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.

P3 – Practice standards-based assessment.

Teacher-candidates use standards-based assessment that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies to monitor and improve instruction.

It is important that teacher-candidates learn to properly use assessment to assess their students understanding of the learning target for the lesson. Teachers must be able to give assessments that allow multiple ways for students to show how much they know at the end of a unit or lesson.

In my internship placement classroom we were just finishing up our section on snails which is part of the Animals two by two. To wrap up our unit on snails which was all about the parts of land and water snails ad how they use those body parts we first had the students observe the snails and talk about what body parts are the same and are different. Than as a whole class we reviewed the parts of a snail. I used this as a formative assessment because I was able to gauge how well my students understood snail parts and their functions at that time. Finally as my summative assessments the students were asked to draw and label as best as they could a picture of a land snail and/or a water snail and write a fact sentence about them. As evidence of my competency in this area I have included the whole class drawing that we made and some samples of students drawing and writing about their snails.

These assessment examples are evidence of my growing competency in this area because I planned them out with the help of my mentor teacher and then I administered them with little difficulty. The whole class discussion gave students  a chance to evaluate their own misconceptions about snails and they were able to write things that were true about snails, as well as label their picture once they had to do it on their own.

What I learned while planning and administering these assessments is that formative assessments are a great opportunity to make in the moment changes to your teaching. If the students are not getting it, it is always okay to go back and reteach in a different way to make sure that every student got what they were supposed to out of the lessons.

My students benefited from these assessments because first I gave them an opportunity to put all their thoughts into words and in one place at the front of the board. This made it possible for them to put their thoughts down on paper. Sometimes in kindergarten writing assignments don’t go as planned because some students are still struggling with their letter sounds. The way that I laid out the assessment allowed all of the students to write something about snails and the students that could write more did.

Next time I would like the students to do some self-reflection and self assessment about how well they think they did on their assessment as well as understanding the lesson.

H5 – Honor student potential for roles in the greater society.

Teacher-candidates prepare students to be responsible citizens for an environmentally sustainable, globally interconnected, and diverse society.

As a teacher-candidate I am not only responsible for teaching my students how to read, write, add and subtract but I am also responsible for teaching them how to be good people and good citizens.  Children ages 5-18 spend almost as much time with their teachers as they do their families, this puts responsibility for how the students act in the hands of the teacher. In kindergarten the students learn how to share, how to listen when others are talking, how to work constructively and treat others with respect.

In my internship classroom I have been teaching a language arts lesson every week. This week our letter was T but I struggled to find a meaningful book that had something to do with a turtle or a tiger. Luckily we also have snails in our classroom for our science unit so I found a book with snails in it. I came upon the book “Snail Started It” by Katja Reider, a story about a snail that says unkind things to his friend and then the unkindness spreads because of hurt feelings. We had been having a lot of unkind words being said in my class so I thought it would be a good way to talk about having empathy for others.  To show evidence of my growing competency in the area of preparing my students to be good people I have attached my lesson plan for the lesson that I taught with this particular story.

snail started it lesson

This particular piece of evidence shows my competency in this area because I we were able to have some really good discussions and do a meaningful activity about how it feels when someone says unkind things to one another even if they were just trying to be funny. I introduced the concept of why words can hurt by reading the book to my students; whenever an animal in the story said something unkind I asked the students if it was okay to call someone that and how they would feel if someone said that to them. Then when we had finished reading the story I talked with them about things that we could say to our friends instead of saying unkind things. All of the students and I proceeded to get in a circle and hold hands. Every student was expected to say something kind to their neighbor. When everyone was finished we discussed how everyone feels better when we say kind words.

While teaching this lesson I got a lesson of my own. There are times when you plan a meaningful heartfelt lesson like this and students do not give the responses that you want. All of my students were able to tell their friends something that they liked about one another, except one. This student told their neighbor that they were not their friend. I solved this by telling the student he said something very unkind, I had this student apologize and sit out. Then I told their neighbor something that I liked about him and we continued with the rest of the circle. When the activity was over I sat down with the student privately and we talked about why they had to sit out and practiced what they will say next time instead.

I feel as though my students benefited from this because of the experience that they were able to have. Learning experiences need to be personal for kindergarten students. You cannot just tell them that calling people names and teasing is mean, they need to understand how it feels to someone else when they are being teased.  In this activity they got to understand why teasing hurts and the mess that it causes. They also got to practice an alternative to teasing and discuss why that makes people feel good.

In the future I plan on teaching more lessons like this on the social aspects of their lives. A healthy happy classroom happens when students are respectful to one another and to the teacher. If I want to promote the best learning environment for my students I need to provide opportunities for them to learn about kindness, respect, and problem solving.

H1 – Honor student diversity and development.

Teacher-candidates plan and/or adapt learner centered curricula that engage students in a variety of culturally responsive, developmentally, and age appropriate strategies.

When planning instruction teacher-candidates must make certain that they are thinking of their students individual lives and how the experience that they have had thus far will shape their understanding of concepts in the classroom. When planning a lesson it is imperative that teacher-candidates reflect of their student’s backgrounds before diving into something new.

