Showcase of Work
I chose a concentration in literacy for my Master of Arts in Education Degree, so many of my classes focused on various aspects of literacy instruction. When choosing elective classes, I tried to pick courses that would help me to differentiate
learning in order to learn strategies to use to help all of my students be successful.
Here you will find a sample of my work that shows the skills and strategiesI have learned and
how they can be applied to my classroom.
Literacy Work
I picked a student in my classroom to take a closer look at their literacy abilities. I selected assessments to give them and use the data to help guide my instruction in order to help them grow as a literacy learner. In my final report, you will read why I chose the assessments I used, what strategies I used while working one-on-one with the student, and the growth of the student after individual instruction.
Teachers act as interpreters for their students as they guide their thinking. This paper is my reflection of how different filmmakers interpreted stories to make them their own and to tell a story in their own way. I focused on the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I discuss how the filmmaker of the movie made his own choices when he told the story and explain how I would use these differences in storytelling as discussion starters in the classroom.
I became very aware of the cultural appropriation of books and movies when I was reading Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my students. They kept telling me that the book was telling the story wrong because they were used to the movie version. In this essay reflection about cultural apprpriation I discuss my feelings about the topic and why I think that teachers should be aware of how it can affect their students' learning.
While discussing the teaching of writing to students, I became very interested in the assessment of students' writing. I had heard of many different ways of assessing writing, so I decided to research the pros and cons of each assessment style. This paper reveals what I learned about three different writing assessments and how their usefullness in the classroom.
Differentiation Work
I created a web-based math resource library of online tools that I plan to use in my classroom. I organized my library based on the fourth grade Common Core State Standards to make it easy for me or other fourth grade teachers to find appropriate resources to use with their lessons. All tools have been evaluated by myself or one of my peers. They will be great to use for differentiation in the classroom.
I chose one of the students in my classroom to who displayed behavior challenges to work with. I collected data about his behaviors and developed a plan to help him behave more appropriately during the school day. This PowerPoint presentation summarizes the results of my work.
Models are useful in science because they can help a teacher understand what a student is thinking. Throughout a unit about light, I asked students to draw models of how we can see. The models made it easy for me to see who was understanding the concepts and who needed extra help. As they learned more about light, their models began to change. This PowerPoint presentation shows the progression of the models that students drew as well as some of the steps I took to teach them about light.
There are times when a lesson seems perfect on paper, but can be a flop when it is actually taught. I learned how important it is to reflect on the lessons I teach through this lesson study. I worked with a group to create a social studies lesson and taught it to my students while my group members observed. We discussed what when well during the lesson and what could be improved. Then one of my group members taught the lesson to her class with our modifications. We were able to see how small modifications to a lesson can make a big difference to the overall effectiveness of what is being taught. Reflection like this can also make a teacher realize they need to try a different approach in order to meet the needs of all of their students.
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