1. Teaching Diverse Students

To demonstrate evidence that complies with Illinois teaching standard #1, teaching diverse students, this instructional lesson plan exemplifies qualities throughout. When looking for ideas to incorporate for the lesson, this plan demonstrates various activities, instructional strategies, and content that builds from students prior knowledge, social/emotional, and academic experiences. It was produced for students from diverse backgrounds to maximize their engagement and learning within the lesson.

The lesson plan provided demonstrates how student data and information gathered prior to the creation of the lesson plan maximizes engagement of students form different backgrounds. Performance indicator 1H states a competent teacher, " analyzes and uses student information to design instruction that meets the diverse needs of students and leads to ongoing growth and achievement.". The lesson plan has evidence of understanding diverse student needs, provides various activities and games that allow students to practice their new skills to foster growth and achievement in a social diverse setting. This evidence shows how student abilities, characteristics, and background knowledge guide the strategies used.

I was able to take away from this lesson that everyone in the class may not enjoy the "focus" of the lesson for the day. I also learned that it is important to try and find enjoyable things to add to the lesson for everyone to enjoy as everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. It was also important to find out that informal assessments help the flow and transition between tasks. This artifact will allow me to have a fun, non sport based game that many individuals can enjoy.

In order to demonstrate and provide material that is in compliance with Illinois teaching standard #1, teaching diverse students, this PowerPoint on Tourette is a informational presentation that allows individuals to have a further look at a group of diverse learners. Within this artifact, one can find background information on the syndrome, qualifying symptoms of an individual who is enduring, examples of classroom behaviors displayed by those individuals, and various strategies to help that individual cope and be successful in the classroom.

The importance of this artifact is to allow individuals to understand challenges individuals with Tourette and to help understand characteristics that can be noticed in the classroom. It is also important to note this artifact provides strategies on how to support individuals with said challenges. Performance indicator 1J states that the competent teacher, "Differentiates strategies, materials, pace, levels of complexity, and language to introduce concepts and principles so that they are meaningful to students at varying levels of development and to students with diverse learning needs;". The evidence from the Powerpoint outlines various strategies and introduces vital information about the syndrome appropriate for different levels of development for students with diverse learning needs.

I was able to learn during the process of creating this artifact that strategies provided may work for some but not others so it is important to have a variety of strategies for difference situations. This artifact is significant to me in the fact that I created it while also working full-time as a Paraprofessional, where I was able to practice some of the strategies that were researched. This artifact will support my future classroom by providing me with various models, information, and strategies that can be called upon when I face challenging situations.