Christen's+Page


 * Hi everyone! Here is a little bit about me (Christen)...**

Here is the link to Nora's Caring Bridge page :)

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I've been teaching for 8 years now. My first year I long-term subbed in a little farming community near Green Bay. I so desperately wanted my own classroom (as I'm sure most new teachers do). I had heard that Florida (specifically Orange County) was in desperate need of teachers. To make a long story short, all the stars must have been aligned because I received my first job there! I taught 2nd grade for a year down there getting my foot in the door. I had gotten engaged right before I left for Florida so my plan all along was to get some experience for a year and then move __back up__ here. I was extremely lucky to receive the job that I now have. I have been teaching first grade in Ashwaubenon, WI (suburb of Green Bay) ever since and I absolutely LOVE IT! I live in De Pere, WI with my husband Marc, my two step-daughters Ava (13), Maya (12) and our son Chandler (2 1/2). We have a dog and two cats.

Likes: I have a lot so I will try to make it short...we have covered already my love for shoes and earrings (big, __cheap__, earrings). I love to sing and I use music a lot in my classroom. I enjoy running for exercise and to keep me sane! As I said on Saturday, I grew up in the South and so I am used to warm weather. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to waterski and pretty much anything to do with water! My favorite thing to do on a hot summer night is to go out on the boat with a glass of wine and a good book! My favorite thing to do is spend as much time with my little guy as possible. Our weekends are busy with "projects" and activities centered around our kids. I would say one of my strengths is definately communication..I process through my thoughts and feelings by talking to others. I rarely keep anything bottled up.

Dislikes: I dislike change and become very anxious and nervous when I don't know what to expect with something...anything. Which is pretty unusual considering our profession. Professionally, I love change and the unexpected but on a personal level, it makes me very uncomfortable. One thing that I need to become better at within our profession is to "share" ideas better. I often find myself feeling competitive with my teammates which is something I am trying to work on. I DISLIKE doing laundry. :)

I love my job and often don't even think of it as a "job". I feel it is more my purpose in life, second to being a mom and wife. Teaching has become so much more personal for me since I had my son almost 3 years ago. I have a completely different outlook and direction since becoming a mom. My passion is working with __students__ that suffer with Emotional/Behavior Disorders. I beg my principal each year to give me those students. I find it more challenging to work with students that have more of a LD background for some reason. I think it's really interesting how we all have our areas of strength and comfort when it comes to the kids. I am often bothered by people who treat their role as a teacher as a job. I am on several committees and am very frustrated with the lack of respect and the "attitude" we are thrown when we are calling on our colleagues to reflect upon their teaching and try something new. It's amazing how powerful a bad attitude is and how it can replace the momentum a district has with a wall of opposition. We are facing this in our district right now.



1. Poverty 2. Displacement of responsibiliy Parent vs. Teacher Parent vs. Child 3. Respect (both with parents and kids) 4. Expectations...losing sight of what's important 5. A sense of everyone's out for themselves (professionally) to save their job 6. Power of educational decisions is in the wrong hands 7. Socio-economic differences 8. Pressure to perform (turning kids off to learning)
 * Issues in Education:**



Action Research Question**Does small group Guided Math instruction produce higher achievement in math than Whole Group instruction?** // Why is this question important? What experiences did I have that made me choose this question? Why would small groups be beneficial? What led me to this question? For the last 7 years my Guided Reading instruction has been my focus. As far as my math instruction has been concerned, I have just followed the book and taught whole group. Just this past year my colleague and I decided to split our math in half on the two days a week we have spanish instruction. This allowed us to have half of our class in our room at a time for a half hour twice a week. This was a flexible group and I was able to change my students according to their strengths of the unit I was working on. For my first couple of years teaching first grade I really didn't know any different. I thought that some kids were just going to struggle and some would shine. Over the past three years this has really just not settled with me. This year especially I have students that are completely spread out over the math spectrum. All with various experiences and capabilities in the area of math. The pre-tests I have given this year have really shown this. So math daily has been very frustrating to me b/c I've felt I haven't been able to disperse the teaching across the entire class and meet everyone's needs. So when a colleague of mine came back from an RTI summit and shared that a classroom she visited was using math to self and math to someone (language I was already familiar with through the use of Daily 5 in my reading classroom) it got me thinking. If we differentiate our students' reading instruction why not for math too? At the time, I was not familiar with the idea of Guided Math...I was silly in thinking I had just had a huge idea. Well, I have come to find out that in fact I was not the first to think of this awesome idea (which I got a very good laugh over). First graders come in at all different levels in reading as well. For that we spread them out and teach them at that level. It is extremely successful. You are challenging those that need a challenge and that have mastered certain skills of the grade level and you are intervening and introducing for those that have no expereience. The way it is in my head as of right now is every day I would start math with a 15 to 20 minute mini lesson that would be whole group. This is where we would share strategies and have our common math language. After the mini-lesson we would break into small group (Daily 5 type setting). I would be at my table with a small group of students. The others are rotating between stations. These groups would change based on each Unit and by skill needs. I would at some point switch to whole group instruction for the entire math block to give myself something to compare results too. //

