P2 – Practice differentiated instruction

Teacher-candidates apply principles of differentiated instruction, including theories of language acquisition, stages of language, and academic language development, in the integration of subject matter across the content areas of reading, mathematical, scientific, and aesthetic reasoning.

As a teacher candidate it is so important to understand the research that lies behind differentiating a classroom lesson for the various kinds of learners that I have in my classroom.  Students from every walk of life and having any number of learning needs and not every lesson that I plan is going to work for all of them. It is up to me to plan lessons and activities are appropriate for everyone.

In my internship classroom I have a lot of students who need me to teach and do things differently in the way that they show they are making progress. In order to show my competency in this a area I have attached a copy of a lesson and assessment that I differentiated and gave my students.

goldilocks lesson

This assessment shows my proficiency in this area because I had to intentionally plan times for my students to show what they know in their own way. I also had to plan a way for all of my students to be able to understand the information that I presented to them.

In giving this lesson to my students I learned that it is more difficult to differentiate ahead of time then you think. There were times that I had to differentiate my lessons in the middle of a lesson; this is differentiating from the differentiation that I had already planned ahead of time.   I learned It is okay to have a plan but that it is also okay to stray from your plan if that is what the students need.

This lesson benefitted my students because the students that struggle to show what they know and the students who already know the material a way to represent their thinking. All of my students are talented and intelligent in their own way. It is my job to work as hard as I have to and be as flexible as I need to in order to get them to learn.

In the future I will continue to work as hard as I have to because my differentiations are not always going to work the first time. You can never be for positive that the changes you are making are going to be the right one. It is my job to continue to make changes that they need and continue to try things until you find something that works so all of the students in your class can learn.

H2 – Honor student access to content material.

Teacher-candidates use multiple instructional strategies, including the principles of second language acquisition, to address student academic language ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Competent teachers are those that continue to try new strategies in order to get their students to learn. This is true of those teachers who are trying to teach a group of students who are developing their understanding of the English language.

In my class of kindergarteners all of my students are working on developing their English language skills. I do not have any students in my class who are English Language learners in the standard definition of the term, English is all of my students’ first language. This being said they are kindergarteners and every day they are learning to read and write. Every day they are learning new vocabulary and sentence structure.  As a teacher in a kindergarten class it is my job to provide my students with the tools that they need to succeed in learning to read and write the English language as my competency in this area I have included a copy of a word bank that I made for my students to help them compare and contrast the stories Goldilocks and the Three bears and Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs in writing.

goldilocks word bank

This piece of evidence is shows my competency in this area because I created this word bank for them to use in orders to show what they know in another context besides just oral language.  It is important for them to have practice writing down their thoughts but it is difficult and seems overwhelming for students who are not yet comfortable sounding out words longer than three or four letters. My creation of this word bank allows them to recognize that the word in print matches the picture so that they can copy it in their writing and work on sounding out other words.

In doing this I learned that there are plenty of ways to enhance my student’s language use that will benefit them in multiple areas of language use. I also learned how easy it is to get my students more comfortable with writing. Some students are at the point where they can write multiple sentences phonetically and there are other students that still need to copy down words in order to get their thoughts down on paper and that is okay.

My students were able to benefit from this word bank because it allowed students who normally are not able to write distinguishable words on their word to do so. They were able to tell me that the word under the picture said the name of the picture even though they could read it. This allowed them to take words that they did know how to write and combine the two. It make the work seem less challenging for the students  while actually increasing the difficulty so that they can submit work where they know they achieved the goal and wrote a sentence.

In the future I think I would like to plan the use of sentence frames along with the word bank so that students can receive more practice in using their words in a sentence.

P4 – Practice the integration of appropriate technology with instruction.

Teacher-candidates use technology that is effectively integrated to create technologically proficient learners

In our technology savvy society it is essential that teachers model the use of technology in their classroom to ensure that their students have exposure to the idea that technology is accessible to them in the classroom. It is a tool to be used often.

In my placement classroom we do not have common technology items used in most classrooms like smart boards and Ipads or other tablets.  I have to make use of the technology that I have at hand.  As evidence of my proficiency with using technology  in the classroom I have provided a power point on ocean animals that I used as an end of unit wrap and introduction to an end of unit writing assignment.

animals in the ocean

This power point is evidence of my expanding proficiency in this area because it is one of the first piece of technology that I have created for use in my classroom. I created it because I could not find any books that I felt were comprehensive enough to review all of the ocean animals that my students had been learning about. So I created this power point to read along with my students and use almost as an ebook.

I learned that when you open your mind up and use the technology resources that you have at hand you can create a resource to use in your classroom to tailor your students learning to exactly what you want them to learn and what you want them to see.  I believe this could also be used as an excellent strategy for differentiating your lessons. If the materials are not there you can just create them.

My students benefitted from this power point because it was their first time having a power point for their use in the classroom. The more exposer that my students get to different technologies the better off they will be. They need to know that technology is a part of our society and that we can use technology to help us learn.

In the future I would like to continue to use technology such as Power Point and Prezi to make presentations to provide the exact information that I would like my students to obtain in the lesson that I am teaching