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 students.While the need to know the content you teach is quite apparent, it can also be quite the daunting task as you get into the higher grades. I learned this lesson the hard way the very first day my mentor had a meeting and I was to teach the entire day on my own. I had looked over her lesson plans and was confident about my ability to do it, despite having only been in the classroom for three weeks and having never taught for longer than forty-five minutes to these students.
Though the day began smoothly, I hit a roadblock when it was time for math. I walked up to help the students correct their math homework when I realized the answers were not given in the teacher’s manual like I thought they were. It suddenly hit me that I was going to have to do the math and though the concept was simple, I didn’t really remember how to do it. I had focused on making sure I knew how to do the lesson I was teaching that day, but never gave correcting the previous day’s homework any thought. I attempted the first problem on the overhead. When I reached my answer, I asked the students how many people had this answer. No one raised their hand. I knew I had made a mistake, but I was clueless as to what I had done. After allowing a student to walk through the steps on the overhead, I quickly understood how to do the first concept and was able to get the answers for the rest of the homework.
This experience certainly made me aware of how important it is to make sure you know what you’re doing before you attempt to teach it to the students! The next time I needed to teach math, I spent time with my mentor the day before making sure I understood the content! Since that day, I have had very few issues where I didn’t know the content, all because I make sure to check for my own understanding prior to teaching concepts to students.
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of a student’s work whom I corrected for the content mistakes that he made.
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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.Over the course of my professional internship in District 108, I have served as a teacher to at least 165 students. Each and every one of them has been a unique person who is very different from all the other students who surround them. Though many have similar interests and oftentimes there are whole groups who need to develop the same skills, no two children are the same. This becomes increasingly evident as I plan my lessons to a group of students whose math skills are widely varied.
For instance, before I taught multiplication and division of fractions, I decided that our students could benefit from a pretest. I had already given an overview of the concept a few weeks prior in trying to review for ISAT, so I wanted to know how many students needed a more in depth study of multiplication and division of fractions and who already understood it either from an earlier classroom or from the flyby approach I had used earlier. When the students turned in their pretest, I found that most of the students could benefit from a much slower, more methodical look at this concept. However, there was a small group of students who already grasped this math skill and would not need any more instruction to understand it.
As a result, I considered the students who had performed well on the pretest and I considered their abilities and interests. I settled on challenging them to create a board game which required their classmates to be able to multiply and divide fractions. I gave these students guidelines and I assisted them as needed each day after I taught the day’s lesson to the rest of the class. When it was time for this group of students to present their games to the class, they did not disappoint! They were able to provide a motivating, engaging way to review for the math test for the rest of the students!
Artifact Attached
Attached is a lesson plan in which I made accommodations for the students who did not need anymore instruction on multiplication and division of fractions.
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Diversity
The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners.I have learned through my student teaching experience that working with diversity has way more to do with getting to know individual students than it does the color of a person’s skin. My classroom does not have a wide variety of ethnicities; however, it is full of students who are very different from one another in terms of academic levels, learning styles, interests, and socioeconomic status. Through creating a respectful classroom environment at the beginning of the year, I have managed to provide an atmosphere where students feel safe to share their opinions. I have also been challenged to create engaging lessons that utilize many different learning styles.
One way that I am working towards this is through implementing a project choice into my integrated unit. My students will be given the opportunity to select which project they would like to complete from a list. Some of their options include writing and illustrating a children’s book about Roman daily life, creating a large diagram of the Colosseum, writing and performing a play about the Romans, creating a map of the Roman Empire, or developing their own project that is approved by the teacher. In this way, I open up the possibilities for students to work in the learning style they feel the most comfortable with as a way to show me their knowledge of Ancient Rome.
I feel that I have been pretty successful in navigating my way through teaching students in a variety of learning styles because I make sure to incorporate technology and videos when possible, while still doing a fair share of auditory lessons and making use of my overhead projector. I also give the students a choice in how to respond to questions I ask of them. They are usually allowed to write or draw their responses and are encouraged to seek out and use alternative formats to present their work. Certainly, the students do plenty of reading throughout the course of the day also, but I try very hard to not completely rely on that. The more learning styles I incorporate into every lesson, the more students I have reached with that concept! Keeping in mind how very different my students are, I try to be fair about the way I present the content to them.
Artifact Attached
Attached is the Ancient Rome projects guide which I gave to my students. They used this list to decide which project to complete. They were able to think about which way they learned best and choose accordingly.
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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 curriculum goals.Being well planned has been a strength of mine throughout my internship year in district 108. What began as a fear of failure during my first weeks in the classroom has evolved into a perpetual feeling of readiness as I think through each lesson prior the evening prior to teaching it in order to prepare my materials. In the early stages of my student teaching experience, I would agonize over the entire lesson, asking myself questions and predicting what students may respond to each question. I thought at long length about every word I wanted to say while teaching.