Hey Christen, I really like your action research project question. I too wonder if small group learning will help achieve higher grades and confidence. I look forward to seeing how your research turns out. ~JULI

Hello,

I have always wondered the whole small/whole group thing really works. I have help teach that way before and it kind of seem to work but I would like to see more information on it. Good Luck, Tiaa

Christen, you will enjoy this, i taught in this style therough highscope K5 and it showed properous. Denise

** TLA Program - Christen's Field Experience Documentation ** **(10 hours per course)**

FIRST ADD INFORMATION INTO YOUR WORD DOCUMENT, THEN TRANSFER INFO TO CHART.MAKE SURE TO SAVE FREQUENTLY.

 * Field Experience:** Every student in the TLA program is required to document 10 hours per quarter of field experience or classroom applications. These activities will document your applications of the theories and practices encountered in your coursework, as well as your growth and application of the Nine Outcomes of the TLA program. The purpose of field experience is to help you to make connections to your thinking, deepen your insights into these new connections, and ultimately guide you in discovering how these insights can, have, or will transform your professional practice.

Field Experience Activities include journal entries, activities in your classroom, online interactions with your colleagues.

This document has two purposes. One, it gives each student a place to record their field experiences. Second, perhaps more importantly, it provides an opportunity to reflect on those experiences. THE COMPLETED 10 HOURS MUST BE COMPLETE AT THE END OF THE QUARTER.

For each activity, please complete the chart below. Use the Reflection Questions below as a structure for your reflection on the activity; your reflection should include as many of these questions as possible, but need not be limited to these questions.

quarter || Course || Date of Activity || Duration (give approximate time spent in/doing activity): || Activity (describe briefly, if possible provide an artifact to document) || Reflection (please answer as many of the questions listed above as possible. Take as much time and space as you need to be thorough) || quarter || Course || Date of Activity || Duration (give approximate time spent in/doing activity): || Activity (describe briefly, if possible provide an artifact to document) || Reflection (please answer as many of the questions listed above as possible. Take as much time and space as you need to be thorough) ||
 * Reflection Questions**: **//How or why did you choose to document this activity? What was the outcome? What was the result of this activity? What TLA Outcome or Outcomes (if applicable) did this activity provide you more insight into? What did you learn about yourself, your peers, your students, as a result of this activity?//**
 * Quarter 10hrs/
 * || Quarter 10hrs/
 * 5/10 || TLA542 || 9/12/12 || I worked on it for several days for different lengths of time. || Analyzing my students Trimester 1 Test and creating Unit 1 Goals. I also determined which group they would belong to for Math I/E time. || This was something that I needed to do to determine what my students needs are. Technically this falls in both assessment and differentiation because after I analyzed their scores, I had to place them in the appropriate group for their needs. This gave me such a good snapshot of my students and where they fall on the spectrum of skills. I have never spent this much time in math looking over their scores. Usually I do it for reading. It was very helpful and I felt very organized doing so. ||
 * 3/10 || TLA 589 || Week of 9-10-12 || 3 hours || Creating stations and groups for my balanced numeracy framework. || I collaborated with my teammates and we came up with a great way to illustrate my groups for the kids and develop stations that the students will go to during math time. I had to put students into groups that would rotate with each other. I did homogenous groups for my guided math block for this unit. In following units I may decide to make heterogeneous groups ||
 * 7/10 || TLA589 || Week of 9-17-12 || 4 hours || Creating and finding math games for my students to play that will support the standards and what we are learning in math. || This is a part of my Guided Math and also our RTI par t of the day. I had to create and find different activities/games for my students to play that would support standards and support their learning goals for math. ||
 * 11/10 || TLA542 || 10-26-12 || 5 hours || All day inservice for RTI. Learning how to design goals and find interventions to meet student needs. Learning more about our MAPS data base and how to analyze the data it can give you. || This in-service was offered by our school district. We were split into grade levels. We were able to really dissect the MAPS website. We learned how to sort our students to really find out what their skill deficits are within each subject area. Very interesting. We also learned more about the ERTI website and how to develop an appropriate goal for our TIER 2 students and what interventions are acceptable. ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * 10/10 || TLA589 || 11/12/12 || 3 hours || Created a personal communication assessment and interviewed students for a mid math assessment. || I created an interview/conference assessment for my unit in math. I wanted to know what my students thought and how they thought through a math story problem. I wanted to learn what strategy they were most comfortable using and why. This assessment gave me incredible insight in how my students learn seperately and where/what they still needed to receive more instruction/practice on. This assessment showed me that I needed to go back and have students discuss the language of a story problem and have them become more conscience of what the story problem was asking them to do and what words were the "key" words in telling them to do so. ||  ||
 * [[image:http://www.wikispaces.com/i/editor/insert_table.gif]] ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||


