Competency 3

Planning for teaching

The student teacher plans teaching experiences based on subject matter standards, curriculum goals, student knowledge, and the learning community.

Reflexive Seminar III

Unit Plan

As evidence of my competency in "Planning for Teaching," I offer a mini-unit plan that I developed during my practicum experience in January 2025 at the Elementary School of the University of Puerto Rico. I initially began my practicum experience under the unit, My Beautiful Island, which came to an end in April. This meant that I had to come up with a new one. Using the 2nd-grade syllabus and curricular template, I then created a new unit titled Under the Sea.

Creating a unit plan as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher requires meticulous planning and skill. It involves integrating language objectives, language skills, topics, and content standards into a cohesive learning experience. Planning transforms curricular goals into intentional and meaningful learning activities, where subject matter standards and curriculum frameworks provide the foundation for learning to occur. Ultimately, a unit plan serves as a guide, helping teachers get a general idea of not only what students are expected to learn long-term but also how their learning builds progressively over time.

The process of creating a unit plan is based on reflection. It requires the teacher to consider what students already know, what they need to learn, and how to achieve it effectively. This includes deciding which assessments to use, which skills to practice, and what activities will best support language and content development. In short, developing a unit plan requires careful thought and intentionality to make sure that learning experiences are effective, engaging, and meet students' needs. Effective planning involves seeing students as a whole recognizing their skills, performance levels, backgrounds, and areas for growth. As I always say, planning is indispensable for offering effective instruction and for making informed decisions that support student learning.

Unit Plan - Under the Sea.pdf

Unit Overview Sea Animals-2.docx

Reflexive Seminar II

Camino al mar

Plan revisado.pdf

As evidence of competency #3 "Planning for teaching", I present an individualized lesson plan. The lesson plan I created was a requisite for the course Edpr4011: Curriculum and methodology in the preschool level I. This course was offered by professor Nereida J. Rodríguez and the lesson plan was made during the second semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. The purpose of creating this lesson plan was to use our knowledge of children's development and what we learned in class to correctly create a plan.

With this evidence I demonstrate that I have progressed in my domain of planning teaching experiences based on subject matter standards, curriculum goals, student knowledge and the learning community. For my pre-practicum course and experiences I was required to create and implement an individualized lesson plan for the infants of the Laboratorio de Infantes y Maternales of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. The lesson plan was intentional and carefully planned in order to offer an integrated and holistic learning experience. Taking into account the topics taught, which in this case was sea animals, including the expectations and standards of the department of education and aligning all of it with developmental milestones expected for the infants stage. Fostering specifically, cognitive and physical development but being mindful that we should foster all of the developmental dimensions. With the help of the teaching community, professors and teacher’s recommendations I was able to make the learning experience more meaningful and joyous for the student. Ultimately, a lesson plan is a guide the teacher creates to ensure effective and engaging instruction that is relevant and enriches students' learning experiences so that every child can be successful.

Reflexive Seminar I

Yeidilys Pitre y Lizbeth RodrÃguez- Experiencia de PlanificaciÃ³n y ReflexiÃ³n.pdf

For the course EDPE3013 (Teaching of the mother tongue) I elaborated, with my classmate, Lizbeth Rodríguez, a document titled “Experience of Planification”. This course was offered by the professor Laura Santiago in the first semester of the 2022-2023 school year. As evidence for the competency of Planning for teaching I offer a word document containing our planification for a single class lesson.

I offer as evidence an experience of planification because through it I demonstrate that I am in progress of mastering the competency number #3 "Planning for teaching". This was my first time planning a lesson and I have to admit that it was not easy given that I had not done anything similar to it before. For this assignment we were required to create a lesson plan for a Spanish class in the grade of our choosing using the format that professor Santiago had provided. The plan required us to meet the standards and expectations of the department of education and also of an integrated and varied lesson. It had to also include the different language systems, not limiting itself to a grammar lesson but other systems like reading comprehension, oral expression and others. We were also required to elaborate the assessment sheets that we were going to use to evaluate our students after the activities that we had planned.

In the first part of our field experience of planification, together with my classmate, Lizbeth Rodriguez, I developed a hypothetical plan for an integrated Spanish class. To begin with our plan, we chose to target the fourth grade and work with the literary work (short story) “No quiero el Cabello Rizado” written by author Lauren Ellen Anderson. Through this reading we worked on concepts such as self-acceptance, self-love and identity. We developed large group activities in which we worked and promoted skills such as reading, listening, speaking, conversing, writing and drawing. We developed separately, although based on the reading, beginning, development and closing activities. We based the activities according to the newest standards and specification of the department education and the objectives that we wanted to achieve.

For the beginning of this planification we planned to present the students with the reading “No quiero el Cabello Rizado” as an audiobook. This way we promoted listening skills. We developed questions that we would ask the students, some of them were predictive, inferential and critical questions. For the development of the plan we created three activities. Given that one of the requirements of the plan was to plan an integrated class lesson we developed the language, social studies and fine arts centers. For the language center we developed an activity titled “La entrevista ¿Quién soy? ¿Cómo son los demás?” in which the students had to interview one of their classmates. For the second center, the social studies center, we developed an activity titled “Arbol Genealogico” for the students to complete a family tree and identify aspects that he or she shares with his or her family. In the last center, the fine arts center, we developed the activity “Todos somos diferentes”. In this center the students would make a self portrait in a simple yet creative way and identify the qualities that they like about themselves and the ones that they don't. For closing they would review with the teacher the concepts that were discussed through some guide questions. After developing the activities we also had to create assessment sheets that we would use to evaluate the students performance.

Even though this assignment is not focused on any of my fields of study I learned a lot from it. Through completing this assignment I learned that Planification is a very useful tool when it comes to teaching. It allows teachers to be organized and follow a sequence of study. To have a structured lesson plan while taking into account the standards and specifications of the department of education. To have a lesson plan that targets the students' learning levels and I learned as well how to redact instructional objectives. All of this will help me in the future to create an organized lesson plan integrating curriculum goals, subject matter standards, students knowledge and the learning community.

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