Domain 4: Professionalism

Goal: Actively apply feedback from others and information learned through meetings, professional development, or other conferences to lesson planning and teaching.

4e. Growing and developing professionally

Artifact #1 - Differentiation in Instruction

Throughout my student teaching experiences, I was continually challenged to find ways to support all students in my lessons. Supporting a classroom full of students with a wide range of needs can be one of the most challenging parts of being a teacher. However, there are multiple things one can do to support students. Keeping particular student needs in your mind while planning lessons and activities is a crucial part of being an effective educator.

One way that I differentiated for students in my pre-algebra course was by creating a notes page for students that needed extra support in organization and following along in class. I projected these notes on the whiteboard and then wrote in the work with a marker as we went through the lesson. This format also supported other students in their note taking strategies as they were able to use the formatting of the notes page to help them organize their own notes.

This photo is of the notes projected on the whiteboard. I zoomed in on the document to make things easier for the students to see.

A part of my planning was printing out the notes and creating a teacher's copy. As I taught, I would use these notes as a guide. This also gave me the ability to send these notes to students who were absent so that they could easily get the content that they missed.

Artifact #2 - Professional Development Lessons

In my second student teaching placement, I attended two different professional development days. During these days, the staff split into groups to discuss various books that they are all reading in preparation for the school to begin its new accreditation cycle. I was in the group that read Virtuous Minds by Phillip E. Dow. I was very encouraged through our discussions and challenged to implement some new things into my teaching.

Applications:

One section of the book was about teaching and modeling effective thinking routines. Thinking "out loud" while teaching can be an extremely effective tool. Modeling for students what it looks like to process a problem, form connections, and make decisions using a variety of strategies is extremely impactful in developing students' intellectual character. In my classroom, I strive to intentionally model for my students thinking and processing skills that they can transfer to all areas of their lives.
Another section of the book was about intellectual courage. When learning, it is important that students learn to open their minds to new ideas and take risks in the classroom. For example, it may take a lot of courage for a student to take the risk of raising their hand in class. Fostering an environment in which students can build their intellectual courage is important for students' growth and therefore important to me as an educator.

To help focus a little more on vocabulary and help with reading science texts, I created physical flashcards for students. Throughout the unit, students would write definitions, examples, prefixes, suffixes, and connections to other words on the back of each flashcard. This helped students in developing their scientific literacy.

Artifact #3 - Disciplinary Literacy

In my 6th-grade student teaching placement, I was encouraged to focus on teaching students how to read in science. A lot of time was spent on vocabulary and helping students build their scientific vocabulary. It is also important to help students grow in their ability to decipher words using context clues, roots, prefixes, and suffixes. At this age, it is important that students learn how to read disciplinary-specific texts and become more familiar with the terminology and vocabulary used in specific subject areas.

The flashcards were created on google slides which allowed students that needed accommodations in writing to use their computers to make the flashcards. This was one way that I differentiated the activity to meet the needs of all my students.

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