Content Knowledge
Human Development and Learning
Diversity
Planning for Instruction
Learning Environment
Instructional Delivery
Communication
Assessment
Collaborative Relationships
Reflection and Professional Growth
Professional Conduct
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.
Throughout this exciting experience, I have found that knowing more about the content I am teaching makes my job a lot easier. The concepts I researched more seemed to have more students engaged throughout the lessons; they could tell I knew what I was talking about. Furthermore, if I know more about a concept, I am more enthusiastic about the subject and want them to learn more. For example, my knowledge of the concept was very helpful when we did a lesson on Chinese culture. I taught the students how to eat with chopsticks, which can be a very difficult task to learn. Because I know how to eat with chopsticks, this made the lesson easier on both the students and I. If I had not known how to hold or use the chopsticks, the students would have struggled even more than they did because they would not have known where to start. Since I was excited about the lesson, the students were excited and that made it all the more engaging. Because of this the students learned more about the Chinese culture.
Below is a picture of me helping a student with chopsticks.
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Human Development and LearningThe teacher understands how individuals grow, develop, and learn and provides learning opportunities that support the intellectual, social, and personal development of all students.
Before student teaching, I knew that my students would be diverse but I never realized just how diverse they really would be. Because of this, I have tried to be accommodating for all of my students, which I have found to be more difficult than I imagined; although I am starting to adjust. To incorporate all of the learning styles into my lessons, I try to teach a lesson in more than one way. For example in math, I first show the students how, and then I have them do a hands on activity; sometimes a worksheet, sometimes more of an activity. When we did measurement, I had the students walk around the room and list things they would measure in inches or feet, ounces or pounds. This got the students up and moving and let those kinesthetic learners understand the concept more. This was after I had showed them visually how to measure with a ruler, and told them different ways to figure out what to measure with. I try to use as much of a range of learning styles as possible when making my lessons.
Below is a spelling tic-tac-toe activity that I used. This allowed my students to chocse what activities would be easiest and more fun for them.
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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.
In order to create effective goals, activities and lessons, you must first know your students as well as possible. This can be done by doing things like bio bags, learning interest surveys and getting to know you games on the very first day. The first day of my clinical experience, my mentor did many of these activities to build not only trust and respect out of the students, but also to get to know the students on a deeper level right away. One game we played was a kind of scavenger hunt to find students in the class who have experienced a particular event or who have a certain interest. My mentor and I both participated in this so we could get to know the students and the students could get to know us. This was not only a great ice-breaker, but it allowed me to get to know my students right off that bat. Knowing about my students has lead me to be a more effective teacher because of the goals and activities I develop through their interests and diversity.
Below is the scavenger hunt we used on the first day of school.
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Planning for InstructionThe teacher understands instructional planning and designs instruction based upon knowledge of the discipline, students, the community, and curriculum goals.
When planning my lessons, I like to plan in a specific way in order to meet my goals and to be more organized. I first plan what topic or concept the students are going to learn and then I find the standards or I Can Do Its to match up with that concept. From there, I can plan my lesson to meet the standards and goals I have set out to achieve. Not only do I want my lessons to meet the standards and goals, but I also strive to meet the individual needs and interests of my students. A lesson where I clearly planned for the instructional goals was when we read Tomatoes From Mars. The students made story cubes to answer questions about the story, setting, theme, character, etc. This activity used many different multiple intelligences and gave them an opportunity to be more creative with answering the questions I had for them.
Below you will find the lesson plan that I used for Tomatoes from Mars.
Tomatoes From Mars
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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.
Having a positive learning environment is the basis for all learning. If the students in the class feel discouraged, are distracted by other students, or are acting out, there will be no learning accomplished and the day will be a waste. Setting that foundation of positive learning means using a classroom management plan that works for all students. This can be difficult as I have observed in the third grade classroom. The students are so used to “moving their clip” since kindergarten, it does not seem to have any affect on them; it is not a big deal. This has been a difficult task for me during student teaching because of the way my mentor does things. I know that establishing my own management plan and my own routines is going to be the most effective way to establish that positive learning environment. I also realize that for some students I need to simply pick my battles. For example, most students I would not let leave their seat to sit in the back of the room and read when they are done with their work. There is one student though that if he is not reading quietly, away from other students he will bother them. For this student reading in the back of the room, what he loves to do is appropriate. For most of the other students, if they were to go read in the back of the room when they were through, they would bother other students. I have learned that it is important to establish a classroom management plan but figuring out what works for my specific students will be the most difficult part.
Below is a picture of my classroom management plan.
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Instructional DeliveryThe teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem sovling, and performance skills.
One of the biggest struggles I have dealt with during my student teaching is my planning; this has improved though when I discovered ways to use more resources. Instead of simply what the book says and what my collaborating teacher has in his files, I now look to other sources for ideas. The internet has been a big help for me, not only for planning, but also for instruction. I have used numerous websites for math, science and social studies centers. In addition, they have also been used for the higher learners when they finish before most other students. In addition, networking for ideas has also proved to be very helpful to me. For example, when I wanted new ideas for reading response, I went to another third grade teacher and borrowed some of his books and ideas. We do not have a Smart Board, so instead I use the computer with attached television at the front of the room. For this I have showed students how a website worked and shown PowerPoint’s.
