Using Research to Inform Practice

I ensure that UDLs are present and integrated into every single lesson. I believe that it’s best practice and it ensures that you are making your lessons as student-oriented and accessible as possible. The three UDLs are: provide multiple means of Engagement, Provide multiple means of Representation, and Provide multiple means of Action & Expression. 

For example, low-floor high ceiling lessons can be grouped under the UDL. They aim to move beyond differentiation and provide a lesson that is accessible for a range of learners while also providing students the autonomy to self-select what challenge they are ready for in a lesson. It essentially provides them multiple access points into the content and within the content, movement to try and challenge or grow towards one built into the lessons. 

Developing literacy is a crucial aspect of a child's education. I base my instructional approach off of research suggesting phonics is best taught systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively. I also pull from Shefelbine's Literacy Framework which is divided into two sides: decoding and encoding which means to sound out words, know based on sight common words, and phonological awareness. The other side is comprehension which involves a number of things such as background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and language structures. But importantly, the theory integrates the influence of motivation into what impacts a student's ability to gain literacy.

Bilingual Education with a Global Perspective and the research presented in that class during my graduate coursework at UCSD had a profound impact on my teaching practices. It has radically changed my perspective on the ramifications of what a school’s language ideology and language choice to teach through can have on students and groups of people. I now deeply understand the importance of celebrating and supporting the many languages my students know in my classroom, in addition to their unique backgrounds they bring into our classroom. I want to be a teacher who respects and cultivates bilingualism in my classroom and although I am not bilingual myself, I know there are many ways I can support my bilingual students by encouraging them to speak their language, by supporting translanguaging, and by providing opportunities for them to use their languages. Moreover, ensuring that my lessons are accessible to multilingual learners that help them develop academic langauge. 

Backwards planning centers the content-specific learning goals based on the standards that the school grounds itself on before creating the tasks and content that you will ask your students to engage in. This way, the learning goals and the tasks you ask of your students are always in service of helping them grow towards the actual learning goals.

Assessment driven lesson planning ensures that you are considering what your students already know and where they need to grow before designing a lesson. This way, lessons are tailored to all students' learning needs. 

Teacher inquiry is an important part of being an educator who's attuned to their students. It's a practice that requires reflection and asking questions when an educator notices something that isn't aligned with their teaching philosophy or student goals. It involves changing aspects of their practice or classroom environment in the hopes of affecting positive change. During my student teaching, I led an inquiry project looking into the impact of art therapy on students with ADHD. You can read the research brief here.