Texas Teacher Tired

  One of the most important fourth grade standards is inferencing. One of the most incorrectly answered STAAR questions in fourth grade is inferencing. This skill is something that students actually do almost daily, and without even realizing it. I have come to believe that the reason so many of them struggle with knowing when to infer, is just that- they don’t know the question is asking them to infer. Once we get our students to first understand what the questions are asking of them, they are more likely to answer correctly. I've created a detailed unit plan focused on teaching inference skills, a critical reading comprehension strategy that often challenges students. The unit takes a gradual release approach over three weeks, moving from explicit instruction to independent application. However, given our new Amplify curriculum, we do not have three weeks to teach this skill. So, I will now condense the lesson plan into four to five 20-minute mini lessons. I have also added tec...

 Chat conversation with Claude AI:  click here to view A few weeks ago, chatting with a bot was a new goal for me. Now, I'm not sure what took me so long to discover how helpful this tool really can be. While using Claude AI to help me brainstorm my teaching philosophy, I was for the first time able to think about my own approach to education as an individualized idea. I realized that I have been trying to place myself into one of the boxes, which is very unlike me. For this assignment, and the many other times throughout my three degrees in education, when asked to create a teaching philosophy, I felt like I had to pick out and label my pedagogical approach or chose which learning theories I believe in and use. This was always difficult for me because I feel like my style or approach to life in general is so eclectic. A few semesters ago I decided my view was Humanitarian. Teaching several years in the inclusion setting at title one schools, I was always very focused on perso...

                        Teaching 4 th grade with Technology   A few years ago as part of a teaching incentive program, we were challenged to add a new technology from a list of approved platforms into our classrooms during stations. I chose to use SeeSaw, and I have been using it ever since! It’s a fun and free website that teachers can create, share and assign engaging lessons on the student’s computers. One of my favorites that I use every year was created by another teacher. It’s a very simple poetry practice. There are several words in boxes that the students can drag and drop into place to create their own poem. I have edited my copy to change the theme from time to time. For example, the original template has fall leaves in the back ground and all of the words are related to fall. This year we are just starting poetry in February, so I have edited the assi...