Artifact Meeting all Teaching Standards
Reflection
This artifact meets all the teaching standards based on the process that was followed to complete it as well as the product itself. The learning progression was created with a team of my peers, where we collaborated and debated the learning progression as well as the formative and summative assessments. We would brainstorm, unpack the standards and content together to ensure we all knew the standards. I took the opportunity to assert myself int the leadership opportunity for my team, and set up our Google Site each week as well as started communication channels with my peers outside of class. As a team we planned for instruction and worked to develop our knowledge of the content.
Formative assessments were created in a way that provides variety, and multiple ways to check in on student learning. We discussed what the formative assessments would tell us about the students learning of a specific objective. Summative assessments were created and would be used as a pre-assessment to find our flexible groups for our students. We would often include a few problems from the previous grades standards for the same topic/domain to see if the students had a foundation of the knowledge, as well as to give students a more positive test taking experience if they can only achieve the previous objectives at the moment. It was also important to me to include opportunities other than the typical paper test to assess students knowledge. When feasible we including in our summative assessment an opportunity to call students up in groups of 3-4 and do quick verbal or whiteboard assessments. This gives students a break from sitting at their desk to take the paper test and can give us, the teachers a more low stress opportunity to assess the students completion of the standards.
I focused a lot in my lesson plan on how to create a positive learning environment, address students learning differences, and make sure I could develop the students learning in the best way possible. My lesson plan is created for a math block that incorporates flexible grouping, and has inclusion of a math program, where applicable. I think it is important to have a clear line of communication with students, regarding how they are feeling with content, the classroom environment, as well as their feelings towards my teaching style. I never want a student to feel they cannot tell me as their teacher that they would better succeed if I wrote bigger on the board, or provided them with different manipulatives. This is why in my lesson plan I developed the idea of the math block check in paper students bring to each station. After each station the student would rate their learning, if they felt it was too challenging, too easy, or just right. When doing guided math I do not want my students at other stations not experiencing productive struggle and getting frustrated. This check in will ensure I am assigning each student work that enforces their learning in an effective way. At the end of the stations the check in sheet would ask about the environment of the classroom and anything else the student would like me to know. I think this could create a very effective means of communication, especially while I would be do guided math and cannot be aware of everything going on in the classroom.
Overall I think this artifact shows my ability to work with colleagues, develop a learning plan, assessments and take into account classroom environment and students learning styles. This is why I would consider it meeting all the teaching standards.
