So you want to be a master teacher?

Hooray! 

You've embraced the role of mentoring new teachers and will soon have a student teacher under your wing! Whether you are called "mentor teacher," "master teacher," or "cooperating teacher," you are taking on a meaningful and rewarding role in helping student teachers learn how to thrive and grow in this profession.

While you may have some ideas on how to be a mentor and support your student teacher on this journey, you may be looking for ideas and tools to help along the way. Your support can be crucial to helping them become the best educator possible, and you will hopefully build a lasting relationship as someone they can turn to for advice or ideas.

Jumping into a new school, classroom, staff, and more can be overwhelming for a new teacher. Read on for some tips and freebies that can help your student teacher feel welcomed and at ease, and can help you both establish norms that will leave everyone feeling joyful and inspired by this experience.

1. Relationships are key

As you prepare to welcome your student teacher, keep in mind the world of difference it can make if you prioritize building a positive relationship from the get go. Just as with our own students, your student teachers will be much more comfortable learning from and working with you if you develop a sense of trust and positive leadership.

Start by really putting in an effort to get to know your student teacher. This will not only help them feel welcome, but it can help lay out some differences between the two of you that may need to be accounted for in order to feel like a successful team.

 Are you a morning person, or do you stay late to plan and prep? Do they have family or work obligations before or after school that may put them on a different time track than you? How will you compromise to ensure you still have adequate time to plan and prepare together? This is also the time to set norms and ensure your expectations and understandings of student teacher/mentor teacher roles are on the same page.

Beyond getting to know one another’s schedules and interests, be sure to introduce your student teacher around campus to help them feel comfortable with the people and the layout of the school.

2.Reflection is vital to improvement and growth

Another key component of a master teacher's role in teacher mentoring programs is to foster reflective practice in teaching. Teach your student teacher to be okay with you asking “why” they made certain choices – this does not mean you are saying their choice was a questionable choice; it’s just encouraging them to reflect on decisions they make in and out of the classroom, and to be thoughtful of how those decisions impact their students.

Video record lessons to discuss – yes, it may be awkward, but it really is so much more beneficial for the student teacher to SEE themselves doing the actions you say you observed and to see the things around the room they may not have noticed while “in the moment.” This can be a great tool for collaborative conversations and goal setting.

3. Don’t just evaluate your student teacher; help to teach and train your student teacher

This is very likely only your student teacher’s first or second opportunity to TRY teaching. As mentor teachers, we are effectively an extension of the credentialing courses – everything their courses teach them in theory, we get to support in practice. That also means providing feedback and – here’s the key part- support to help our student teacher learn and grow. When discussing areas for growth,  be sure to also give your student teacher some strategies to try in that area. Then, observe them again to follow up on whether they’ve improved or whether you two need to brainstorm some other strategies.
Just like in our own classrooms, we have to assume the need to model and teach even the most basic strategies and approaches. While some student teachers will come with a knack for certain aspects of teaching, be sure you aren’t assuming they know HOW to lesson plan and HOW to execute specific management tools or strategies. Model and hand-hold a bit at first, then as they grow and are ready, be sure to give them freedom to try lessons in their style. Try to avoid stepping in during their lessons unless absolutely necessary, but make notes of observations to reflect on later.


Remember, they will enter your class as a new teacher, and leave your class…still as a new teacher!

It’s OKAY if you didn’t impart #allthewisdom and “build the whole car,” so to speak – you helped them grow and provided a solid foundation for their own journey into teaching. For that, YOU ROCK!!

Click here to download a set of freebies to help you start your journey as a master teacher.

Need something more in depth? Click here to view my full Mentor Teacher Toolkit for a student teaching binder on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Summer is time to recharge and reflect

Looking back on your school year to recharge and reset before the year ahead

After pouring so much of ourselves into our classroom and students over the last 180 days, it is SO important that we make the most of our breaks. Using summer to purposefully recharge can help prevent teacher burnout and leave you feeling ready and excited for the year ahead.

While it's tempting to waste the days away with the latest Netflix binge in my jammies, I know I feel much more relaxed when I can get all the clutter out of my head and really make sure I'm prioritizing the things I don't always have (or make!) time for during the school year.

