| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

View
 

Instructional Practice

Page history last edited by Abigail MacLean-Blevins 11 years, 5 months ago

As part of our Maryland State Assessment review week, I planned a review and assessment lesson working with parts of speech.  I created a Jeopardy! game in which teams used Turning Point Student Response System clickers to provide their answers.  The game template projected the results of team responses immediately after all answers were given, allowing me to quickly assess student mastery of the topic and address misconceptions.  I exported the final results by question and interpreted the data to plan further review of parts of speech.  The scores showed me that the majority of students demonstrated mastery of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but many students needed further review of pronouns and adverbs.  During the next review session, we reviewed pronouns and adverbs as a whole group.  One group also submitted far more incorrect answers than the others; I spoke with the group members and determined that the problem was cooperation rather than lack of knowledge about parts of speech.  This game, data analysis, and action plan based on the analysis demonstrate my ability to understand and use multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and the learner’s decision-making.  Using varied assessment and using results to amend instruction are essential aspects of instructional practice because both aspects allow educators to provide the most appropriate and challenging lessons to maximize student growth. 

 

 

To assess my students’ knowledge of the placement and purpose of text features in common media, such as newspapers and magazines, I designed a group project in which students were asked to locate, identify, clip, glue, and label examples of text features on chart paper.  The lesson plan for the text feature chart assessment describes the activity in more detail, including logistics and the establishment of relevance.  Pictured below are the finished products of this lesson.  Each group used the available resources and their individual creativity to create the chart, and all of the charts, in combination with one-on-one conversations I held with each student, indicate that all of my students had mastered the objectives for the lesson.  This lesson plan and the class set of the text feature chart demonstrates my ability to plan instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals and use a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections. This lesson required students to use real-world materials drawn from and representing many content areas and topics as examples of text features; students were presented with many ways that text features were used to organize and convey information about math, science, social studies, and language subjects.  Furthermore, these materials were selected from old classroom magazines, local newspapers, and other print sources with which the students come in daily contact, connecting the academic topic with students’ lives outside of school.  As students worked in their small groups, I circulated and held one-on-one discussions with students to assess each student’s mastery of the objectives and to encourage further learning beyond the lesson goals. 

 

                     

 

To exemplify my ability to plan instruction which draws upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context as well my creativity in using a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways, I have included a math lesson plan in which I guided the students in using movement, fun, and relevant practice problems to review multiplication and geometry.  Below are pictures taken during the lesson of students engaged in the geometry review game and working in small groups on the multiplication practice problems, which I specifically created to include the names of all of the students and realistic classroom-based word problems. This series of review activities engaged students in shared learning, both in large and small groups, as well as purposeful movement.  The “head-bandz” game, which I created for students to review geometry information, such as the names and number of sides of shapes, engaged students in higher-order thinking about the information rather than rote memorization of names and descriptions.  This lesson was successful both in student mastery of objectives and student engagement and participation.  I demonstrated a knowledge of the learners and community context in this lesson by addressing the need for movement and a variety of activities for those students with ADHD as well as all of the 8 year old students, who get easily bored and do not always engage with independent seat work.  

 

        

 

     

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.