 * TLA 543 || 4/10 || 5-21-13 || 4 hours || I researched on-demand writing assessments. || I plan to implement on-demand pre and post assessments in my writing units next year. I feel it will give me a good picture of what my students know and areas that they need to work on. ||
 * TLA 543 || 7/10 || 4/29/13 || 3 hours || Created challenge words to go along with our spelling units. || A colleague and I created a set of challenge words to go along with each of our weekly spelling lists to give our students an opportunity to receive a 4 which is advanced in the area of spelling. These words were pulled from our sight word list and other commonly misspelled words. If students pass the basic words on Monday’s pre-test they will be given the opportunity to study the challenge words for Friday’s test. ||
 * TLA 543 || 10/10 || 5-21-13 || 3 hours || Analyzed students growth from September to May in the areas of math and reading || As a team we used a google document to analyze our students’ growth from the beginning of the year. In the spread sheet we filled out their MAPS scores from fall to spring and calculated the growth in points. We also recorded their IRI data and calculated their growth from fall to spring. We recorded whether or not they reached the first grade benchmark. We then did the same for math MAPS and used their basic fact test data to record growth from fall to spring. We then passed this data on to second grade teachers. ||
 * ESR 534 || 6/10 || Week of 4/29/13 || 6 hours || Analyzed my data for my chapter 3 of my action research || I analyzed my data that I collected to write the third chapter of my action research paper. I created a power point that really highlighted each data source and what I learned from each one. This really helped when it was time to write about what it was that I had learned and experienced. ||
 * ESR 534 || 8/10 || 5/2/13 || 2 hours || Reviewed, edited, and revised my paper || I spent quite a bit of time reading my paper, revising and editing it to make it even better. ||
 * ESR534 || 10/10 || 5/21/13 || 2 hours || Reviewed and edited my paper and made some changes provided to me in the feedback of my instructor. || I went back to my proposal and added the demographics of my classroom. I also fine-tuned some things that my instructor had found when she read my paper. ||


 * TLA 594 || 6 || 6/10 || I have spent a long time searching data bases and different resources looking for activities and games that my would supplement the curriculum I am teaching and the students are learning in first 3 units in math. I put each game/activity in a binder. I had not organized them other than that. || It was important for me to find materials that would supplement curriculum because that is an important part of balanced numeracy. Students need to work on activities independently and with their peers to challenge and practice skills being learned. ||
 * TLA 594 || 1 || 7/10 || I met with several of my colleagues to see what organizational system they use. || One of my colleagues uses an open file box system for her writing units and I thought it would be very appropriate and easy to use that same type of system for my math units and my writing units. It would give me a place to put materials for each unit and separate below, on, and above grade level activities. It would allow me to add to the unit as I find new materials and make it very easy to organize and get ready for each unit as the year unfolds. ||
 * TLA 594 || 3 || 10/10 || I went through my materials and divided them by unit. Some activites can be used for more than one unit. This showed me where I have holes and need to find more materials to supplement what we are learning. || This was a very good thing for me to do. I felt very organized and made me feel very ready to teach. Sometimes, when you aren’t organized, it makes you not as good an educator. This will allow me to be ready and motivate me to add to my units as I come across new activities! ||
 * ESR 533 || 2 || 2/10 || I went on the MAPS website and printed off my classes’ results for fall and winter. I printed off the different reports to show weaknesses and strentghs. || This is very valuable information. It can show an educator what a child is strong and comfortable in as well as where their areas of weaknesses are. Sometimes our informal assessments don’t pick up on these areas of concern. ||
 * ESR 533 || 3 || 5/10 || I administered a student conference. I met with 6 students and asked them a question about a word problem and recorded their responses and thinking as they worked through it. ||  ||
 * ESR 533 || 2 || 7/10 || I looked at my MAPS results and created a line graph that compared my fall test results and winter test results. || This was a good way to see the growth that occurred between the months of October and January. I was surprised by some and not by others. I was quite surprised by the students that stayed the same. ||
 * ESR 533 || 3 || 10/10 || Created, administered, and analyzed a post survey. This survey was an improvement from the survey I gave to students at the beginning of the year. I got the idea for this survey from one of our text books. It was very organized and students were able to follow along with me by using pictures. I gave them only two choices to choose from which also helped minimize confusion. || I got the idea for this survey from one of our text books. It was very organized and students were able to follow along with me by using pictures. I gave them only two choices to choose from which also helped minimize confusion. ||