Unit/Subject    Pacific Northwest: Washington State History _________________________   __

Lesson Title/Focus        Introduction to Immigration __ _________________          _________

Academic and/or Content Standards

Literacy in History/Social Studies Common Core State Standards:

Key Ideas and Details

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions

Craft and Structure

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.8 Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

Content Objective

By the end of this lesson students will be able to identify groups of immigrants, providing reasons for why migration occurs in general as well as specific to the course content.

Academic Language Objective

Students will be able to identify the causes of migration for several immigrant groups including their reasons for migration, outcomes, impacts and prevalence in Pacific Northwest History overall.

Assessment Strategies

To assess and practice the concept, students will be assigned to groups and topics in which they will read the text, answer questions, create a physical model and present their knowledge of their assigned topics to the class. Students will be prompted to share their “essential” questions with their classmates. Worksheets from each individual student will be collected and assessed for completion. 

Lesson Rationale

This lesson will help students be exposed to various reasons for the occurrence of migration through the study of various immigrant groups. In addition, students will be asked to create their own physical representations of the immigrant groups they are assigned, allowing them to offer their own interpretation of the information provided by the text. 

Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks to Support Learning

Direct Instruction/ Independent Work/ Whole Class Discussion (11 minutes): The instructor will welcome the class, direct students to the entry task and explain the days plan. One or two students will be selected to pass out textbooks. Students will be given time to read and respond to the entry task on the doc camera. Students will then be called on to share responses which will lead into the power point presentation.

Whole Class Reading (7 Minutes): The instructor will ask for volunteers to help read paragraphs from the introduction of the section. Students will follow along and write down three things they found to be important to the northwest from the section read. Students will be asked to share a few items and prompted again to relate back to the entry task question.

Group Work (15 minutes): The instructor will pass out worksheets, explain the instructions, clarify terms and answer questions pertaining to the task. Students will be grouped up, read together answer the questions on the work sheet and then create a model/representation to present.

Whole Class Discussion/Presentation(15 minutes): Volunteers from groups will be prompted to share their responses to the questions pertaining to immigration groups. Further students will show and explain their models. Students will have the opportunity to ask questions and share things they found particularly interesting.

Whole-Class Discussion (3 Minutes): The instructor will bring the class together, have them put materials away, turn in worksheets and close with an exit question. Students will be reminded of upcoming assignments and past due assignments.  

Differentiated Instruction

Being able to read along to a printed version of the text is appealing to visual learners. For kinesthetic learners the worksheet provides a more hands-on learning as well as the model activity in which students get to create a physical representation to show their understanding of the immigration group they were assigned. Auditory learners benefit from hearing the text read out loud as well as sharing their responses with one another.

Resources and Materials

This lesson used:

Green, M. K., Carlson, L. M., & Myers, S. A. (2008). Washington in the Pacific Northwest. Salt

Lake City: Gibbs Smith.

• Pen/Pencil
• Computer
• Microsoft Office Word
• Document Camera/Overhead Projector
• Worksheets- 110 Copies
• Colored Paper
• Markers
• Pipe cleaners
• Miscellaneous Craft Supplies

Management and Safety Issues

Not applicable.

Parent and Community Connections

Not applicable. 

Captain's Log 4

Captain's Log 4

            On Monday I had a break through moment with a female student in my class who in the past has been shy, reserved and resistant to completing class work or participating in discussions at all. I asked her how her day was to which she shook her head and just said “awful”. I asked her what was going on and she said her mom and her had a fight, and that it was a regular thing. We talked about her upcoming move to England to live with her father; our connections to the Air Force and at the end of the conversation she asked me, “Are you going to be here the rest of the year?” To which I answered “Yes, of course!” She smiled- I have never seen this girl smile-and said “Good”. During the conversation, however, she confessed (I’m paraphrasing for her own privacy) that the fights between her mother and her were moderately physical. I was shocked that she had decided to share this with me. I reported back to my coordinating instructor which he said he would document and report during his free period, and then we briefly discussed her past history. Apparently she had shared similar information with him, but left out the physical aspect of the fighting. It dawned on me that for this girl I had become someone she could trust with private and personal information.

While I know it is mandatory to report, and I fully believe in the idea, I am worried that our teacher-student relationship will lose trust to which I see as harmful to her. I see this as harmful because I see already see her disconnect in the classroom and I’m hoping this won’t add further to it. I also can tell that these fights DO affect her classroom performance and that it is absolutely necessary to report this- that this is quite possible her call for help.

            My experience from this incident serves to affirm, in my own beliefs, the importance of mandatory reporting as well as the weight of relationships between students and teachers. We need to be the person they can trust but also act as their safety line, especially when they can’t see the way out for themselves. In my own classroom in the future I want to establish trusting relationships with my students and maintain an open door policy so when things like this happen in their lives they can trust me to act in their best interest.

