The ending has come

"You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having."

The end of the semester came in a flash! I cannot believe that I am finished with my last semester of classes as an undergrad! This is definitely a bittersweet feeling. I am extremely excited to be student teaching next semester. For my first placement I am in a second grade general education class. For my second placement I am in a fifth grade co-taught special education class. Thanks to Dr. Smirnova I have so many resources that I can use when creating my lessons and unit plans. Furthermore, when

I am completing my edTPA next semester I will have so much practice!

This semester was definitely hard work! Sitting in class the first day I never thought I would be sitting here writing my final blog post! I have acquired so many skills and expanded my knowledge and experience! The thought of all the work we had to do made many of us crazy. But, now that it is over,
I am sure we all see the benefit it had on all of us. We have learned so much this semester. As well as learning new material, tools, philosophies etc. I have also learned a whole lot about myself as well. I have learned what certain teaching styles work for me.

Overall, I am very happy for everything I have learned in this class. This class has made me so excited for my future when I have my own classroom! There was also no better feeling than completing my eFolio! My eFolio has everything that has been completed over the semester. Follow this link to take a look!!

Here are the links to some of my peers blog's that I have commented on:

Mallory's blog

Shannon's blog

Kristen's blog 

Creating My Unit Plan

Creating Unit Plans can be a very stressful thing to do. I find it most helpful to plan a lot before you begin your actual unit plan. You need to think about how many lessons you need and what type of lessons. For our unit plan, we had already created 2 lessons that we taught in the classroom. Therefore, we needed to include at least 3 more mini lessons. At first, I thought this was going to be very difficult. But, during our semester, Dr. Smirnova provided us with many great resources that we
could use to create a mini lesson with and gear toward our topic. For example, two great mini lessons that I am going to include in my unit plan are: Science in the news and a trade book lesson. While creating my mini lessons, I am gearing it toward rocks and minerals and sixth grade. The next step I usually take when creating a unit plan is gathering everything together. It is important to see what you already have and what you will need. After you gather all your information you can begin to create everything you need to complete your unit plan. Creating a unit plan takes a lot of hard work and effort. You have to be patient and adaptive. At times, creating a unit plan can be very overwhelming! It is important that our lessons are not only educating but creating experiences for our students.