Showcase of  Graduate Work

So how do we learn? We learn by adapting and changing our behaviors and/or thoughts in response to stimuli, memories, and situations. We can learn by observing others and mimicking their behavior or we can learn by creating new memories in situations thus building on and changing our schemas (our cognitive framework for how we organize information). As each moment occurs in our day so too does an opportunity to learn and adapt.

In this paper, you'll find my personal theory of learning supported by decades of research. 

A growth mindset, is a belief that through hard work and embracing challenges one can improve at anything. A person with a growth mindset works harder when the task gets harder and they strive to learn from their mistake rather than sulking with their head down. On the other hand, a person with a fixed mindset identifies as smart when they do well on a test and identifies with being dumb when they do poorly on the test. You see, the person with the fixed mindset gets frustrated and gives up, while the person with the growth mindset gets upset and is quickly motivated to improve and learn from their mistakes due to their constant belief that they can improve and grow through hard work. 

In this paper, I demonstrate my ability and understanding of how to foster a growth mindset in students. 

Effective praise in the classroom is specific and refers to the childs' hard work. Over thirty years of research from Stanford Psychologist and Professor Carol Dweck show that when we praise children for their intelligence (i.e. "You are so smart") they develop a "Fixed Mindset" which leads to worse task performance, less persistance, and less task enjoyment when children encounter difficulty. On the other hand, when we praise children for their hard work (i.e "Remember when the math homework was really hard and you kept working hard? That hard work paid off. Nice work!") they learn to embrace the challenges they encounter and their performance improves.

In this slideshow, I demonstrate my ability to conduct a small research survey. 

As an early elementary teacher, shrinking this literacy gap and meeting more of children’s individual literacy needs is one of my biggest goals. Furthermore, in order for our country’s literacy needs to be met and for the growing gap in literacy to shrink, change needs to take place. A great place to start is by looking at what methods have been proven to increase literacy motivation and improve comprehensive literacy instruction. Multiple studies have shown that fostering student engagement through the ARC (access, relevance, and choice) can enhance literacy motivation...and we know that having literacy motivation means enjoying reading a book or being delighted to receive new information (Morrow & Gambrell, 2019).

In this artifact, I showcase my ability to use evidence-based reading practices to improve a students ability to decode words and read fluently. 

Reading fluency is an important skillset for all readers to learn. For educators, fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) and Wide Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction through multiple texts (Wide FORI) have been shown to be beneficial and a best practice for literacy educators. 

In this slideshow, you'll see my perspective on FORI and Wide FORI. This artificat, showcases my ability to read research and understand the implications. 

Research shows, when teachers give writers a choice about what they can write about they not only take more ownership over their writing but their task enjoyment increases. In my classroom, we might be learning about writing informational paragraphs about animals, but students will get to choose what animal they write about. This is one of many examples in which I give students choice. The more choice students get, the more ownership they take over their learning process. 

In this picture, you'll see a past student choosing the title of her fairy tale. 

In my classroom, I provide students with a simple rubric of their own before the assignment. It's merely a checklist. This helps make the expectations concrete. When the student finishes their writing, I then have them go through the checklist to make sure they have everything. The point of this is to help students take more ownership of their writing process, to give them a framework to work with, and to help them understand that writing is a constant process of editing and revising. 

This is an example of a student driven rubric that I use during my fairy tale unit. 

Successful elementary writing teachers show models of what a good report might look like, explain who the audience is, help students generate questions to research, and support students with getting their writing started (Zemelman et al., 2005). That’s the meat and potatoes of what makes a good writing instructor in the elementary grades. Of course there’s so much more to it, but that’s a great starting place.

In this artifact, you'll find a culmination of the most effective writing practices.