            A final thought: What do you say to a child who says something like that? I’m a little in despair about that conversation still. At that time I just sort of paused, and sort of re-directed the subject. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but she must not have thought anything poorly of it by the way the conversation ended. I mean how do you console someone who confesses something like that?

This is Captain Danielle Raschko, signing off. 

Captains Log 3

Captain's Log 3

This last Friday I taught my first lesson in the Social Studies classroom. Let’s just remember my major is English and a History minor with only two history classes under my belt, so I was pretty impressed with the results. I planned a power point introduction on the Oregon Trail, covering the highlights of the book and then created a note worksheet for students to fill out while I was lecturing. The goal of the worksheet was to help students remember information, allowing them auditory and tactile mediums in which to retain the information. Further, the worksheets would help them learn the information so they could answer questions during the game. After we went through a slide, I would pause and check to see if students had the questions and notes filled out. During the presentation I would prompt students with lead-in questions, for example: “Why do you think Native Americans would have been upset with the pioneers during the migration of the Oregon Trail?” After the presentation, we reviewed the presentation to help students fill in their missing information. Following the presentation, we played a game in which two students at a time faced off, responding to a question. I thought this would be a great game to play on a Friday because students are already in the weekend mind-set as well as they had just completed MSP testing the day before.

            While my lesson was a little too fast for first period, it was down to the last few minutes and ran smoothly. I was surprised and proud by how well students responded to my prompt questions. Everything ran smoothly until sixth period, which was surprising because my fourth period class- which is usually the most disruptive- ran the best. In sixth period a group of boys required attention in the back with their disruptive behavior, so while I was impressed with my ability to teach students from the back of the class, I was a little annoyed by students walking outside the class through the emergency exit that had been propped for airflow. In addition students were not participating in the presentation at all and were instead throwing their worksheets around and tearing them up. While the majority of the class did well, it was difficult for me to know how to discipline while trying to teach lessons; I felt like the most talented chain saw juggler ever.

            What I learned? I learned I still need to practice discipline and familiarize myself with the procedures. The student behavior was out of control, but thankfully my coordinating teacher handled the detention slips for me; however, I felt that I should have more participation in that process. Also, I learned that I do have the confidence to teach! It only took one period for me to slow down, but after the second run-through I felt confident about the topic and comfortable to ask different questions and run with the teachable moments as they arose. I was also very proud of my students! I had a student- the brain of the class- who informed me he had researched the topic before he came to class. I was impressed by their insights and honestly, I would not have thought of half of them myself. 

        So a further conflicting issue for myself is knowing the discipline procedures of the school and when to act on them. I knew in that situation that something needed to be done, but I didn't know what or how. I don't know what I would have done if my coordinating teacher hadn't been there and thats a thought that scares me. I want to be confident that I can handle these situations when they arise. Finally, my coordinating teacher was very impressed with how the lesson ran and decided to create an activity which we will run this Thursday. I was happy to hear this news and slightly embarrassed (in a good way) when he bragged to the Principle about how my lessons went that day. 

This is Captain Danielle Raschko, signing off. 

How I feel about my day:

Captain's Log 2 (Weekly Reflections from in the Classroom

Captain’s Log 2

            Being back in a middle school classroom has provoked me to look back in to my past, at my own middle school experiences. I was shy, awkward and a late-bloomer. I didn't have all the developed parts my fellow classmates did, and I was convinced they gossiped about me all the time. I hated school so much and begged my mother a million times over to let me transfer to another school in the Yakima Valley. Thankfully my mother knew better and forced me to stick it out in the trenches of my middle school, which was actually more of a portable rather than a traditional classroom. The highlight of my week would have made middle school me beam with admiration. I've finally realized the thickness of my skin as of this last week in school.

            My students often make comments. At first these comments were nice like, “We love Ms. R! Can we keep her?!”

They have slowly transgressed:

Student: “You’re not a real teacher so you can’t tell me what to do.”

Me: “Well I’m not a fake teacher either. I’m a teacher to you right now, and you need to

complete this assignment in order to pass- that’s from your ‘real’ teacher”.

Yes, I used air quotes to make that emphasize. Roll your eyes if you want but it worked.

Another comment which wasn't critical or mean, but rather sweet was a compliment from a student. However the compliment got a bit out of hand and was leering towards becoming an inappropriate topic at the exploitation of the student’s peers:

Male student: “Ms. R, you look beautiful today!”

Me: “Thanks,”

Other students: “Oh my God, you can’t just hit on the teacher!”

Male student: “I was just trying to make her feel nice!”

Me: “Thank you for the compliment, but I’m going to walk away now because this is getting out

of hand. The three of you need to get to work.”

    Although these comments weren't outrageous, I've come to notice the dramatic change in my ability identify when it is appropriate to let the comments roll and when to address them. Being able to handle these situations today, in comparison to my middle school self, is something comparable to a 180 degree change- she was shy and introverted and thin-skinned. I wouldn't recognize myself today as myself back then.

