CSTP 4

Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students

Year 1- Fall and Spring 2020-2021

Garfield Elementary - SDC mild/moderate 2nd-4th grade

CSTP 4.1- Using knowledge of students; academic readiness, language proficiency, cultural background, and individual development to plan instruction.

This picture is a chart depicting my students' i-Ready diagnostic assessment results. I continue to use knowledge of students; academic readiness, language proficiency, cultural background, and individual development to plan instruction. I gain knowledge of students by incorporating a weekly activity that involves students discussing what they did over the weekend. I also understand their family dynamic even more now that we are in school virtually. I am aware of those students that have hectic home lives that make concentration difficult. My students' cultural background as well as their family life helps me prepare and plan lessons to help student achievement and to make their learning experience better. I also have to use their IEP goals to shape and plan my instruction and delivery. All of this information helps me as an educator to be better prepared to teach in this difficult time of learning and teaching.

CSTP 4.2- Establishing and articulating goals for student learning.

This picture is an example of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goal section I have created for a student. I have continued to establish and articulate goals for student learning. I establish and communicate learning goals to my students by orally describing the what, why, and how of the activity. I tell my students what the assignment entails, why the assignment is important, and how the assignment will prepare them in the future. During their IEP long range goals are set for each of my students and that provides a foundation to what they should be learning this year. When I introduce my proposed IEP goals to parents/guardians I always articulate why that particular goal is appropriate to their child. I inform them that the goal is based on the result of their child’s informal and formal assessment and are aligned to the common core grade level standard. I do modify the goal to be achievable based on the students functioning level.

CSTP 4.4- Planning instruction that incorporates appropriate strategies to meet the learning needs of all students.

This picture is an example of CVC words that many of my students are working on during after school reading intervention. I adapt instructional plans and curricular materials to meet the assessed learning needs of all students. I monitor students’ understanding of content through exit slips, weekly exams, i-ready results, and homework. If a student is showing signs of difficulties I will re-teach by using different examples, scaffold more, and add visual modalities such as engaging videos or songs to help offer a different approach to their comprehension needs. I provide tutoring/intervention during my office hours Monday-Thursday for thirty minutes for all my students. I work on whatever concept that small group of three to four students are having difficulty grasping. Overall my class area of weakness is reading so my intervention has been working on reading. Monday and Tuesday groups are working on practicing decoding simple cvc words. CVC words are aligned with many of my students' IEP goals. On Wednesday and Thursday groups these students are working on reading fluency and reading comprehension. The strategies I use are choral reading and turn taking reading and then I ask literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension questions about the about the text.

Year 1 Reflection

CSTP Standard 4 states that teachers need to plan instruction and design learning experiences for all students.

The application of CSTP 4 in my teaching practice is establishing and articulating goals for student learning. Before I can plan and design instruction for my students I should know what my students' needs are. This year I started with knowing about half of my students from the previous year, so knowing their needs was a little easier and less challenging. For the other half of the class, I had long conversations with their previous teacher to learn about their needs even before starting the school year. I used this information to plan and design instruction and to avoid misconceptions of student's learning. Although, most of my students are third and fourth graders, I knew that they needed a lot of phonemic awareness and phonics activities. I spend a lot of my planning on reading foundational skills and finding my students lowest skill deficit. I believe that knowing where the student's gaps and skill deficits is key to help students improvement.

I learned to create a series of activities to help students acquire what they need to successfully achieve that goal. Most students need a variety of activities in order to keep their attention focus on a task. My students get distracted easily so I have to provide mini lessons that are engaging , fun, and as well as providing students with tools to self monitor their learning and growth.

The impact on student learning has been a big improvement in student reading. My class area of weakness is English Language Arts reading skills. I made English Language Arts my area of focus for after school intervention that I held for about ten weeks during distance learning office hours. I seen a lot of improvement in reading. All my students know all the letter sounds, most can read cvc words and several sight words, and some can now read simple passages, and respond to comprehension questions correctly. Reading is a skill that is needed in all subject areas to be successful and my students have shown improvement.

Year 2 Fall and Spring 2021-2022

CSTP 4.3- Developing and sequencing long-term and short-term instructional plans to support student learning

This is a picture of a Eureka math lesson while we are in learning centers. I articulate the learning goals of the lesson to my students and the importance of the how this end goal will develop into higher order skills, knowledge, and real life skills.

CSTP 4.4- Planning instruction that incorporates appropriate strategies to meet the learning needs of all students

This is a picture of Benchmark Advance My Shared Reading booklets and the decodable books. I often modify this material through sentence starters, word banks, and highlighter. I also structure the delivery of this instruction into small group to ensure my students stay focused and that I could closely monitor their understanding throughout the activity.

CSTP 4.mp4

CSTP 4.5- Adapting instructional plans and curricular materials to meet the learning needs of all students

This is a video clip of my explanation of the procedures that are expected of my students before we break out into our center rotations. The small group instructional strategy works best for my class. I decided to often teach my students through center rotations because when I conducted a student inventory at the beginning of the school year many of my students stated that they prefer learning in small groups.

Year 2 Reflection

CSTP Standard 4 states that teachers need to plan instruction and design learning experiences for all students.

The application of CSTP 4 in my teaching practice is by establishing and articulating goals for student learning. This year was challenging compared to last year because I did not know my students. I started with all new students they are second and third graders. Most of my students came from one of my colleagues and she gave me information about some of their learning needs, I also read their IEPs to get additional information. Although I planned and designed instruction before the school year began, I knew that I had to get to know my students to make long-term planning. For this particular class, observations, and assessments will be used to plan and design my instructional goals. This Fall 2021, we returned to face-to-face instruction which was beneficial because from the beginning of the school year we return to campus. Although, I had different challenges with the use of masks and social distancing. I had to modify my teaching because students were not able to see my mouth during direct instruction, so this made phonemic awareness and phonics lessons difficult to deliver. I had to enunciate my speech and exaggerate my pronunciation so that my students can understand what I was doing behind the mask during phonemic awareness activities.

I learned to create a series of activities to help students acquire what they need to successfully achieve that goal. Returning to campus made it easier to group students depending on their needs. I have been working in small groups throughout the day and this is the model in which students with special needs learn best. During this second year, I have learned that planning and design are critical to having a positive outcome. My students work best when they have structure during the instructional day so my planning and design have to have learning objectives and routines that are established and followed daily.

The impact on student learning is a big improvement in student reading. My class area of weakness was English Language Arts. I made English Language Arts my area of focus for intervention that I held for about ten weeks. I have seen a lot of improvement in reading. All of my students know all the letter sounds, most can read CVC words and several sight words, and some can now read simple passages and respond to comprehension questions correctly.

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