Instruction Delivery 

In the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards, one of the knowledge indicators to be a competent teacher states the following:

knows strategies to maximize student attentiveness and engagement (5F).

Using the strategy engage, connect, and launch has been a fundamental part of my lesson plans. This allows students to be hooked into the lesson and sets the tone for the remainder of the lesson. Therefore, students can be engaged through a quick 5 minutes introduction into the lesson. My application of this strategy can be seen in the following link that contains a unit plan with five lesson plans: Unit Plan

In the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards, one of the performance indicators to be a competent teacher states the following:

uses multiple teaching strategies, including adjusted pacing and flexible grouping, to engage students in active learning opportunities that promote the development of critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, and performance capabilities (5I).

Reading often becomes a repetitive process in the education field with read alouds, popcorn reading, or chapter reading. As a creative teacher, I want reading to be a fun and creative process. I decided to read aloud a picture book about Malala's life that relates to the book we were reading . I scaffolded throughout and students were able to make connections to our chapter book. After reading, students split into three groups that I created with three different teachers. Each jenga tower had different questions depending on students' reading, comprehension, reflection, and vocabulary levels.

Each group had a Jenga tower with questions related to the book on each block. These questions allowed for book-to-self reflection, book analysis, and chapter book-to-book reflection. The differentiation from group to group allowed for great conversations that promoted creativity, reflection, critical thinking skills, and actively listening to be fostered.