My brain is constantly swirling with activities I want to do over the summer, filling with ideas I have for next year, ruminating on things I goofed on this past school year, or just trying to make a mental list of all the appointments I need to schedule and get to while I actually have some free time! I can't be the only one swamped with a muddled to-do list flashing through my mind, so I thought I'd share these reflection sheets I created.

I'm hoping that if I get the main things out on paper, there will be less swirling around my brain which will allow me to fully relax and enjoy the free time I do have this summer. It will also help me prioritize the ideas I want to prepare for next year, so I go back feeling rested and ready in the fall.

Click here to head to the freebie, and let me know in the comments how you plan to rest, recharge, reflect, and reset this summer. Cheers!!

Welcome TPT Friends!

Welcome to Awesome Anaheim!

Hello TPT Friends!!! I wish I'd thought of sharing this sooner for all you weekenders who've arrived early for #TPTOC17. Nonetheless, here are a few of my favorite things to do around Anaheim, other than the obvious fave, Disneyland! Hopefully these help if you're looking to fill your evenings after TPT, or are sticking around for a few extra days!

• Come try unique and yummy treats from craft eateries at the Anaheim Packing House, and wash it all down with some great brews at the Anaheim Brewery. One of my favorites at the Packing House is a sandwich from the Black Sheep Grilled Cheese Bar, followed by a chocolate-dipped fresh berry popsicle at Popbar. There are so many great restaurants and treats, though, that it's tough to decide!

Anaheim Packing House 

"One for a nickel, Two for a dime, Get your beer at Anaheim!"

Anaheim Brewery

• Check out some Angels Baseball. They're playing the Nationals on Tuesday and Wednesday, then the Red Sox on the weekend. 

Angels Baseball Tickets

• Get your Boot Scoot'n Boogie on at The Ranch Saloon, and try the fried pickles while you're there! They're closed on Monday and Tuesday, but Sunday is Family Night, Wednesday and Thursday are fun with the DJ and line dance lessons, and there's live music on Friday and Saturday.

The Ranch Saloon

• Visit the shops and restaurants at Downtown Disney. I've put this last, because if I'm sharing local faves, this (understandably!) is more of a tourist spot. I do love it though, and some other teacher bloggers and I will be at ESPN Zone on Tuesday night after the conference. We'd love for you to come say hi and join us for a drink!

Downtown Disney

I hope you enjoy visiting our little corner of "The OC," and if you're ever back in town, I'd love to show you around even more! If you try any of the above spots, let me know what you think down in the comments! And if you're a fellow SoCal native, what else would you add to this list?!

Welcome to Electric City!

Hi there! Welcome to my shiny, new, amazingly designed blog, courtesy of the extremely talented Alexis at Laugh Eat Learn Designs. I am so excited for this new adventure! A blog debut calls for sharing one of my all-time favorite projects to do with my kiddos, so here goes!!

I first learned about this project, Electric City, from a wonderful hands-on science gal named Maureen at the Orange County Dept. of Education. When I was teaching science, I would do this with the fourth grade classes, and after 2 years of 7 or 8 classes, I worked out some kinks and now have a pretty fine-tuned system! This was previously a culminating project tied to our 4^th grade “Magnets and Electricity” unit, but it transfers so well to the new NGSS engineering standards.

I begin by teaching or reviewing the concepts of electricity and circuits – conductors, insulators, schematic design, open and closed circuits, etc. The interactive notebook set from The Science Penguin is perfect for this!

Once the students have a solid background of circuits, we jump right in and put our knowledge together to create our awesome city! With my science classes, I was able to complete this project in 3 one-hour class periods. With my 5^th grade homeroom, we stretched it out a bit and did shorter periods throughout one week. I was also SO grateful for parent helpers this year – cutting windows and stripping Christmas lights is a daunting, callous-inducing task!! Totally worth it, though!

Our first step is to bring in empty cereal or large cracker boxes, and turn them inside out.

The students then choose a large panel on the blank side to design their home or storefront. They are so creative!

I let the students know they can choose 3 – 4 spots for us to cut out as windows, and they mark each one with an “X”. With an X-acto knife or box cutter, parent volunteers and I cut out the windows and cut open the doors.

Once our boxes are designed and cut, we review circuits. I then hand out the 3-bulb strand of Christmas lights (pre-stripped by a wonderful parent volunteer!) as well as a 9V battery and a snap cap (available at Radio Shack or in bulk from various online retailers). *Note: I have found that the Dollar Tree 9V batteries pictured above work best for me! I bought them because I could get a class set for under $20, but asked for parent donations of batteries one year. The big brand names were too powerful for our little homes, and were getting really hot! I would recommend just being extra careful with the powerful batteries!

