Domain Two: The Classroom Environment
Domain Two: The Classroom Environment
Embedded Files
In my classroom, I prioritize building authentic relationships with my students and encouraging them to do the same with one another. Students know that there is a purpose to their being in our class, and they are reminded that we created our classroom values altogether. In making students think about what they want from one another, they also co-create expectations for behaviors that they will commit to in order to help our class succeed. Students understand that we are one community, and over the course of our time together, have come to respect each other and our space, have started helping each other without being asked, and have begun taking academic risks and speaking up more frequently. Our classroom is also physically set up into small pods of 2-4 students, which reflect our dedication to being community-oriented.
Barrón Letter to Students.docxIntroductory Letter to My Students
Introductory Letter to My Students
I believe that when students are in a new environment, we should model behaviors we want them to emulate, as well. In writing a letter of introduction to my students, I had hoped to model vulnerability and bravery in sharing information about myself while also explaining to students what my role in their classroom would be. It was very important to me that they understood why I was in the room and that they did not think I was meant to take more from their community than I gave to them. It was the beginning of several “introductions” to my students, followed up with “ask-me-anything” breaks where they got to ask me about my friends, my schooling, and my relationship with education. Students responded by talking about themselves during consequent warm ups and lunch breaks. By the end of my time in the classroom, some students returned the letter-writing to me with letters of recommendation for me.
Some students reciprocated with a letter of recommendation at the end of our time together:
In my classroom, I also prioritize...
Deeper learning and culturally relevant teaching
Deeper learning and culturally relevant teaching
In encouraging students to share the things that excite them and get them motivated, I learned that many of them like horror movies and plot twists. I wanted to teach students about foreshadowing before we delved into our unit on Macbeth, so I was able to use a short film called Alma in order to teach them about this literary element. This lesson also was created for students to practice thinking, pair communication, and sharing aloud. This is something that our class has been working on, and it promotes students to dig deeper than their initial thoughts while being supported by their peers. Part of the lesson is also that students are meant to create their own definitions of foreshadowing, which allows them to concretely know what we learned about in this class.
Active learning and independence in my classroom
Active learning and independence in my classroom
I really like promoting cooperative learning, which leans into the collectivist culture archetypes that we unpacked early in our semester. It is useful because my students value collectivism and Bloom’s taxonomy values creation. In thinking about what is at their zone of proximal development and how to promote positive relationships with others, the use of word scrolls encourages students to rely on one another to build new knowledge together—especially based on existing knowledge they each have. This lesson was framed by our essential question: “Why do words matter?”. Students, without knowing, began their exploration into why words mattered and thus, the lesson was a good frame for before they began their reading. McTighe mentioned that by starting a unit or lesson with increased student attention, focus, and curiosity, they would be better primed for the following learning that could take place. By validating students’ existing knowledge, which they built off of for this activity, and showing them that in one class period they managed to work collaboratively to create something, students were connected with their expertise and saw that we believe in their abilities.
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