Below is a PowerPoint I used to teach students about phones through the years when we were discussing inventions.
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CommunicationThe teacher uses knowledge of effective written, verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication techniques to forster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
There are many different ways to communicate in the classroom and it is important to use all of them. I have learned that my communication with instructions tends to be vague at some times and I have been struggling with improving that. One thing I have learned through this experience so far is that my instructions to them need to be repeated numerous times with both oral and written form, and it does not hurt to have the students repeat the instructions themselves. I have also learned that it is okay to stop the class to further clarify instructions, although I had to learn it the hard way. I once did a lesson with alternative energy sources in the fifth grade classroom. I thought I had explained it well enough and they had no questions. As I was walking around the room, I found that students had a lot of the same questions and I found myself repeating the instructions over again, multiple times. It took me a long time to realize that I needed to stop the class and answer these questions to the whole group instead of repeating them again and again. The students were not sure about the instructions and this was because I only gave them in one form; oral. Also, in terms of communicating with my students on a daily basis, I think it is important to have that one on one relationship with their students not only so they know what is going on in terms of their grades, but also so I can have that trust and respect built. This will also make classroom management go more smoothly.
Below is a letter I wrote to the parents when I returned to the classroom.
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AssessmentThe teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses them to support the continuous development of all students.
In order to effectively assess my students, I know I need to find a wide range of strategies to assess them with. Taking a test over what we learned is good but it does not always work, some of my students freeze up during tests and do much better with other activities. When I am planning, I try to think of the diversity in my class when it comes to learning styles and their strengths. I try and use these to their advantage so they can all get a chance to show what they have learned. For example, when learning fractions recently, there are many different activities I graded them on. I used worksheets of many different types so I knew they understood fractions in different ways. They colored in parts of a whole to show the fraction that was written and they labeled the fraction that was shown. For the hands on learners we did an activity with bag of M&Ms where they had to tell me what fraction of each color was in their bags. These were all ways I assessed the students to check their learning of fractions.
Below is a picture of my students working on their M&M fractions project.
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Collaborative Relationships
The teacher understands the role of the community in education and develops and maintains collaborative relationships with volleagues, parents/guardians, and the community the support student learning and well-being.
Having a relationship with other teachers in the building, especially with my mentor, has helped me greatly through student teaching already. Just knowing that I can ask advice, get feedback, reflect, or seek resources from any of these people gives me reassurance. As I am planning, I have found that if I am struggling, my mentor will give me plenty of ideas that I can use or develop something else with. When I finish a lesson, it is very helpful to sit with my mentor and discuss my strengths and weaknesses. These discussions lead to my improvement in different areas, helping me in the long run. Collaboration for me does not just include reflection and planning, although that is a large part of it. For example, there was a day we had reading centers. My mentor was in charge of one center, I was in charge of the second center, and the third center was computers, which was monitored by both of us. In this case, my mentor and I collaborated on a lesson that was being taught by co-teaching.
Below is a picture of me volunteering at Family Fitness Night at Willow School. This gave me the opportunity to create a relationship with the teachers and parents in order for me to collaborate effectively.
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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.
One of the characteristics I am most proud of is my willingness to listen to both good and bad feedback and then taking that and learning from it. I know that becoming an effective teacher is hard work and will take a lot of time and so with that I also know that I need to take the good with the bad. Journaling regularly is something I know needs to be done in order to reflect on how the lesson or the day went. There are things that happen throughout the day that I may want to write down to remember how it was handled and how I could have been handled better next time. For example, I taught a lesson where it went a lot quicker than I expected it to. When I wrote in my journal that day, I wrote about my needing to plan for more instead of for less. Because this has happened, I have learned from this and I now plan for more time than less. I have learned that it is easier to move some of the lesson to the next day then to have nothing to do for a period of time. I know that this is a time of growth and learning, so in turn, I realize that there are things about my teaching that are not perfect. With that, I need to be able to accept that bad feedback but then to learn from it, and that is exactly what I do.
Below is a picture of me reflecting with my mentor; something I did every day.
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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.
There have been many opportunities for me so far to further develop my professional growth. Throughout student teaching, I have attended the School Improvement Day meetings where I have learned many things including emergency plans, ISAT scores and ways to raise them, and Charlotte Danielson’s evaluation tool. These things will be of use to me both throughout student teaching and further on down the road. I attended and presented at the Illinois Reading Conference in March. I attended many seminars, learned about many different reading strategies, and found the whole experience to be very helpful. If possible, I do intend on returning in the following years to know more. When I presented, I used a lesson I gave in my third grade classroom on persuasive writing. It was great practice in sharing my ideas with other teachers and collaborating. I know that enhancing my content knowledge and pedagogical skills is very important and so that is why I am expanding on these things now.
Below is a picture of my partner and I presenting at the Illinois Reading Conference.
