Standard 3 - Planning for Differentiated Instruction

Standard 3 - Planning for Differentiated Instruction – The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement.

The artifact that was created for this standard is the “Culture Unit Plan.” It contains evidence of strategies and ideas that reflect my teaching style. The artifact contains elements of my developing philosophy of education and is intended to be a resource for me to use when I become a diverse learner teacher. It was produced March 2019 while studying Understanding by Design and Social Studies Methods.

The IPTS standard that was targeted for this course is “Planning for Differentiated Instruction.” There are many ways that a competent teacher plans and designs knowledge acquisition that incorporates the diversity of their students this is true when it came to creating this unit plan artifact. Within each section of my artifact, I purposefully planned to fulfill and support the needs of all types of learners by differentiating activities and language art modes. This artifact is just the beginning of all I plan to learn in terms of differentiation and modification. The future of education is individualized and social/emotional learning. My goal is to continue to develop as an educator and future diverse learner teacher. I believe within this artifact that it “incorporates experiences into instructional practices that relate to a student’s current life experiences and to future life experiences” and “creates approaches to learning that are interdisciplinary and that integrate multiple content areas.”

During the course of this project I have gained many connections that will help me in the future. The overall lesson that I have learned from creating this unit plan is that I have to be purposeful when it comes to designing for understanding. Teaching must be purposeful in terms of reaching your desired outcome or learning outcome. I also really dove deep in understanding the individual parts of learning and what it takes to transfer knowledge, how to gather evidence of that understanding and how to foster that transfer. Much like teaching, I fully devoted and incorporated myself into this unit plan as I compiled and modified the activities and big ideas. I learned a lot about what is important for me as a future educator to use in terms of differentiation, but I also learned that I need to follow my god given instincts. This artifact is not just a compilation of materials to use to teach. It is a display of my ability that I can and will overcome challenges and walk in my calling of becoming a teacher.

Above is a project that I created called ASL in the classroom. I believe in using real ASL hand signals to support "diverse student characteristics," student engagement and "community context." Using hand signals in the classroom allows all students to be seen and gives value to their interaction with the teacher. I also believe that using hand signals gives students a sense of empathy, learning a new skill together as a classroom community as well as learning about diverse learning.