Standard T

Knowledge of teaching

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1.   Informed by standards-based assessment. All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.

2.   Intentionally planned. All students benefit from standards-based planning that is personalized.

3.   Influenced by multiple instructional strategies. All students benefit from personalized instruction that addresses their ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

4.         Informed by technology. All students benefit from instruction that utilizes effective technologies and is designed to create technologically proficient learners.

My Understanding of Standard T

This standard is about the pedagogical knowledge that I need to be an effective teacher.  I have to know and use the elements of effective lessons and units.  As a part of this, I need to make sure that I address the needs of all of my students.  My students will be diverse in culture, ability and talents and all need to thrive in my classroom.  In addition to planning instructional activities for my students, I need to design high-quality assessments for my students.  I need to ensure that I am assessing students on what I have taught, and that what I have taught is important.  Students also need opportunities to self-assess during my units so that they know what they know and what they need to work on before end of unit assessments.  Lastly, I need to make sure that I am incorporating appropriate instructional technology throughout my teaching.  It is important for me to help students become proficient in the available technology.

Knowledge of teaching

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1. Informed by standards-based assessment. All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.

I’ve heard a heard a lot of debate about assessment.  Some feel testing is biased towards certain students.  It is true some students are better at testing than others.  I was a good tester when I was in school.  For this reason we as teachers can use many different forms of assessment.  Our students are not just filling out answers to tests.  We have class discussions, we have various small assignments throughout the year, and we are constantly observing our students for signs of understanding or confusion.  I argue that there should be constant assessment happening in our classrooms.  This is a formative assessment I made up for the students that they did the day after we had an important lesson on the layers of the Earth.  This assessment let me see how well the students got the information covered.  The lesson included several strategies.  Visual simulations and modeling, questioning, and comparing and contrasting various topics.  As with many of the units, I started the evolution unit with a pretest.  The pretest let me get a picture of what prior knowledge or preconceptions  students brought into the unit.  The pretest showed that this student had some ideas about about genes but not how they played a part in evolution.  They also had some idea of what extinction was and how animals might become extinct.   Most of the pretests were similar to this one in that students had pieces of information but had not put them together as they related to evolution.  I have included a few pages of this student’s evolution unit final here, here, and here.  This student did well on the final, and when compared to the pretest, their performance increased dramatically.  On the final the student was able to give examples of why species might go extinct.  The student was able to articulate how genes are passed on and affect evolution.  This student did well on the last question which asked about the mechanism of natural selection which is the heart of evolution.

Self assessment has been a part of our classes on occasion.  For assignments requiring explanation I will make copies of a range of answers and show them on the screen allowing students to assess that piece of work and whether or not it answered the question being asked. This and this are two examples of student answers to the same question.  Students were encouraged to analyze their own work as they looked at the photocopied work and determine where they were in comparison to the work they were seeing.  Those students whose work fell short were to correct or improve their work in relation to what they saw on the screen and heard during discussion for future study use.

Formative assessments help me gauge the effectiveness of my instruction.  These two formative assessments show that these two students have a good grasp of the subject while this student’s assessment shows a gap in their understanding.  In this case, the next day I spent a couple of minutes reviewing the topic.  I tried to give an example of the currents as imaginary conveyor belts that transported the heat from the equator to the poles.  I gave this new example because the students didn’t quite get what I wanted them to the first time around, so simply repeating the same thing would possibly get the same result.  By rephrasing the idea I could hopefully get the same information across but from a new angle, the students who didn’t get it the first time might be able to understand better.

2. Intentionally planned. All students benefit from standards-based planning that is personalized.

While the idea of personalized lessons for each student is a great idea the reality is that there just isn’t enough time for us to assign, monitor, or grade so many lessons.  The compromise is the development of lessons that are flexible enough to challenge students that need it but are also able to be understood by students who are slower to understand.  My  multi-cultural journal includes pieces on differentiation and diversity in the classroom.  I’ve tried to differentiate my lessons as often as possible throughout the year.  My Standard-S meta-reflection # 2 gave some examples of different strategies I used in a lesson on layers of the Earth.  The layers of the Earth lesson used visual aids in the form of simulations.  These visuals help with students who may have trouble forming a picture of a concept just from words.  Instead of my students that some waves pass through the earth while others do not the students get to see it happen and can make inferences on what they see.  In addition to visual aids the students did some modeling of waves.  The acting out of the wave motions works well for those who are kinetic learners.