I have been teaching one English Language Arts lesson a week in my internship classroom and I try to choose a book that has to do with what our letter is for the week. This week our letter was “P” and the chant that goes along with it is “P says [puh] police man in the park [puh puh puh].” In our curriculum we are currently in the being healthy and safe unit so I really wanted to do a lesson about police officers and how they help keep us safe.  As evidence of my growing competency in this area I have attached my lesson about police officers and some work that my students completed in the lesson.

Police officer lesson plan

I believe that this evidence shows my competency in this area because when I first set out to plan it I had to think long and hard about how to approach the subject in the most positive light. I was aware that some of my students may have not had positive experiences with the police previously in their lives but I really wanted to solidify how much police officers do to help us and the community. Of course in our discussion my students brought up that police arrest people and that they have guns but I quickly acknowledge that while they do that we are talking about how they help our community. I wanted to make it clear to my students that police officers do so much more than just arrest people. I chose a book that was developmentally appropriate and put the police in a positive light. All in all my students really enjoyed it and they all seemed to have no problem talking about police officers in a positive manner.

While writing this lesson I actually struggled a lot because I was unsure of how to prepare for some of the questions I thought I might receive. I looked to my mentor teacher for guidance and we discussed that while these questions may come up we just want to turn in back around to something more positive. I also learned that the other students can be helpful in helping change misconceptions. I had students in my class that were helpful in telling their classmates about the good things that police officers do and I feel as though that is very helpful for students with bad experiences to see.

This lesson affected my students learning because I tried to make the whole discussion very positive for all of the students. My real hope for this lesson was that my students would see how good and helpful police officers are and could hopefully carry on those feelings if they ever did need help for a police officer. My students enjoyed themselves, they were able to remember facts from the story, and they were able to tell me about the picture they drew. Not only did they gain a some life lessons but they got to practice using their literacy skills.

In the future I would really like to do a whole unit on community helpers and expand on a lot of the discussion that my students were able to have.

O2. – Offer appropriate challenge in the content area.

Teacher-candidates plan and/or adapt curricula that are standards driven so students develop understanding and problem-solving expertise in the content area(s) using reading, written and oral communication, and technology.

Teachers have the opportunity to take a required standard and turn it into a fun, meaningful and appropriate lesson that their students will learn from. What teachers teach is mostly up to their own discretion so it is important that teachers be able to create challenging lessons for their students.

In my social studies method class we were asked to make a unit plan that would span 3-5 days and integrate other subjects with social studies. I have attached a copy of my unit plan on wants and needs below.

J. Machin%2c Unit plan

This unit plan helps to demonstrate my competency in this area because I created 3 days’ worth of challenging, meaningful and fun activities for my students to learn the difference between wants and needs and what happens when you choose too many wants and not enough needs. This also demonstrates my competency because I planned a unit for first grade instead of kindergarten. It is important to not limit yourself to one grade like I normally do.

In the process of completing this assignment I learned that sometimes it is better to be brief in your statements. When writing a unit overview all you need to do is give brief descriptions of what each day’s activities will be and it is not necessary to include step by step information.  This is the first time I have ever created a whole unit that worked together and each lesson built upon each other. I think that I did well for my first time.

Since I was making the lesson for a primary grade I tried to make a lot of my teaching done through literature because students can relate to stories told in books. I also tried to provide them with a variety of different kinds of activities ranging from hands on activities to group discussions.

I think that In the future I will flesh this unit plan out more into three whole lessons that I could eventually teach to a class if I taught in first grade where wants and needs are a standard.

P1 – Practice intentional inquiry and planning for instruction

P1 – Practice intentional inquiry and planning for instruction.

Teacher-candidates plan and/or adapt standards-based curricula that are personalized to the diverse needs of each student.

Teacher-candidates must make plans for instruction that are designed to fit the needs of their students. Even after they are certified I believe that teachers never stop learning. Everyday teachers learn more about the needs of their students and can revise their lesson plans based on student learning and feedback.  Teachers should always be striving for improvement in their lessons.

To demonstrate my expanding competency in this area I have included a copy of a guided reading lesson plan for kindergartners that I taught to my peers and then revised upon receiving feedback.

Guided reading lesson a farm

This demonstrates my competency in this area because I planned a lesson based on a specific group of students needs and I based the lesson on Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten.  I also gained practice using the model, practice, do format or “I do, we do, you do.” This also demonstrates my competency because upon receiving feedback from my fellow teacher-candidates, I revised my lesson to improve student learning.

 After making, teaching, and revising my lesson plan on guided reading I have learned that there is always room for improvement. Even if an idea sounded excellent in my own head, that does not mean that it will work or that the students will learn. I also learned how to plan a guided reading lesson and how to fit all the components of one into a 15-20 minute lesson.  This was a difficulty for me because I wanted to do so much in such a short amount of time. It is difficult to gauge student learning when you teach a lesson made for five and six year old emerging readers to college seniors. Despite this I still learned about how I could make my lesson better by using feedback of other teacher-candidates placed in a kindergarten classroom.

