Well Structured Lessons
Well-structured lessons benefit students by creating a structure to the lesson focused on well-defined goals which will result in student success. Well-structured lessons offer structure to students by creating a routine for students in which students are expected to be prepared each day and start class off with a bell ringer. For example, if a teacher uses clickers everyday to do bell ringer questions, after a few days the students will get into the routine of getting their clicker before the bell. Once students know a routine, this will conserve class time for other activities especially when taking a test or quiz where every minute counts. Well structure lessons do not only help with creating structure but also helps with creating goals. Goals are an aim that could be either class specific or for all the students. For example a goal might be for the majority of students to obtain a 65 on a worksheet done on the first day of a new unit. This is an example of a measurable goal because their is some physical way to measure the goal but it is also attainable since the material covered is new .If measurable goals are not made then how will the teacher know that the students actually understood the lesson and know the content. If the goals are not attainable because then the teacher might start blaming themselves or the students which could result in an unsafe learning environment. Another aspect to consider are objectives which are similar to a goal but this relates more towards content and language not towards informal or formal assessment. Objectives help students succeed because lower EL students improve their English whether it is through speaking, writing,reading,etc. In contrast a content objective focuses upon students mastery of a certain topic or idea. Those are just two important aspects but the teacher has to also take into account the materials being used because if you are going to give out a worksheet then the worksheet should be prepared ahead of time. When I started teaching I struggled a lot to write measurable and attainable goals along with pacing myself. While writing lesson plans, I had difficulty understanding the section about what it meant to write a performance task since for me I thought I could just write: the students will complete the worksheet. After speaking to the faculty member in charge of the PQP about my confusion about this section, I understood how to improve my lesson plans. I struggled with pacing myself, the reason for this is my high school periods were 67 minutes long along with I am used to having WPI classes that are 2 hours long or more. Therfore adjusting to having only 44 minutes to get through notes and doing examples was very baffling. At the end of the IQP, My lesson plans improved significantly in which I started including time limits for each activity so it could help with pacing myself. In addition to including time limits, I started including more descriptions into my learning activity in case someone ever wanted to know how I am actually teaching the lesson and follow the lesson. Pacing is still an aspect I need to improve because when I am helping a student I get really focused in helping them that I lose track of time so I sometimes rush to have the students pass in the worksheet or rush telling them the homework.
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Adjustments to Practice [add evidence]- Student Feedback data
Adjustment to Practice is crucial and valuable to teaching because as the teacher you can help the students succeed through looking at student performance and feedback and take those into consideration to create an action plan to improve the student results. Adjustment to practice can be implemented in the classroom through a pretest and posttest but the downside to this is that for some units there would have to be differentiated testing styles such as projects to help the people who are good at projects succeed. Another way to implement this CAP element is by looking at student works throughout a unit to check whether all the students are understanding the lesson or not. If the students are not performing well then the teacher consider reteaching a specific concept in the unit to all the students. If only a couple of students are not understanding the lesson then the teacher might work with those couple of students more one on one rather than reteach the concept. At the beginning of the practicum I was unsure how to take student results and help them improve for the current unit since for me I would analyze the students performance on the assessments and worksheets. I also informally assessed the students through each lesson I taught by asking the students
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Meeting Diverse Needs
Meeting Diverse Needs is important in teaching because not every student will have the same learning style therefore it is the goal of the teacher to differentiate their learning style to help each student succeed in the classroom .The reason for Meeting Diverse Needs is to level the playing field for each student since everyone has a strength and weakness in a certain area.This causes not only a certain number of students to succeed but everyone to succeed in the classroom and show their side of creativity. As well diversifying the instruction can help strengthen the student's weaknesses because the student with a spatial learning style might ask the student with a logical mindset help understanding a math problem. The opposite could occur when building molecules in chemistry class and having to draw the VSPER model of each. The scenario promotes not only cooperative learning but also helps each student improve in their weakness, it could result in each student being able to do all but the challenging problems and that is when the students ask for help again. The other benefit is when the teacher differentiates the learning style then you might see the students who rarely participate, get really excited and show to you how much they understand the concept. At the beginning of the practicum I was unaware how to implement this or what it looked like in teaching. When I started teaching I knew to take into account the needs of my students because I know not everyone can do mental math. With this is mind I always make sure to have the calculators out in case the students need it. In addition to this I made sure the students always had extra of any other resources they would need day to day such as periodic tables, writing utensil, etc. Including the necessary tools, I tried to differentiate my learning styles for chemistry since I knew not everyone learns through logical thinking and through lectures. Through my practicum I started doing more student centered activities in which the students would do review games and compete against each other. Another activity was to come up with a creative way to describe to the class a periodic trend and how it is applicable to real world chemistry. A few aspects that I did not know met diverse needs were fill in the blank notes, graphic organizers and step by step instructions. My program supervisor informed me about how these tools help ELL students and students with disabilities. The tools helped because the students could focus more on what a teacher was saying and explaining the notes rather than writing down the notes.Towards the end of teaching, I made sure to at least hit each different learning style twice and made sure every day that the students would have the necessary tools to succeed each day in the classroom. The downside was that I was unable to hit the musical learning style for chemistry since it is one of my weaker domains and I was unsure how to implement it. I know this is an aspect I will have to work on because I did meet the level of proficient but it was not until the end of teaching in which i started using graphic organizers, step by step solution, abbreviated notes,etc.
