The teacher draws upon knowledge of content areas, cross-disciplinary skills, learners, the community, and pedagogy to plan instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals
Meeting this standard means that the teacher uses their knowledge of the content area that they are teaching, as well as their cross-disciplinary, their students, the community, and their pedagogy to explain each lesson and make sure that it is supporting all students and meeting them at all their rigorous learning goals and objectives.
7 (p) Takes professional responsibility to use short-and-long-term planning as a means of assuring student learning.
Description
This artifact is an online planning book that I used to organize my week. I chose this planning book because it allows me to have easy access to the Common Core standards and allows me to navigate through my week very easily. This planning allows me as an educator to quickly look back and what my objectives are for each plan without hand writing all of them down.
Rationale
This artifact is a strong example of how I am able to meet this standard and indicator because it shows how I am taking responsibility by creating both short and long term plans to ensure student learning. I am planning for the entirety of the week and keeping in mind the plans I will do for the day I am on as well as planning ahead. This is kept professional because it is well organized and developmentally appropriate due to the use of standards and objectives, for the students. These are both examples of my short term and long term planning. I have made sure that it fits the means of student learning by matching up the objectives and standards for the students. Making sure that there are planned objectives and standards are more meaningful for the students' learning.
7 (L) Knows when and how to adjust plans based on assessment information and learner responses.
Description
This was a part of my Teacher Work Sample. I had to find two times that I adjusted my original strategies and instruction and had to adapt to fit the situation. I did this because as a teacher there are constant changes in your lessons, your students, and your planning due to so many factors big and small. I wanted to show that I can make on the spot adjustments to best fit the needs for my students so they are getting the most out of the activity and lesson.
Rationale
This artifact is a strong example of how I met this indicator. This is a part of my Teacher Work Sample where I had to find two parts of my TWS implementation that I changed to fit what would work best for the situation. The first adjustment I knew I needed to make was on the second lesson plan in my TWS. There was low attendance when I presented this lesson, my original plan was to have the students work in pairs to collaborate. Due to the low attendance, I changed my instruction to have the students work individually. I knew this change needed to happen because the students at the rug after instructions were ready to work with a hands on task. I felt that this change allowed the students to explain a stronger explanation of their thinking since they were not working with a peer. I also was able to gather assessment data easier because the students were working individually and their understanding was not masked by having a partner with them. The students had more of an opportunity to explore with the hands-on task without needing to switch the materials back and forth between themselves and their partner. I would implement the lesson again and have the students work independently even if there was not a struggle with low attendance like there was in this situation. The second change that I made was during the fourth lesson plan of my teacher work sample. For this lesson the formative assessment I had the students illustrate predictions of what was going to happen when a car was pushed down a ramp. I then had the students complete the activity and then illustrate next to their prediction what actually happened when the car was pushed down the ramp. My original plan was to just have the students hand their work in to me, but instead I noticed some students struggling on the explanation part of their work. This is when I knew a change needed to happen on how to approach this assessment. I then decided instead of students just handing their work in I would have them share their predictions to the class at the rug. I did this so the students who seemed confused about the explanation could see how other students were explaining it and get an example provided. I chose students who I knew truly understood the task to present theirs first and then the students who were confused followed. This change allowed the students to further their learning and understanding to match the targets based on how they were responding to the change. It also allowed me to gather assessment data that showed more of what they knew from the overall objective rather than them describing their image. They were able to go into greater detail of the activity and what happened in the lesson which is what I was looking for for my assessment data. I don't think that I would have gotten the strong responses that I did if it didn't see where a change needed to happen and act on it.