Evidence & Commentary of Classroom Practices

This is a graphic organizer that I created to support my students in the process of writing an objective summary of a text. I believe that this artifact highlights my competence in teaching academic language in that it shows that I can break a complex process down to easily understandable parts. This artifact was taken from a lesson I constructed based on Common Core standard R.L. 7.2: (Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text) focused on the skill of providing an objective summary of a text. This graphic organizer gave my students a framework to gather the key details of a text and use them to write their objective summary. My students were able to easily understand what was required for their objective summaries based on the sections of the graphic organizer and the provided sentence and objective summary paragraph stems.

If I were to modify this graphic for use in a future lesson, I would focus more on the why and how key details and would work to differentiate them better. When I taught the lesson that this graphic organizer was used in, there was some confusion from my students as to what was a why detail and what was a how detail, and how those two types of details differed. I predict that if I am clearer and more explicit with the why and how details, and include specific examples, my students would have a stronger understanding of what is being asked for in those sections of the graphic organizer and would write resultantly stronger objective summaries.

This is a lesson plan that I created for a lesson where my students would be taking a pre-assessment for a unit based on Common Core standard R.L. 7.2. I believe that this artifact highlights my competence in using differentiated instruction in the classroom as a part of a system of student support as it involves creating a small group of the class’s lower performing students and seating them together where I could give them extra attention and support while I also attended to the rest of the class. This arrangement allowed me to observe the whole classroom to offer assistance or guidance to any students who required it, but when that was not required, I was able to stay with the small group and offer encouragement and support to keep them focused and on task. Because of this extra attention and support, the lower performing students were able to improve their scores on the 7.2 pre-assessment relative to the preceding unit pre-assessment they had taken.

If I were to modify this lesson plan for use in a future lesson, I would include more modeling of what was expected for the small group students. I think that they would have benefited from additional examples of how to answer the pre-assessment questions following the R.A.C.E. framework where the students restate the question, answer the question, cite the text, and explain why their citations support their answer. Ideally I would be able to pull the small group aside and walk them through two example questions that explicitly model how to read the text and respond to the questions with answers that adhere to the R.A.C.E. framework. I am confidant that this would lead to an even stronger improvement in my students' pre-assessment scores. 

This is a Google Slides presentation that I created for use in a lesson focused on teaching my students how to recognize the themes in short films and supporting their choices with evidence from the films. I believe that this artifact highlights my competence with regards to integrating technology into my classroom as a way to engage students in their learning by showing how I have embraced technology as a way for students to work on assignments at their own pace. In this lesson, I first discussed the themes with my students, and used that discussion to bridge the gap between the short stories and books that are the most common examples of fictional writing in the classroom and expanding that out to movies, television shows, songs, and video games. This lesson benefits from the integration of technology as the students were able to, with their chrome books and headphones, choose the order in which they wished to watch and respond to the short films and were able to scrub through the films to search for evidence to support their choice of theme. Without this integration of technology, my students' only option would be to watch the videos as a class and then try to write their answers out without the benefit of being able to return to the videos as references for their answers. Having the technology available improved student learning by providing unfettered access to the material being studied. 

If I were to modify this presentation for use in a future lesson, I would make sure to better differentiate between topics and themes. The list that is provided in the second slide is more accurately described as a list of topics, as a theme is more detailed and specific to the work in question. The students in the class for this lesson were in the seventh grade, so a less complex exposure to the concepts of themes is appropriate, however I do feel that I somewhat sold my students short by not adequately distinguishing between the two literary concepts. If I were to make this change in a future lesson I know that I would be better preparing my students for further encounters with topics and themes by exposing them to the nuanced differences between them. 

This is an email that was sent to the guardians of two students in one of the classes I was leading as a student teacher. I believe that this artifact highlights my competence with regards to professional communication with families through its respectful tone and clear, concise summation of the events that lead to the email being sent. As stated in the email, I discussed proper remunerative measures with the students in question and the result of retaking the assessment in an after-school detention was the consequence that the students and I all agreed on. This approach is based in the concept of restorative justice. I believe that this email improved my student's learning as it made very clear the importance of academic dishonesty while also allowing the student to make good on a mistake. Through the processes of restorative justice, the students in question we able to understand why they were experiencing these consequences for their actions and were given the opportunity to recover the detrimental mark to their grades, make amends, and move forward with a respect and understanding for the consequences of academic dishonesty. 

If I were to modify any aspect of this email communication for future use, it would be to make sure to lay the proper framework of positive communication with parents and guardians before an incident occurs. This email was, unfortunately, my first communication to this student's parents. Looking back, I should have put together and sent an email to the parents and guardians of all of the students in the classes that I was taking over during my student teaching. This would have properly informed everyone of the change in their child's classroom experience and it would have allowed any further communication with families to proceed from a place of knowledge and respect. I believe that engendering this respect by starting my demonstration teaching with an introductory email home to all of my student's parents and guardians would have improved student learning by allowing the student's parents and guardians to be more closely involved in their student's classroom experiences.