Moc Interview

Today in class we participated in a Moc interview. Myself and 3 other classmates had the pleasure of being principal or administrators at a school. The rest of the class were the teacher interviewees. My school is Dream Big Elementary School. 

Here is an example of my opening statement!

My name is Mrs. Julian. I am a principal at Dream Big Elementary School. At my school we believe in the phrase “develop together”. It is important to us that each student develops their unique potential to become responsible, educated citizens! I obtained my bachelor's degree from Mount Saint Mary College and continued my education at Fordham University and received my Masters degree. I have been working at this school for 10 years. I taught 3rd grade for 8 years and decided to apply for the principal position and here I am today! Since I have experience as a teacher at this school I would like to tell you how our school runs, we believe that students should be actively engaged during the entire school day. We all work together and we are looking for a teacher candidate who is willing to incorporate technology and creativity into their lessons. Before we get started, I would like to thank you all for your interest in our school. Best of luck to each of you!

Let’s begin.

Each interviewee was well prepared with their resume and philosophy of teaching. Everyone was dressed appropriately. Here are the questions that I asked,

5 Elements of teaching Social Studies/ Teaching SS with technology - Alisha

1. If you could be one color of the rainbow, which color would it be and why?
2. What technology would you use in your everyday lessons, especially when students are working in groups?
3. Out of the 5 elements of powerful teaching (Meaningful, Integrative, Value-Based, Challenging, Active) which 3 elements do you believe are most important to reach in a lesson?
4. Can you share an example of teaching a social studies lesson where you applied 5 elements of powerful SS teaching?

During the interview I noticed that not everyone was knowledgable on the 5 elements of powerful SS teaching. So answering question number 4 was a challenge.

I learned a lot from this moc interview process. A few things I learned on the administrators side was they way to use symbols for each interviewee's answers. They don't know what the symbols mean but this is how us administrators kept track of the interviewees who answered well. I also learned that this is a real process and not everyone gets hired. School districts and administrators are searching for the right candidate. It was tough to make a decision, but a total of 9 people were hired!!

I also learned some personal things that prepared me for the future. It is important to be well prepared, attentive to the questions that are being asked, and to include real life experiences in the answers. I also learned that it is effective to give examples of lessons that I have previously taught when answering some of the questions.

The Moc interview was a great experience and it gives us teacher candidates a little taste of what the real interview world is like because we have to start preparing for it now!

What's in the bag?

I really enjoyed creating an artifact bag! I learned that this is such a great and engaging way to introduce a lesson to a class. As a teacher candidate it is important to learn many different ways of teaching and how to make lessons engaging and meaningful to the students, and the artifact bag lesson is definitely one way!

Creating an artifact bag gives students the opportunity to explore what is in the bag, then they can research the "artifacts" in the bag and learn more about them and the meaning of them and why they are important to the lesson.

I created an artifact bag that related to our Unit Plan which is, "Forming a New Nation". Many important events were taught in this unit plan and I included some in my artifact bag. The artifacts that I chose were the Preamble of the Constitution, the 3/5 compromise, and the American flag.

Here is a picture of my artifacts.


I found a website that students could explore on and research more about these artifacts. Students can learn why these artifacts are important in history and in our lives today. They can learn what each artifact means and how it is significant to this lesson.

Click the link to view group 1's artifact bag presentation!

WASTED!!

On Tuesday 4/17/18 I attended a conference/professional development that informed me on food waste and how much of a problem it is in our country. Many people spoke at this event, people from DEC, and local community famers. Dr. Michael Olivette did a great job putting an image in my head on how much food waste fills the earth by saying if we took all the food waste and filled tractor trailer trucks and parked them side by side, they would circle the earth one in a half times. That is insane! 
All of these speakers stressed how they work towards stopping food waste by recycling, or making new foods. Foods that are unused can be brought to food pantries, can be composted, or made into different things for people to consume.  For example, unused lettuce and other veggies can be given to pigs because they will eat anything! Or, like the movie showed, the ends of the loaf of bread that people don't use can be made into beer! A drink that mostly everyone enjoys :) The movie that was shown was Wasted! The Story of Food Waste and if you click on the link you can watch it! This movie taught me the simple things we can do to prevent food waste. The food that we waste can be going into the mouths of truly hungry people in poorer countries, or into farm animals that also produce food for us. Supermarkets throw away a crazy amount of food that is not used, or the "sell by" date is up or the "use by" date is up. It is unreal, because that food can still be eaten or used for something else and not enough people are educated about this so they automatically throw away foods with "dates" on it that they bought from the store. Another way to stop food waste is through composting.  If you throw unused parts of fruits or vegetables into a compost bin, you are making extremely fertile soil that can be used for the garden! I would love to get a compost bin for my house! I also want to start recycling. These are some simple ways that I am going to start helping this huge issue in the world. 
Dr. Smirnova also spoke at this event! She spoke about the sensory garden that is being build at Bishop Dunn, right on campus! This is great because it is teaching young children the importance of gardening, growing food, and the benefits it has to life in general. 

Below are some pictures from the event! 

