~ Isabel Fernandez ~
Standard III
Teachers plan and deliver effective instruction and create an environment that facilitates learning for their students.
At the start of my student teaching and most of my time at the middle school, I felt that sometimes I did not articulate what I was trying to say to students one on one well enough (even though I was still successful). This is something I worked on and started to plan a moment to think about before and after every class I teach. At the elementary school and through these changes, I became a lot better at this and over consistent classroom expectations/routine, and management. However, I think communication is ever-evolving and I will consistently have to work on all this to meet my schools and students needs. If I ever make a mistake I know I can always fix it and only become clearer and more concise. For example, my lessons, presentations, and instructions all use proper communication for the age and ability levels of all my students through constant reflections and editing. I believe that I am Accomplished in this area, however, I will always try new classroom management techniques and adapt for each of my unique classes I will meet throughout my career.
Element A: Teachers demonstrate knowledge about the ways in which learning takes place, including the levels of intellectual, physical, social, and emotional development of their students.
This lesson was created for 3-5th grade students, there are specific areas where 5th graders have more opportunity to push depth due to grade level expectations and ability. The lesson is also about visualizing our human emotions into monsters, allowing students to learn more about their emotions and how to read others’ emotions in every grade level.
Element B: Teachers use formal and informal methods to assess student learning, provide feedback, and use results to inform planning and instruction.
The first image demonstrates my success with formal assessment and providing feedback. The student originally submitted a statement that was very surface level as I stated in my feedback along with my probing questions. All my students can always resubmit after receiving feedback, and this student took my feedback and turned in a much more meaningful statement as shown.
The second image demonstrates data from my own informal assessment. I created a Kahoot for students to play in pairs or alone during class time, just to quickly assess the next steps of my instruction, if I could move on from two-point perspective and points of view and have students begin the project. During the kahoot, from my own observation, I could tell thta my instruction and my students were very successful in understanding the concepts so we passed out final paper that day.
Element C: Teachers integrate and utilize appropriate available technology to engage students in authentic learning experiences.
This artifact is a screenshot of a weekly cultural activity I implemented while at the middle school. I researched art forms and techniques from arounf the world and created Canvas discussion boards for students to fill out during a whole class socratic seminar. This use of technology pushed students learning outside of the western view and pushed students thinking to give their best guesses from context clues how to make gold leaf because the videos captions were in Japanese.
Element D: Teachers establish and communicate high expectations and use processes to support the development of critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
With every lesson I create, I also create presentation and a checklist for students to follow (like in this artifact). I make sure that my expectations are communicated visually and verbally for the comprehension and success of my students. I do this so that my expectations are clear, but also so that when students ask if they are done or if I think their work is good, I can ask them to problem solve on their own and use some of their own critical thinking to decide if they are satisfied with their work or believe if they should be finished.
Element E: Teachers provide students with opportunities to work in teams and develop leadership.
This artifact is a video that students took themselves in an extension activity I created for their project. I simply told my students they needed to create a skit using one of the comic strip stories someone on their team already made, use at least two of their finished monsters in collaboration, and define their roles including director (leader), actors which could be voice actors or they can video them acting with their whole bodies, and prop directors (helpers who don't feel comfortable hearing or seeing themselves on video). Beyond this simple facilitation at the start, students worked together in teams all by themselves and were very successful.
Element F: Teachers model and promote effective communication.
This artifact demonstrates teacher instruction translating into student work. This demonstrates my effective communication as a teacher because students were able to take my verbal and visual instruction and create a successful plan for their artwork. If I had been unclear, students would not have been able to make their plans in the way that I had facilitated.