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Safe Learning Environment
The concept of creating a safe learning environment is very important to teaching because this allows students to develop as learners and as people which is shown in physically and intellectually safe environment.The aspects of a safe learning environment in a classroom are: making sure the students feel welcomed every day, the students do not feel they will get hurt physically, students are comfortable raising their hands to answer a question,etc. Therefore an effective teacher will make sure each student feels welcomed in the classroom and demonstrate to the students that in learning it is okay to make mistakes.If the teacher has an unsafe learning environment, this can result in students skipping your class because they feel unsafe in the classroom or students no longer participating in the classroom. When I started teaching I was unaware how I was going to be able to accomplish this CAP element but my program supervisor told me that I accomplished that in the first observation. I was surprised about this but then I realized that one way I accomplished this was being open to corrections. For example I am okay with students correcting my mistakes because for me making mistakes is part of learning. Another way I try to make a safe learning environment is by making sure the students feel welcomed every day in the classroom. There are many ways to demonstrate this, one way is making sure to greet the students every day at the door or in the classroom. Another way is keeping in mind their backgrounds and making sure to apologize if you said something that was insensitive or hurt their feelings. Lastly as a teacher, you have to protect a students privacy by making sure not to share the students information such as grades or anything personal they tell you. At the end of the practicum I improved more on the safe learning environment. An example that I improved was when a lot of my first period class was affected by the passing of a student. I told my students they could leave to see the counselors but they prefer to stay but did not want to have other people see them cry. So I told these students that they could sit in the back of the room and that if they need to see the counselor just to give me a sign and I will write them a pass.
In the classroom, I established a safe learning environment by establishing classrooms that would result in a safe learning environment. The Rules I established were:
- Treat all students with respect. This includes not teasing students for getting the incorrect answers
High Expectations [add evidence]
High expectations is essential in teaching since as a teacher you should hold you students at a set standard and demonstrate and model to them that the students can achieve it with hard work. For example an expectation is that the student will hand in homework everyday and as a teacher you will not accept excuses such as I was working late yesterday. This demonstrates to the students that the teacher expects the homework to be completed each day even if the student has after school. The reason the teacher should not accept the excuse is this student might not be able to do it but other students might be able to do the homework and work resulting in an unfairness to one student because they are not treated equally. High expectations can help students with high needs because sometimes these students are given up on or treated on lower standards. This causes the students to believe that school will be like this, therefore if you increase the expectations these students might backlash a bit in the beginning but towards the end the students might reach the expectation.Towards the beginning of the practicum I understood what expectations I wanted for the students but I had difficulty knowing how to portray the expectations I wanted. These expectations involved completing their homework, attempting each problem and being responsible. One excuse I did not accept was for them to give up when something seemed difficult. I tackled this by walking them through the problems then telling them to try the next one. If the student was still confused, I helped the student on the second problem but a little bit less and made the student do more of the work. This seemed effective for the students learning because this demonstrated to the student that they are able to learn the material, it might take a little bit more effort on their end. At the end of the practicum, I improved on High expectations. At the begging I did not assign much homework but towards the end I assigned more homework because I expected the homework to be handed in the next day. As well I would remind the students one week in advance of an assessment and tell them to study. When the students complained they did not know, I told them that I have been telling you what the assessment will be on for the past week and telling you to study for it. As well I continued to persist to the students that any material can be learned just some more effort needs to be put in. A lot of the students started to see this come true and got excited because they did it and I congratulated them and told them that with a little bit of effort, anything is possible.
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Reflective Practice [add evidence]
Reflective Practice is useful to teachers because you can reflect with yourself and colleagues about whether a lesson or teaching method went well or poorly and how to improve for next year. The qualities of reflective practice involve the teacher reflecting on a lesson or a unit based upon personal opinion, student feedback, and student data. Including this, the teacher reflects on what went well and what did not go well and how to improve the lesson for the next year. Reflective practice also has an aspect of collaboration with other teachers since there are instances in which a department has to implement an idea and maybe for some teachers it worked and for others is did not. Therefore as a department you should work on how to improve the idea by reflecting on what went well, what didn't go well, what could be improved, etc. Along with sometimes people can be too hard or very lenient on themselves hence having another person can help with reflective practice Along with this you should keep in mind how you could modify the lesson better to equip for your ELL students and students on IEP/504. Without Reflective practice the students might suffer academically from year to year because the same scenario might occur as in previous years and the same or worse results could happen.When I started taking over the classroom, I was lucky enough to have a break between each class so my supervisor practitioner and I would reflect on what went well and what could have been improved.For example I introduced a group project that needed to be done. After the first day, I decided to make it count as a quiz grade to motivate the students more. After the second day, I put more emphasis on that it would be peer graded. The projects did not turn out well but now I learn I should come with a clear rubric on how it will be graded and what aspects the grade will consist of. Towards the middle of the project something I know I was lacking on implementing Do Nows and improving my content and language objectives therefore I focused on these aspects in my goal.Towards the end I have been getting better at distinguishing between content objectives and language objectives. This is demonstrated through a comparison of my lesson plan at the beginning and at the end and how much I grew since at the beginning the objectives were similar. At the end, I became more centered in trying to hit one of the six domains and made the language objective. Including this I continued to reflect upon how the lessons went after each period but also asked other chemistry teachers on how they introduced a certain topic to the students and either modified it or implemented it.
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