What learning skills am I not overly familiar with?
What am I thinking now --> I feel like self-regulation is a necessary skill to teach in the classroom. It is essential in managing time, stress, emotions, relationships and more. This is not a concept I would have previously thought about too much, but this lesson has highlighted its importance in every day life. I am realizing I must start working on my own self-regulation skills as they are somewhat lacking.
How can I teach self-regulation? What strategies work well for me?
I strongly resonate with building relationships with students and showing an interest in their lives outside of academics. When understanding the interests of the class, you can begin to target lessons and connect curriculum with student interests to encourage student participation and enjoyment. Making these connections with students will also build a stronger relationship with them. I strongly resonated with "Focus[ing] on knowing your students and helping students know themselves". On another note, I appreciated the section about changing student thinking and mindset - it is necessary for students to change their mindset and learn to think of themselves in a more positive way in order to thrive in all areas of life (academic, emotional, physical, etc.,). I plan on being adamant about positive self-talk in the classroom, because it is difficult to succeed with continuous negative thoughts. Teaching students ways to encourage positive self concept is a must in any classroom, which can be done through discussion and through practice (actually practicing positive talk and revisiting it often). Mistakes are the best way to learn and improve.
Big question for me: How can I improve my self-regulation and what is the best way to teach this is the classroom?
This is quite straightforward: creating and following plans to complete work and tasks, established priorities and manages time to achienve goals and gathers/evaluates and uses information, technology and resources to complete tasks. Understanding what organization looks like and strategies to become more orderly are necessary for success as a teacher and as a student
Use activities to teach organization. Encourage students to use a weekly to do list, that includes due dates for their assignments. This will allow students to plan their time wisely. Organization in assignments is very important as well, and is commonly a section on rubrics, so that students are more likely to organize their thoughts/text and visuals clearly and thoroughly
Without organization, students may miss deadlines and/or completely miss handing certain assignments in if they are not aware of them or when they are due
I have learned about the responsibility of being a teacher and as a student throughout several of my courses in Concurrent Education. This was an awesome refresher, and I greatly appreciated all of the content. I resonate specifically with the responsibility of being a teacher: communicating with parents, being a constant role model for students, maintaining the role of teacher and not friend, and taking an interest in their lives outside of school. The biggest piece that several of my AT's have mentioned to me is "be friendly but dont be their friend" regarding students
Learning about responsibility really made me ponder the inquiry question, specifically 'are learning skills a learning story'. I feel like they can be a story if that is the way you choose to view it, in the sense of telling your story of improvement over time. How could students show this?
If students are not responsible, it may undermine their ability to learn because their priorities may lie elsewhere. If responsibilty is lacking, often self regulation is also a challenge as well, creating an overall struggle for the student academically. Lack of responsibility may lead to the student falling behind/struggling to keep up with tasks, not paying attention in class etc