Once the students have their supplies, I ask them to use their electrical engineering skills to design a working circuit. As this is a basic series circuit, most get it within a minute or two.

I then pose the predicament: How might this simple circuit be problematic once our box is all sealed up? We discuss and come to the conclusion that we need a switch, since this presently has to be turned off by disconnecting wires.

I pass out a small piece of an index card, 2 brass brads, and a paperclip and ask them to go through the Engineering Design Process to see if they can use the provided materials and incorporate a switch into their circuit. They swing the paperclip (attached to only one brad) to touch or release the 2^nd brad, closing and opening the circuit.

We then transfer all of this knowledge into our Electric City project, and affix their circuits into their boxes using masking tape. If a length of their circuit does not reach their switch, we add in the extra pieces of wire that came loose from the light strands.

I also post an “expert list” on the whiteboard, and as students successfully complete their boxes, they add their names to the list. This helps the traffic jam usually coming to me, since they must ask each other for help first, and frees me up to monitor the room.

Ta-Da! Here is our finished city. Isn’t it gorgeous?!

I’m happy to answer any questions about this project, and I hope it inspires some STEAM in your room!

Engineering for Kids - Parachute Design

Alrighty guys, I have to admit I am hesitant to post this because my blog is brand new and still isn’t looking exactly how I’d like it! I absolutely cannot wait for my blog design by the amazingly talented Alexis at Laugh Eat Learn designs, but something is telling me to just start sharing my ideas in the meantime.  So here goes…my very first “curriculum-related” blog post!

I spent a few weeks these past two summers designing curriculum for our Summer Engineering Academy. I am a coach for the kindergarten classes, which means I design the lessons based on our district-adopted “Engineering is Elementary” (EIE) program and help the teachers implement them in our three week long summer school class. While EIE is an AMAZING program with such well-designed, easy-to-follow units, they definitely needed to be modified for kindergarten. While I’m still fine tuning our Submersibles unit, I am pretty proud of how the Parachutes unit turned out.

I used More Than A Worksheet’s “Jack and the Parachute” from the Fairy Tale STEM packet as inspiration while still integrating the content, vocabulary, and Engineering Design Process outlined in the EIE curriculum. The kids have had a blast and have really been applying their parachute vocabulary as they work through the steps of the Engineering Design Process.

Below are some images and descriptions of how this Parachute mini-unit was structured, and I hope it provides some inspiration for you to jump on the Engineering train, even with the little guys! Oh and if you haven’t already checked out More Than A Worksheet on Teachers Pay Teachers, go now! She’s got some seriously awesome, themed STEM activities that are always a hit with my students.

So the premise of the Jack and the Parachute unit is that Jack needs a way to get safely to the ground after the beanstalk has been lined with barbed wire by the Giant. After frontloading some parachute vocabulary, the students determine that a parachute can be a useful solution. The EIE unit is a lot more complex, but ultimately has the students designing and testing parachutes with different variables to determine the safest (slowest) design.

I made this simple anchor chart which the students copied to introduce the parachute vocabulary.

We then talked about varying canopy size, and followed the Engineering Design Process to create and test parachutes with various sized coffee filters. The suspension lines were all the same, as were the loads (one small bulldog clip…binder clips have grooves that let the lines slip out). I also made these fill-in worksheets for students to track progress for each variable.

One of my awesome team members, Sara, made this great anchor chart to track student predictions:

The next variable was canopy material, followed by suspension line length. 

We timed 3 parachute trials for each variable, and graphed the averages. 

After discussing, students used this recording sheet I made to note the three variables that would slow Jack down the most, helping him to safely escape the giant! 

The mini-unit culminates with the students designing a parachute based on the data (and, let’s be real, their own preferences!), which they get to take home.

I love seeing the vocabulary growth and engineering interest that stems (hehe, pun intended!) from activities like these. Please feel free to ask any questions regarding this unit. I’m happy to help more students gain exposure to elementary engineering!

Resources:

Engineering is Elementary – www.eie.org

“More Than A Worksheet” on Teachers Pay Teachers

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/More-Than-A-Worksheet