Woodland Whimsy

The Big Five is a taxonomy that is used to group personality traits and allows scientists and doctors to study different specific spheres of personality traits that are related to each other rather than studying each specific characteristic individually. The five categories that make up the big five are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness. Extraversion refers to the extent to which a person actively engages with the world and how much they avoid social activity or engagement. You can think of extraversion as a scale where on one end you have extreme extraverts who thrive off of social interaction, and on the other end you have an introvert who is usually quiet and keeps to himself most of the time. A more recent term, ambivert, describes someone who falls in the middle of the scale. Extroverts tend to interact well with others and perform well in social scenarios. Agreeableness refers to how warm and compassionate a person is or how helpf...

This month my mentor and I talked about different procedures that she uses in her classroom. Daily questions and having students create an interactive notebook where they take notes in a creative way are some of the strategies Mrs. Milligan uses in her classroom. She teaches these procedures to students by modeling them and walking them through it during the first week of school. She explained that classroom procedures are very important because they help students keep up with the class work and helps set the tone for the classroom. She has basic rules that she expects students to follow like showing respect for everyone, not acting out, and not being on phones. It's important to communicate rules to students and parents to make sure they are aware of the expectations. She usually explains the basic rules in a syllabus and has it signed by students and parents. Then, if she needs to deal with individual students she will either call or email parents. Sometimes student behavior  c...

On January 10th, my mentor and I met for the fifth time this year. This time we talked about getting to know your students and parents. My mentor uses strategies like playing games on the first day of school, discussing grades with students one on on throughout the school year, and greeting kids at the door all of which help her to better connect with students. To communicate with parents she emails, calls, participates in parent teacher conferences, or sends letters home. Depending on the situation she might use different methods but does make sure to inform parents of what's going on. My mentor believes that it is vitality important to keep in touch with parents because it usually helps behavior in class, and as a teacher you would want the parents on your side by letting them know what is happening. This is all great advice, even though I may not have to do this until I start teaching it is good information to know going forward.