My competency in this area will affect student learning because there is an opportunity to improve students understanding with my revised lesson. The first lesson I made did not prompt student understanding at the required level but after revision I believe that it will. Practicing the skill of revising lessons based on students’ needs and understanding will ultimately benefit my placement class and all of my classes in the future.

  In the future I can look back at this experience and use what I learned about using feedback and revising lessons to continue to make my future lessons the best that they can be.

Course Reflection

The school of education at Seattle Pacific University has very specific standards that students in the education majors should be able to meet by graduation. The course “Introduction to Education” is a student’s first step into the world of education. Students are expected to gain knowledge about different teaching styles, lesson planning, and who they believe they will be as educators. During this course students are expected to learn about the school standards and the state standards for becoming an educator. These are called the HOPE standards. Throughout this course I feel as though I have constructed a better understanding about teaching in general and my own teaching philosophy.

In one of our required texts it states that “your beliefs and predispositions about teaching have a profound impact on how you teach and what you teach, just as your beliefs and predispositions about living have a profound impact on how you live your life” (D. J., & Loomis, K. S., 2006.) This is part of the basis of what we learned about in class. We have to be able to understand our views on teaching in order to know how we will teach. Through this text and in class discussion I discovered that there are different teaching philosophies, the same way that there are different philosophies about life. The philosophy that I most identify with is Progressivism. I hope to be very focused on teaching the whole child. I want to teach first or second grade, so besides teaching my students to be good readers and writers, I also want to help them to become better people. I am already taking practice with this when I babysit and tutor.

One of my favorite things to do with the kids that I babysit is read them stories, I try to choose stories that have important lessons in them. This is beneficial to them because not only are they gaining more vocabulary words, they are also learning important life lessons about being nice to others, sharing, and cleaning up. After we read I talk to the kids about what the characters learned at the end of the story and what that means in their lives. Teaching children is about so much more than just getting them onto the next grade. We want to help develop good people. I have less freedom to do these things when I tutor but I take time to talk to the kids about their lives and just be a good role model for these kids who might not have any good role models in their lives. Part of being a good teacher is being a good person.

Another part of being a good teacher is having the ability to plan lesson plans that are organized and aligned to content standards. The text states that lesson planning “forces you to reflect on what you want to accomplish in each class and how best to do so. Planning helps you control how class time is used and, as a result of reflection, use that time as productively as possible.” (Center for Excellence in Teaching, 1999.) During this course we have had time to practice making objectives that are aligned to state standards. This will help me in the future because I now have more experience in writing lesson plans. Writing lesson plans involves knowledge of the state standards and the HOPE standards designed by our university.

During the course of this class we have gone over the HOPE standards and talked about how to relate them to our course work and eventually relate them to the work we do in the classroom. In class we learned about the hope standard O1 which is to Offer and Organize curriculum aligned to standards and outcomes. We showed this through our course work as we practiced writing objectives with the state standards. Now that I am almost finished with this course I feel more prepared in working with the HOPE standards and I hope that they will make me a better teacher. The main goal of this class is to introduce my classmates and I into the world of teaching. It is the first step to becoming the great teacher I hope to be in the future.

Martin, D.J., & Loomis, K.S. (2006). Building teachers: A Constructivist approach to introducing education. Independence, KY: Wadsworth Publishing.

Center for Excellence in Teaching (1999). Teaching Nuggets. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

O1 – Offer and organized curriculum aligned to standards and outcomes

O₁ – Offer and Organize curriculum aligned to standards and outcomes

     Standards in education are important because they keep a common ground for teachers and students. Standards allow us to better plan lessons to benefit the student’s needs. The artifact that represents this standard is the objective that we wrote in class as practice for when we write lesson plans in the future. The objective that I wrote aligns with the State Standards for Second Grade Social Studies: “Civic 1.2.1 understand the basic organization of government in the community.

       

    This objective aligned to the content standard demonstrates my emerging competency on the principle of O1 because I am gaining competency in writing lesson plans and writing objective as you can see in my artifact. By gaining this competency I am gaining more experience with lesson planning and am becoming better accustomed to working with this standard which when mastered it will prove to be a great asset within my career

    In practicing writing objectives aligned to content standards. I learned how to write a proper objective and how to incorporate verbs from the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I also learned that there should be an observable outcome. I learned that a good objective should follow the following format: Students will demonstrate and understanding of content standard by Bloom’s verb, observable action.  You can see that I followed this format in my artifact above. Teachers should be using different levels of Bloom Verbs in their objectives because they show the different levels of understanding and mastery that we want students to show for different subjects.

   The implications of writing objectives in this manner on student learning are that the students will have a clear goal as to what they are supposed to achieve by the end of the lesson or unit. The best way to success is to set goals. When you have a vision in your mind of what you need to accomplish you can achieve much greater. They will also be able to self- assess and self-regulate their own learning, which is a valuable skill for future learning. As teachers we should be interested in making our students good lifetime learners not just while they are in our class.

   In the future I plan to learn more about lesson planning and about writing appropriate objectives as this is just the start of my experience with these materials. I plan to get much more practice in writing standards and in lesson planning in order to make me into a valuable asset to my students in their learning. I will do this be planning lessons that enable the students to learn and master the state based education standards.