In addition to differentiation I make it a point to invite students to come in during homeroom for additional help.  We have homeroom only twice a week but students who are in need of making up work or clarification of lessons are encouraged to come in for help.

3. Influenced by multiple instructional strategies. All students benefit from personalized instruction that addresses their ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Not all students learn the same way.  I myself am an example of this.  Some students learn best by reading, some by listening and watching, and others by doing.  I am an experience learner.  I want to strive to include as many different instructional strategies as possible over the course of the year.  As a science teacher I am lucky in that my students often get to see results of lessons by doing labs.  I also mix in lectures and visual tools to create lessons that cover a broad base of learning styles.  These are two different lesson plans (Lesson 1, Lesson 2, ) I created and entered into this blog for our content methods  class using some of the various Marzano strategies for creating a better classroom.  Over the course of the year we have used a number of graphic organizers to help guide students in their note taking.  This graphic organizer came from the evolution unit when we were looking at the different types of fossils.  When using these types of organizers students who may not be proficient at note taking are given some guidance as to what they need to be looking for during the lesson.  They can also facilitate easier studying for those students who need it.  Cooperative learning has been a big part of our classroom.  Few assignments have not had some type of group work involved.  These two task cards (task card #1, task card #2) required groups to work out how to model the movement of the Earth and moon with non-linguistic representations such as props or acting the movements out.  I feel group work is an important part of learning.  For those who may be struggling with a concept group members can help clarify concepts for them.  For those who have the concept down, one of the best ways of reinforcing material is to try to teach it to others.  I have learned that myself over the course of the year as I have tried to rephrase something I have taught but the class didn’t quite get.

A tool that I have used on occasion is the Brain Pop website.  This is a subscription site, but one of our science teachers has a subscription.  This is a website of short animated lessons having to do with science, math, and other subjects.  They are usually pretty campy and some students roll their eyes when they see them.  They are short, however, and can easily be used as additional reinforcement during lessons.  While some students think the videos are corny I think most students pay attention if just for the novelty factor.

4. Informed by technology. All students benefit from instruction that utilizes effective technologies and is designed to create technologically proficient learners.

Technology is evolving at an amazing rate.  Some of this innovation has found its uses in education.  As the world becomes a more technology dependent students will benefit greatly from lessons that include and make use of technology.  I took a technology elective this past quarter.  In this class we learned about new technologies and how they might be used in the classroom.  Emphasis was placed web 2.0 tools that can be found for free on the internet, meaning any student with access to a computer could use them.  Throughout the class we wrote weekly blog posts and created an educational technology  web page and a digital narrative.  In my future classroom I hope to be able to make use of some of the interesting tools we explored.  Blogs and wikis are no longer new, but they present great potential for online collaboration and communication.  The class page for EDTC 6535 was created using Google Sites, a free online application.  A site like this is what I want to use use a template for my own class page.  All on one site I can have my syllabus, class schedule, assignments, grades, and links to outside readings.  There can be forums for student response to reflection questions.  Another tool we used during our class was Etherpad.  Like many free tools that work really well, it was bought by Google and now tools such as Google Docs and Google Wave are available.  Tools such as these allow for real time collaboration on documents.  This means a groups of students can all work on the same piece of work at the same time, and will allow me to track each group members participation.  It is an exciting time technologically for teachers.  With tools such as Smartboards, clickers, and cheaper laptops making their way into classrooms, the opportunities for student collaboration outside of the classroom is becoming more and more of a possibility.

In our science class we have had two activities that have allowed students to use the computer labs for research.  One of these were the students planet reports.  The students were given two days of computer time to research their groups planet and prepare a presentation to the class.  This assignment was another good example of group work as  the groups had limited time with the computers so they needed to divide the work to maximize their time.  They also needed to agree on the method of presentation.  We gave them the choice of poster, power point, acting out, or any other method they could think of.  As more and more information becomes available online, the ability of students to find, check, and utilize that information becomes more and more vital.  The use of computers is becoming a necessity for success in today’s work force.  I look forward to the future in which I can try to incorporate more and more technology into my science lessons.