However, the farther I moved in to student teaching and the more subjects I took on, the less time I had to think about each lesson. Still, I maintained my high level of preparation and my plans never became less thorough. Certainly, what I wrote down gradually became less detailed and I became much faster at thinking through each lesson. This was the result of the practice I received. As I have become more comfortable with myself as a teacher, I have found not that I need to prepare or plan less, but rather that it comes more naturally to me and takes less time than it did at first.
As I move towards graduation and eventually having my own classroom, I realize that I will never be able to stop spending time thinking through each lesson, but that with each day and each lesson, it will come a little more easily, and take just a little bit less time than it did the day before. Even though writing out long, painfully detailed lesson plans was aggravating and seemed a somewhat silly exercise when I began this process, I am thankful that I was forced to think about each lesson in that much detail. Writing out my thoughts about each lesson is what helped me to be well planned and always prepared in the beginning of my internship. The practice I received then will help me in the years to come as I become busier and busier and am forced to plan just as thorough of lessons with even less time to do it!
Artifact Attached
Attached is one of my evaluations from my mentor teacher in which I scored very well in the planning and preparation section.
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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.One of the first things my mentor and I did at the beginning of the school year with our students was to set up our classroom management plan. We set up many guidelines and rules with the students so that they would know exactly what was expected of them. Then, we did what ended up being the most important piece of the entire plan. We let the students develop their own mission statement for what they thought our classroom should be. Using this mission statement, we are able to correct a lot of behaviors that might otherwise prove to be problematic.
Students can often explain why what they did was wrong after they are referring to our mission statement. It helps them to know that they were apart of making the decision for what this class should look like and it puts the responsibility on them to make it really happen. For example, I was really shocked when a student apologized for something they had done without ever getting caught, because they felt bad for breaking the mission statement that they had taken such a large part in creating. This taught me that every student should have the chance to take ownership in their classroom because they are more apt to really believe in the rules and to work hard when they feel they have a true stake in what happens there.
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of the classroom mission statement that I helped the students create. Together with my mentor, we guided the students as they developed mission statements for our class in groups and then voted on their favorite phrases from each. As mentioned in my reflection, this mission statement has brought a sense of unity and ownership to our classroom.
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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.I found out the importance of teacher enthusiasm when I taught a lesson to my students that I was sure they would positively enjoy! I told them before we started that I thought they would enjoy this new story, even if it didn’t sound like the most exciting book. I asked them trust me that it was very cool and that they would all love it by the end. I continued by introducing the book I would be reading to them, The Fruit Bowl Project by Sarah Durkee. Before I would read it to them, I had them use all the information the book gave them by looking at it to develop predictions about what the story would contain.
After we had read a few pages, we revisited our predictions and altered them. We made connections to our own lives and school as the one in the book seems to be incredibly similar to Washington Intermediate, even though the school in the book is a junior high. After we finished reading the book, the students were highly motivated and excited to start their next writing assignment. As a class, we decided to create our own “Fruit Bowl Project.” We came up with a list of words to include in our fruit bowl just as the students in the book had done and each student had to write their own story using those key elements to guide their writing! It was definitely not just another writing assignment for these sixth graders.
They were excited to write because the characters in the story had been so excited and creative when writing their stories! The students took total ownership of the project as they began by developing the word list and writing their stories. created a book out of the collection of stories from each student in our classroom! What I told them on the first day of the lesson completely rang true by the end, they all did positively enjoy this experience!
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of me with students as I implemented my lesson on candy cells. I was so confident that the students would learn while having fun that I exuded enthusiasm throughout the entire lesson!
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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.One of the many things I have learned the hard way while interning in Pekin, is just how important communication is. One of the first lessons I taught is an excellent example of how I learned this lesson. I began the lesson with a brief review of the lesson from the day before and then went on to describing to the students their assignment for that day. I told the students just what was expected of them, outlining the five steps to their assignment.
To save time, I chose to forego modeling their assignment for them and I unfortunately also didn’t think of presenting the students with written directions. After I was done rattling off what I expected of them, I set them free to work. I was completely dumbstruck when the students had what seemed like 200 questions for me about their assignment. As I looked around, there were perhaps 2 students who were working away as I had told them to do. The rest of the students were completely lost, doing something wrong, or just otherwise off task. It was a disaster!
However, I soon realized my mistake. They simply didn’t understand the directions. I took the time to go back and model what I expected of them. I wrote out directions for them on the overhead and told them to get to work a second time. It ran much smoother once everyone was on the same page about what they were to do!
Artifact Attached
Attached is a screenshot of an email I sent out to the PDS interns because I found a template that I thought the others would appreciate. This email demonstrates that I can effectively communicate with my peers.