P. I. G. S. Jigsaw Reflection

Positive Interdependence
Individual Accountability 
Group Processing
Social Skills
Face-to-face Interaction

CL really focuses on teaching students social skills, rather than just grouping them together to work on an assignment. It is important to inform students what they will be doing during the CL lesson. The teacher needs to explain what each students "job" is during the lesson and how they will be doing peer evaluations and self reflections. It is important to teach the students why all of these elements are important to learn and use during the CL lesson. During fieldwork we experienced that some of the students in each group didn't take their job serious. For example if a student was the "scribe" for the group, they just wrote whatever they thought was the answer. They didn't listen to their group members answers and collaborate and write down the agreed answers. After this activity I learned that the teacher should really only group the students into groups of 4 and they should implement what each students job is in their group and how important the jobs are before they are grouped and ready to work. CL is a fun lesson to prepare for and the students enjoy cooperating in it. They learn how to self reflect on how they think they did as a team member which falls under the "Individual Accountability", and they have a chance to do peer evaluations on how well their peers presented their work to the class which falls under the "Group Processing" element.  All elements of CL are important for students to learn before they actually participate in a CL lesson because then they can work their best and students are going to be participating in group work throughout their lives so it is good to teach them and engage them in it as much as possible.

Fieldwork Reflection

I wouldn't have chosen better colleagues to work with. I am so proud of my group and how well we taught 5th grade Social Studies!!!!

I learned a lot about team work and the importance of planning a lesson. First, everyone has to be able to meet at the same time so we can all put our ideas together and each be working on some part of the lesson. I also leaned how important it is for everyone to know their role on the day of teaching and know the content that they are teaching. We assigned and reviewed what slides each of us in the group would be teaching, and what each teacher candidate would be doing during our lesson in front of the class. For example, one of us is in charge of giving the students a flag for following directions. One of us was in charge of handing out the worksheets that we provided for the students and walk around during the lesson to make sure the students are filling in the note sheet and following along. This makes the lesson go more smoothly so we are not talking over each other and tripping over each other while teaching! I also learned how important it is to take everyone in your groups ideas into consideration. We all had great ideas, but had to narrow them down into one lesson plan. I learned how important it is to be aware of the time you have to teach, time management is so important because you want to give the students enough time to finish the activities and assignments. You want to have enough time to teach everything, but you don't want to spend to much time on one topic and end up running out of time to teach. So, I learned to keep the questions students had that were not about the lesson for the end of class.  We received such positive feedback on the observation reflections from our colleagues.  The only suggestions were to slow down on teaching the content during direct instruction, which is hard to do because we only have a certain amount of time to teach and have the students finish the activities.
The students in the 5th grade class taught me that you can never be over prepared for the questions that they are going to ask, or the way the class will behave. They were an awesome group of students and I cannot wait to have my own classroom someday!!! :)

Great job, Group 4! Celebration Of Learning

Group 4 did a good job with time management and had so many creative activities! Instead of having a numbered note sheet for the students to follow along on they created a flip book! Each flip had the title of the slide on it so the students could follow along. I loved this idea! They also created a traffic light as a check for understanding. The students all had a red, green and yellow card and if they had a question or was confused about something they would hold up their cards. This was a very creative way to check for the students understanding throughout the lesson! The group had a very engaging guided practice vocabulary game for the students to play, but unfortunately the students didn't behave properly during the game. They had the class split into 2 groups. Each group had a paper with definitions on it. The terms were on the whiteboard. Students had to swat the word that matched the definition but the students were not using the fly swatters properly. I think in order for this game to go smoothly, only the students they were swatting their term on the smart board should have been the only students standing.
During their inquiry lesson, I like how they introduced the problem as “In need of historians” as a way to get the students involved in the research. The students had to do a biography research on a WebQuest using iPads again.

Group 1 - researched Stephen Austin

Group 2 - researched James Marshall

Group 3 - researched Sam Houston

Group 4 - researched James Polk

Each group had 20 minutes to research their historical figure. I loved the biography research page they provided for the students. The layout was more engaging than a worksheet with questions to answer. Then the students had to share one major accomplishment of their historical figure to the class.

For their cooperative lesson each group was responsible for a main event learned in the 1800’s. They had to 20 minutes to work on

-Organizing a timeline with the provided sheet.

-Organizing and label pictures.

-Create a slogan

Each group worked so well together and then they presented their timeline!

This was also our last day of fieldwork! This was a great experience learning to teach Social Studies to a wonderful 5th grade class! Every one of my colleagues did a wonderful job equally teaching, working together, and using their teacher voices. 

A Growing Nation

Group 2 did an awesome time working together, and having great time management! I loved their response system, when they teacher said “holy moly" by students responded with "guacamole”. Each group member did an awesome job making sure the students were done filling in their note sheet before moving on. The group chose to do BINGO with the students as their guided practice during their direct instruction lesson. I thought this was a great way to engage the students in a review of the content and vocabulary terms that were just taught, and the students loved it. I also loved their idea of the independent practice. They had the students complete a fill in the blank and matching worksheet. Usually the students have to write a letter, so this was different way to assess the students.

During their inquiry lesson the students worked so well on their WebQuest. The students were divided into five groups and each group had to fill in their history hunt sheet on the assigned historian. (eg. Sojourner Truth, Andrew Jackson, Elizabeth K. Stanton). Then the students had to present their findings, they always do such a great job presenting their findings to the class!

During cooperative learning the students were split into groups and given a specific job. They had to work together to complete a poster on assigned group that they learned about. The students were very engaged and knowledgeable during their presentation and I loved the raps that they came up with! To end the lesson the students wrote an article to "News of the world"

Great job group 3!