            In my own future classroom, I will certainly need to develop this more. Making sure students know what is appropriate to say as well as when is a line I will need to develop and define for them. It’s something that is difficult for me now since this is not my own classroom, or my own students, but instead someone else’s. I have to consider their own rules before I make judgment calls, which can be difficult because as I’m still learning I don’t know them all. For example, I’m still unclear of the schools expectations for myself when I allow students to leave the room to use the bathroom or retrieve their materials in terms of hall passes. I also still don’t know if I should be asking students in the hall ways to produce their passes/slips as I’m passing by. I suppose I’m still learning the ropes as I go.

(Me as students walk by in the hall)

            This is Captain Danielle Raschko, signing off. 

Education 303 – Foundations of Assessment

TPA Lesson Plan

Teacher Candidate: Danielle Raschko            Grade: 11 Length of Lesson: 55 minutes

Content Area: English/History                         Unit/Subject: American Literature/US History 

Lesson Title/Focus: Elements of the Jazz Age within The Great Gatsby         

Academic and/or Content Standards:

Social Studies EALR 4: History: The student understands and applies knowledge of historical thinking, chronology, eras, turning points, major ideas, individuals, and themes on local, Washington State, tribal, United States, and world history in order to evaluate how history shapes the present and future.

Component 4.3: Understands that there are multiple perspectives and interpretations of historical events

GLE 4.1.2, Part 3: The student understands how the following themes help to define eras in US history: Reform, Prosperity, and the Great Depression.

English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, Reading Literature Standard 1: Students cite strong and through textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as influences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

Content Objective:

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to identify specific elements of the Jazz Age that appear in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby.

Academic Language Objective:

Students will be able to relate theme and motifs from a literary text to historical events as well as find historical context within a literary work.

Assessment Strategies:

Before students begin group work, they will be given a worksheet that will be used to assess their work. Additionally, students will be observed during their group work and prompted with questions to assess their understanding. Students will also be questioned during class discussion.

Lesson Rationale:

This lesson builds on both previous English language arts and US history knowledge of The Great Gatsby and the Jazz Age, respectively. Having students think about both subjects and topics gives them a different perspective on literature as well as a narrative of a historical event adding to the depth and breadth of their overall knowledge and understanding.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks to Support Learning:

Direct Instruction (15 minutes): To begin the class, there will be a brief PowerPoint presentation covering the lives of Americans during the Jazz Age accompanied by a lecture by the teacher. Students will be expected to take notes during this presentation to use for their group work later on in the period. Students will also be given an opportunity at the end of the presentation to ask questions. Students will then be sorted into groups of 3-4 by the teacher and given time to gather a handout and meet with their group members.

Group Work (20 minutes): Groups of students will then find examples of Jazz Age life within The Great Gatsby and support their finds with evidence from the text. During this time, the teacher will observe each group, prompting relevant questions and answering any questions students may have. Additionally, the teacher will be making sure that students remain on track and are participating in their groups using an observational checklist.

Class Discussion (15 minutes): The teacher will then direct the groups into a class-wide discussion of the findings. Each group will share one element of the Jazz Age that they found. Students will record these on their handouts. Once all groups have had an opportunity to share, additional responses will be asked for. When all of the responses to the handout have been shared, the teacher will lead students in a discussion relating the Jazz Age to one of the main themes of The Great Gatsby: how the American dream doesn’t overcome everything.

End of Class (5 minutes): Students will have time at the end of the lesson to turn in assignments and pack their belongings.

Differentiated Instruction:

The student who has a Section 504 accommodation for vision will be given print copies of the PowerPoint as well as the content of the PowerPoint in text. The student with an IEP for learning disabilities will be paired with students who have been performing well in this unit and consistently proving that they understand the material. The teacher will also be close by in case the student is having trouble understanding the material.

Additionally, this lesson targets multiple learning styles. The actual PowerPoint presentation will benefit visual learners, while lecture will benefit audio learners, and the notes will benefit tactile/kinesthetic learners. The group discussions have also been constructed in a similar fashion, as audio learners will listen to their classmates, visual learners have the worksheet to see, and tactile/kinesthetic learners have the worksheet to work on.

Resources and Materials:

This lesson consulted:

Fitzgerald, F.S. (2004). The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner.

Management and Safety Issues:

Not applicable.

Parent and Community Connections:

Parents/Guardians will have received an itinerary of the unit schedule from their student. Students will be sent home with weekly notifications of missing/incomplete work or failure to participate; slip must be signed and returned.

Observation Checklist

Group #	On task	Members	On task	Participating in group	Participating in discussion
Group 1		Jimmy
		Bobby
		Sally
Group 2		Eddie
		Martha
		June
Group 3		Johnny
		Jane
		Roy
Group 4		Mary
		Niel
		Patty
		Priscilla
Group 5		Finneas
		Quentin
		Adelle