- Content Knowledge
- Human Development and Learning
- Diversity
- Planning for Instruction
- Learning Environment
- Instructional Delivery
- Communication
- Assessment
- Collaborative Relationships
- Reflection and Professional Growth
- Professional Conduct
Content Knowledge
The teacher understands the central concepts, methods of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) and creates learning experiences that make the content meaningful to all students.
I have found that the best way to make sure that a child is knowledgeable about a concept is to let them practice it over and over again. However, in order to do this, they need to practice it in different ways. I believe that the best way to accomplish this task is to have the children actively engaged in centers. This is a picture of two students that are working at one of their six centers. They were allowed twenty-five minutes at each center. Center activities ranged from showing time on the computer to having students write a story about their day using time.
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Human Development and Learning
The teacher understands how individuals grow, develop, and learn and provides learning opportunities that support the intellectual, social, and personal development of all students.
My mentor teacher and I noticed that our students had a great discrepancy in their spelling scores. Some students would get them all right and some students would miss all but one or two of the words. This led us to create two different spelling groups so that we can differentiate our instruction based on the needs of our students. We gave them a three-day test of kindergarten through third grade high frequency words, and based on their scores, they were placed into one of two spelling groups. These groups have color names and each group has words that are challenging for them. I feel that this is important because before we were not really helping at least half of our class by giving all twenty-four individual students the same group of twelve words. I know this will be challenging to continue when I am the only teacher in the room, but it is a goal that I am going to work on.
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Diversity
The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners.
When giving assignments, I tried to keep in mind that my students have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. I would try to give them a variety of tasks in order to meet all of their needs and unique talents. After learning about maps, keys, and landforms, my students were asked to create their own imaginary island. They had to correctly place all three into their map. The above pictures show some of my students’ and their work. When the islands were complete we hung them up around the room.
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Planning for Instruction
The teacher understands instructional planning and designs instruction based upon knowledge of the discipline, students, the community, and the curriculum goals.I had to carefully plan my lessons throughout the week. I took into consideration the age level of my students and their varying abilities. I based my lessons on the district standards. I knew that my students had a variety of ability levels; therefore, I had to think about this as I planned my instruction. When teaching math concepts, I usually made tentative plans, while knowing that I might not be able to follow them everyday. I knew that some students would still need more review. I would reflect each night on the students' work and analyze how well the students, as a whole, are understanding the concept. My next step is to make the necessary adjustments to my lesson plans.
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Learning Environment
The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.
In my classroom, we would frequently work together in small groups or partners. It is important to allow students to learn social skills as well as the academic aspects. I believe that the students are more likely to be actively involved in something if they are working in partners as oppose to whole class. In our classroom, we did an experiment with eggs. We let the eggs sit overnight in vinegar and when we came back the next day, we were amazed at the results. The shells had dissolved from the eggs. The above picture shows our eggs. The students had to work in partners with their eggs and developing ideas about what could have happened. I could have just brought in one egg and told the class that this was our class egg. However, I felt the learning and engagement would be more meaningful if they were allowed to work in pairs.
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Instructional Delivery
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.
While the students were away at music, I rearranged the classroom to look like an airplane. When they returned, they had a passport, paper suitcase, and plane ticket. While traveling we watched a three-minute video and viewed a power point presentation about Mexico.
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Communication
The teacher uses knowledge of effective written, verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
In my classroom, we send home a newsletter every Monday letting parents know the topics that we are studying for the week. We also keep them up to date on important events, like CAMS and CARS tests, when we walk to the library, and days that we do not have school. We send home weekly behavior reports. It lets the parents know the day the behavior occurred, the number of incidents, and what happened. It is important because teachers sometimes spend more time with students than their parents do, therefore the parents need to be informed of the behaviors teachers are noticing. We also send home most of the students’ graded work. We do save some work to include with their I Can Do It’s (or task checklist) at the end of they year. I have included a newsletter that I sent home to the families of my students.
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Assessment
The teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses them to support the continuous development of all students.
After teaching the students about different landforms, I asked them to anonymously draw a landform from a jar. Each student was given a small amount of clay and asked to demonstrate their understanding of the landform by creating it out of the clay. I tried to use a variety of assessment stategies throughout my student teaching experience because no two students are exactly the same.
Effective teachers use a variety of assessment strategies. They do not only use pencil and paper tests. This is important because not all students perform well on these types of tests. Some students know the information but cannot accurately apply their knowledge in that form. Due to each student being an individual, they each have a different way of thinking, learning, and applying knowledge.
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Collaborative Relationships
The teacher understands the role if the community in education and develops and maintains collaborative relationships with colleagues, parents/guardians, and the community to support student learning and well-being.
I know that I cannot work alone in order to educate my students the proper way. I need the support of many other people, such as parents, building staff, and even the community. It is important to work together as a team in order to promote the growth of the students. My mentor teacher and I worked closely together to benefit our students. We were able to split the class into groups for many activities. This was beneficial to their learning because some students were ready to move on to more difficult tasks. We were able to move one group of students on to other tasks, while we could reinforce the basic skill with the other group. When we were studying Australia, I invited a fellow teacher to come in and speak about the three years that she lived there. She allowed us to borrow some of her materials. I felt this was a wonderful use of resources because the children were able to learn more about Australia than I could have done alone.
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Reflection and Professional Growth
The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates how choices and actions affect students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community and actively seeks opportunities to grow professionally.
I would reflect and debrief with mentor every day after school. We would spend some time deciding what I did well and what I could improve on. At the beginning of the year, my major focus was classroom management. She would offer suggestions and the next day I would practice those suggestions with the students. Throughout the year, we moved on to more specific goals. I believe that through reflection I was able to improve my teaching skills and this will only continue throughout my teaching career. Reflection benefited me, but it also benefited my students. We have a literacy block with our partner teacher, at this time our students are given reading instruction on their level. My mentor teacher and I would meet with our literacy leader and partner teacher to discuss the progress of the reading groups. We had to reflect on the work that the students were showing and whether they could stay in their reading groups, or if they needed to be moved up or down a group. This benefited them because the instruction is brought to their level. Some groups are reading chapter books and some groups are reading first grade books.
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Professional Conduct
The teacher understands education as a profession, maintains standards of professional conduct, and provides leadership to improve student learning and well-being.
Effective teachers are professional in every way because they realize the importance of professionalism on the students. If the students do not respect the teacher, he/she will not be able to accomplish anything. I believe that it is important to teach the students at an early age the importance of being responsible. In our classroom, the students keep a Quality Kid Data folder. Inside of this folder, the students keep records of their comprehensive reading and math scores, spelling scores, timed test scores, and their social behaviors. The students are learning the importance of their scores and what it really means when they score three problems correctly out of twelve. They fill out a chart of their opinions on their social behaviors. It is important for the students to take responsibility for their learning and behavior. At parent-teacher conferences, the students get a chance to share their folder with their parents. The students can then take ownership to their work. The picture shows me working one on one with a students discussing with her, what her scores mean.
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