Chapters+8+&9

Chapter 9 High Expectations
Reflect back on your entire year with your students.

Catherine Palmer Chapters 8 & 9 Task 1: Positive teacher behaviors that I have displayed on a consistent basis are being approachable and making eye contact. My students know that I expect good work from them and as I watch them begin to grow, and change, I see that I just might have had an impact in their maturation process.
 * Task 1- Reflect and respond in your Academic Journa to the following:**
 * Look at the list below and identify the research-based positive teacher behaviors you displayed consistently throughout the year.**
 * How do you know?**

Amy Yeater Task 1: The research based positive teacher behaviors I feel that I display on a consistent basis are: encouragement, gestures, smiles, eye contact, praise and enthusiasm. I know that I display these as I have received positie comments re: my use of these on training evaluations. I make sure that during all my training activities the participants can be successful. I do this partly by the tried and true "self-fulfilling prophecy." I expect it! I instill that they should expect it as well. They rise to my expectations. In addition, I offer assistance for those who need it and provide access to the information and resources to places where the information is available even after the training session. Task 3: The behaviors I feel I need to increase in order to strengthen positive relationships with students and enhance the learning climate are: touch, frequency of interaction and duration of interaction. In order to do this I would increase my behaviors indicating affection with participants. This may look like a greeting and handshake as participants enter the training session. I would increase other opportunities for touch in that I would obtain personal information/common ground/common interests with participants to be able to increase the frequency and duration of my interactions with others. Areas related to communicating high expectations for all students that I need to strengthen are use of quality interactions with students, identifying expectation levels for students and supporting low-expectancy students through the sessions. I plan to do this by taking a survey of student skills prior to the sessions. I would focus on those skills which are of lesser strength for my lower-expectation participants. Liberty Magnet Kindergarten Group At the kindergarten level, most all of the research-based positive teacher behaviors need to be used on a consistent basis in order to maintain effective classroom management. For example, teachers will welcome the students to the classroom at the door each morning. Greeting songs are incorporated into the morning routine to be sure everyone has had some sort of positive interaction. Throughout lessons, gestures, smiles, eye contact and praise are used frequently to engage and encourage participation. All students feel they can be successful in our classrooms because we focus on the student rather than extraneous influences (parental conflict, behavior problems, socio-economic levels, etc.). From the beginning of the year, teacher clearly communicate the expections of both behavior and academic achievement and students are held accountable in a fair and consistent manner.
 * Task 1:

One place we would like to focus our attention on would be Action Step 3: Bring student interest into the content and personalize learning activities. This, in fact, would go along with our IB curriculum and lead to more student initiated topics of inquiry and more thorough exploration of concepts. As a result, students would be more engaged with each topic and take ownership of their own learning. Within the classroom, students would be introduced to new topics that might spark an interest that otherwise may not occured. From Chapter 9, the Action Step we chose to strengthen is #5: When low-expectancy students do not answer a question correctly or completely, stay with them. Teachers can restate the question, giving the students additional wait time to think and compose a response. If they are still unsure, praise them for their attempt and allowing them to ask a friend for help. Once the correct response has been given, the teacher could ask the initial student to rephrase the answer for clarification. This type of an atmosphere will serve to reduce the number of negative comments from other students.
 * Task 3:

Debby Brackett

As I had already written my answer I decided to go ahead and post... Task 1- Reflect and respond in your Academic Journal to the following: Look at the list below and identify the research-based positive teacher behaviors you displayed consistently throughout the year. How do you know?

As I had already written my answer, I decided to go ahead and post... This is the entire question that appeared, so let me go from the list in Chapter 8, pg 153. As a teacher in the past, I believe I was able to exhibit the majority of these on a fairly consistent basis. I am good at consistently using eye contact, touch, and encouragement towards students. This is something I also do in my current role as a paraprofessional. I am good at guiding a student to problem solve when they can’t figure out an assignment, or when they have a problem with another teacher. When I can stay positive, consistent, and encouraging I am more successful in leading the classroom to be positive, consistent, and encouraged. A weak area for me is to not take things personally when students have had a rough start to their day at home or in another classroom. Also I have to work on being enthusiastic on those days I’ve had a rough start, or am not feeling my best.

Looking at Chapter 9, I believe I am presently fairly strong with the first 4 Action Steps. I know I am sometimes too quick to leave a student who is struggling to answer a question in whole group, generally based on the thought of not embarrassing that student. I would never leave the student with just a “No, that isn’t right,” but rather, “that’s a good beginning; can someone help us finish the thought?” In smaller group or individual settings I am much better at sticking with the student until he/she fully understands the concept.

Debra Barnes Task 1- It is hard not to display every one of the teacher behaviors mention in this chapter in a First Grade class (LOL) and I can honestly say I do well in this area. I try to always use eye contact, smiles, praise and encouragement constantly. My students are happy and we all communicate on many different levels, like not always just academically. I try to always here that one thing that is "super important" to them every morning when I pick them up. Some mornings I wish I had 20 sets of ears but we get through it and if someone doesn't get to share I promise them a turn later in the day! I know I am doing these becasue my students respond very postively to all our classroom/school community interactions and I have a wonderful class that has made data based progress this year.