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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.I have worked very hard to use many different types of assessment for my students as I have been teaching over the course of the last year. During social studies, I use a daily five question facts quiz over the twenty-five major facts in the chapter. Another type of assessment I use regularly is an informal one. If I am having trouble gauging where my students are during the course of my teaching, I will stop and ask them “thumbs up/thumbs down.” The students are then asked to consider whether or not they understand what I am teaching them and let me know. This helps me know if I need to re-explain a concept.
Of course, I also utilize multiple choice and matching tests and I ask for students to write responses to questions frequently. Even over the course of these two semesters, I have noticed that many children perform highly on one type of assessment pretty regularly, but not so highly on other types. This is one of the reasons that it is so important to assess in different ways. If a child is very good at demonstrating their knowledge artistically, but you never utilize assessments that showcase this child’s strengths, you may never understand the extent of what they know!
I also use pretests to figure out where my students are before I begin teaching new material. This helps me differentiate my instruction for my students depending on the students’ needs. Because assessment drives all instruction for an effective teacher, it is absolutely critical to be able to ascertain what students true level of understanding of a topic is both before you teach it and at the end of teaching.
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of a chart that my students use to graph their progress on the 25 facts quizzes for social studies.
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Collaborative Relationships
The teacher understands the role of the community in education and develops and maintains collaborative relationships with colleagues, parents/guardians, and the community to support student learning and well-being.Throughout my internship in Pekin, I have worked hard to network with the teachers at Washington school. I have worked with other teachers during school improvement days and at a variety of meetings, from SILT to village meetings to grade level meetings. Getting to know the other teachers in this environment has made it to where I can now contact many different teachers if I have a question I need answered or if I need help on a day my mentor is absent or in a meeting out of the room. While building relationships with other staff members came relatively easily to me, I have found that it has benefited me beyond any measurable means. I could not even begin to count the times that I have received assistance from staff members at Washington.
For example, during phase I of PDS, I was implementing a lesson that my mentor planned while she was out of the building at a Language Arts meeting. During my students’ special, I realized that my mentor had forgotten to bring the supplies I needed for the lesson I was to teach in 20 minutes, when the students came back. Without hesitation, I contacted the two women who work in our Learning Center. After a few minutes of brainstorming, they were able to help me get what I needed so that I could complete the lesson without trouble. By the time the students were done in special, I had all of the materials ready to go and the lesson went off without a hitch! If I had not already begun to weave my relationships with these colleagues, I would not likely have felt as comfortable approaching them for help the way I needed to.
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Attached also is a picture of me with some of the other PDS interns as we discuss an issue in our January debriefing session. This is evidence that I can interact positively with my peers as I build relationship with them.
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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.Recently, I learned very clearly the lesson that it is important to analyze student performances on homework assignments in order to make decisions about what to teach next. While my mentor and I were preparing our class for ISAT, we decided to take a “tour bus approach” to teaching math where we basically introduced it, showed them how to use the calculator if that would help them, and then give them a few problems to practice on.
While the students sat taking their ISAT test, I spent the morning looking over some of the papers they had turned in the week before that were yet to be graded. As I checked more and more of the papers, I realized that several of the students completely misunderstood what the word “polygon” meant in geometry. Several students though that a polygon had to have a certain number of sides, such as three or five. Others didn’t understand that polygons had to have only straight line segments as sides and that curves were very different from straight line segments. It was then that I wished I had looked at those papers the night that I received them so that I could clear up the misconceptions that next day.
It is important for teachers to know where students are in their learning so that this knowledge will inform the instruction that takes place. Assessing student work regularly is a very important part of my instruction because I cannot plan for the best possible learning for my students if I do not know what they do and do not understand.
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of my lesson plan book. You can see that I rearranged what I was teaching during the week as I realized the students needed more instruction in a given area before moving on to the next concept.
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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.They say that “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” The same certainly can be said about developing a philosophy of education. If you don’t have one, you certainly can’t teach according to it. Throughout this year in PDS, I have learned that it is extremely important to create a classroom environment that is respectful to the opinions of all students and which celebrates their differences. This is part of my philosophy of education. Throughout most of the year, I have been working to live by this philosophy, but it isn’t always the easiest thing to do.
One way that I established this environment was through the creation of classroom meetings where we discuss problems as they arise in our classroom. However, as the year progressed and I got busier, these meetings slowly became less frequent until they were only a distance memory. The farther we got away from classroom meetings, and thus, the farther I got from my educational philosophy, the more behavior problems began to pop up. However, in the last few weeks, my mentor and I have been working together to bring back our classroom meetings. Now, the progress has been slow, but I think that it is still evident, despite other problems going on in our classroom.
I sincerely believe that cutting out the classroom meetings was a major contributor to some of the problems we have had this year. Now that we are slowly moving back in the right direction, I can see the class shifting back to where we had been when we had been earlier in the year. Keeping in line with your educational philosophy throughout the school year is not always easy, but it is certainly an important part of giving your best to your students.
Artifact Attached
Attached is a picture of one of our classroom meetings which shows that I am teaching according to my educational philosophy.
