The competent teacher differentiates instruction by using a variety of strategies that support critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, and continuous growth and learning. This teacher understands that the classroom is a dynamic environment requiring ongoing modification of instruction to enhance learning for each student.
Artifact 1
Culture and Worldview Video Culture and Worldview Quiz
The video above was created to teach high-school students about culture and how it can affect a person's worldview. The quiz was made to test the understanding of the concepts taught in the video. Both were made in my Technology and Education class in my Sophomore year of college. The goal of the assignment was to choose an Illinois Learning Standard from our major, and since mine was History Education, I picked from the Social Science standards for ninth through twelfth grade. I settled on the standard about culture and how it can affect a person's worldview because I felt that it was the standard which I best understood at the time and felt confident enough to try and teach in the given method for the project.
The learning standard taught in this video is "Explain how and why culture shapes worldview" (SS.G.10.9-12). This video teaches what culture is and gives certain types of cultures to help students gain a better idea of what a culture is. It then explains several ways that a culture can shape someone's worldview and why culture plays such a large part in forming worldview. Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 5F states that a teacher should "[know] strategies to maximize student attentiveness and engagement." I tried to keep my video short and interesting since I would be unable to see if my students were paying attention to the video. I tried to make sure that the images I chose were interesting and fitting to the idea being discussed in each part and I put in a short activity that I hoped would be able to help the ideas being taught easier to understand. Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 5L states that a teacher "develops a variety of clear, accurate presentations and representations of concepts, using alternative explanations to assist students’ understanding and presenting diverse perspectives to encourage critical and creative thinking." In the video, I gave several examples of each type of culture and how each could affect a person. I also gave examples of how culture affects worldview, such as norms, and asked questions to get students thinking about how these ideas are present in their lives.
I learned that creating a video such as this is a great way to get students thinking about a topic before they come into class. It could open up more discussion and leave more time in class to explain anything that students are confused by. I think that after a bit more practice, I could make better videos for this purpose that I could use with my future high-school students. Making this video also taught me that there is actually quite a bit that goes into a lesson, even one as short as this was. Time management and concentration are very important in this process. By making the quiz, I tried to test for students' understanding of ideas rather than memorization of facts. This way is a little harder than just testing for memorization, but it's ultimately more helpful to the student because it helps them better understand and remember what they were taught.
Artifact 2
The lesson plan above was created during my student teaching. The school required that we use a DBQ unit focusing on Japanese silk factory workers during the industrial revolution. Some of the documents in the packet we deemed too difficult for 6th graders, so we settled on using the background essay and four source documents from the packet, two of which (Document A and Document C) were merely a picture and/or a table.
Illinois Professional Teaching standard 5J states that the competent teacher "monitors and adjusts strategies in response to feedback from the student." While I was teaching the lesson on Day 5, I noticed that many students were struggling with answering the questions and reading the table. This was in the first period that I taught that day. I decided that, instead of having students work on the questions on their own, we would do them together as a class. For every class after the first on that day, we did the questions together. The class went a lot smoother and was a lot more engaged after that.
I learned that not every lesson is going to go exactly as I plan and that's okay. I also learned that, unfortunately, my first period of the day is always going to be my 'guinea pig' period because they are going to receive what is essentially the rough draft of my lesson. I learn from that first period what will or will not work, how long an activity will take, what parts of the lesson will offer the most difficulty, etc., and reorganize or even replan for later classes. After a few years, I imagine this won't be the case, or at least won't be the case as often.