3a: Communicating Clearly and Accurately

Philosophy

Engaging students in learning requires that directions and explanations be delivered clearly, simply and accurately. Since most teacher direction is delivered orally, spoken direction should command the attention of a room, be direct, and use plain English. This ability is best addressed through classroom observation. In my classes, I like to strike a balance between using academic language that contains vocabulary and syntactical form that is specific to the field and more colloquial language. The academic/ formal language reflects both correct usage and is a reflection of the discourse of the discipline, while more common vernacular proves more useful for engaging students in discussion or providing directions for student activities. I make sure to call attention to when I am "code switching" between informal and formal vernacular.

When instructions are written, they should likewise be clear, legible, and contain language that students are able to understand.

Progress Self-Assessment

I take great pains to ensure that written instruction and questioning is both concise and uses language the students can understand. Within the population of our school, this task begins with providing simple, direct, and clear instructions that define a task and provide a time fram for its completion. Within my classroom, I ask for students to restate instructions to demonstrate that they have a clear understanding of what is asked of them.

I find that one of the clearest and most important elements in communicating expectations clearly to students is having a well-designed rubrics. I try to design rubrics that read like a check-list of the elements necessary for an assignment to be complete. I consider a rubric to be successful when students use it as a road map for constructing the content of an assignment, and have a clear sense of when the task has been completed. This type of rubric should also provide a vehicle for self-assessment- the student should know the degree to which she has met the expectations of the assignment long before before a grade has been assigned.

Explanation of Artifacts

Artifact 1: Blog posting rubric: I composed this rubric for use in a Computer Applications course. The class was in the midst of a desktop publishing unit and I wanted the students to create a blog based on a specific interest of each student. At first the class struggled, and I was not satisfied with the structure of the student sites, nor with the quality of their postings. I used the rubric to more clearly define the expectations to the students. I was pleased to see that after the explanation of the rubric, the students were not only able to to understand the expectation of the assignment and produce better blogs, but were also able to verbalize a clearer understanding of the purpose of blogs.

Artifact 2: Classroom Observation
Within the context of classroom, the district Director of Special Education drew attention to my use of paralingual techniques when working one-to-one with students. She suggested that the use of a polite and kind tone served to put the students at ease and consequently made them more receptive to verbal instructions.

Areas for future development

I have found that effective models the best companion to clear and and concise directions . The usual of visual examples connect with a different modality and provide a concrete instance of task completion. As I add new tasks to my curriculum, I often lack appropriate exemplars. I hope to amass additional student models that supplemental instructional directions.

3b: Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques

Philosophy

Questioning is a crucial part of teaching and an extremely subtle art. It functions to engage a student in learning, reflect on prior knowledge, and bridge the gap between a student's present knowledge and hitherto unknown possibilities. Some questioning may simply ask student to elaborate or clarify a previous answer. Other questions are developed with Bloom's taxonomy in mind and carefully scaffolded to allow students to reach beyond their present ability. Questioning in an important tool which, when properly implemented, can engage all students within a given class while simultaneously probling their content understanding.

Progress Self-Assessment

I begin all of my classes with a blog posting. This question is designed to link content to the students experience and to increase engagement while demonstrating relevance. Research has shown that teachers who develop questions on-the-fly often fail to compose questions that stimulate higher-order thinking. In order to address this concern, I write higher-order questions while composing my lessons. I also make a point of questioning every student at least once in the course of a given class to stimulate engagement.

Explanation of Artifacts

Artifact 1: Social Science Survey Class BlogIn all of my classes I use a blog posting to stimulate student engagement and activate prior knowledge. For example, in a unit on Gender, students are asked to reflect on what toys they played with as a child and whether they they had masculine or feminine sex traits. This is used as the "hook" in a lesson that discusses how gender identity is a consequence of social factors.

Artifact 2: Bill to Law Lesson Plan
The following SIOP lesson plan demonstrates how I devise higher-order thinking questions (HOTS) in the course of lesson planning.

Areas for Future Development

In the future, I hope to continue to my classroom discussion technique to have students take more responsibility for generating questions, both to initiate discussion and to proble the content of each others' answers. It is my hope that generating higher-order thinking questions will make the students engage with the material in a more meaningful way.

3c: Engaging Students in Learning

Philosophy

Student engagement is an essential precondition for learning to take place. Engagement of all students is achieved by developing rapport and a clear understanding of student interest. In terms of content, students must be provided high-interest material, and exercise choice in choosing classroom materials. Studying a given subject in depth rather than emphasizing depth will teach students a method of inquiry that can be applied universally in their lives.

Progress Self-Assessment

Within the context of my classwork I take great pains to ensure that the students recognize the relavance of the activity to their own life. Many of our students come from depressed socio-ecnomic backgrounds and they often connect well to lessons that deconstruct issues of race, poverty and criminial justice. I also use a variety of instructional materials, and have found great success in using technology to increase student buy-in.


Explanation of Artifacts

1. Social Science Survey - Sociology Topics Rank Ordering Survey
In this activity, students were asked to rank order topics within the topic of Sociology to be covered within the limited amount of time alloted in the coursework. Based on the studnet responses, the unit began with the topics of the criminical justice system, and attraction and romantic love and marriage.

2. Inside and Out Activity
In this activity on the Crminal justice system, students are asked to reflect on why youths become involved with the criminal justice system. The web site contains narratives of young people's lives. In reflection The students are asked to draw comparisons between the the troubled youths' experience and their own life, and become engaged in a larger conversation by posting their reflections to an online discussion board.

Areas for Future Development

In the remainder of the year I hope to increase my use of problem-based learning, so that my students may engage with the material in a more meaningful way. In the future I will strive to provide more students with more options in the manner in which they complete assignments. Also, I wish to provide more opportunities for students to provide feedback on instruction to better assess the efficacy of instruction.

3d: Providing Feedback to Students

Philosophy

Teacher feedback to students should be prompt, constructive and concrete. This feedback should inform students of areas of relative strength and weakness and guide students toward successfully reaching instructional goals. When students have work evaluated, this evaluation should be based on concrete criteria that was made known to the student prior to the evaluations (rubrics) . Feedback is most effective when students are asked to use content of evaluation to guide further instruction.

Progress Self-Assessment
I am making greater use of tools that allow for automated grading and immediate assessment of student work. I am also encouraging students to use feedback on a given assignment to drive further learning.I am making greater use of tools that allow for automated grading and immediate assessment of student work. I am also encouraging students to use feedback on a given assignment to drive further learning. I have also put more emphasis on decreasing the turn-around time on grading and returning student work. The effect of this has been dramatic: not only do my students have a better sense of their standing academically, but I am able to use results of assignments/ assessments to determine if students are meeting standards or if reteaching is necessary to address deficiencies.

1. Artifact 1: Civil War Test
This test is an online, automated exam that is scored immediately and provides instant feedback to students upon its completion. In the future, I hope to increase the specificity of the exam report so that it provides a breakdown of areas in which students are more or less profficient. This will provide both myself and the student with information about skill mastery and need for reteaching.

2. Gradebook Log-in lesson
This lesson was developed by Jessica Medinah, a teacher at Academy-North. I have used the lesson to provide students with information on how they may access their grades through the district-provided gradebook system. With this information, the students have instant access to their standing within the course, and also may identify missing or incomplete work.

Areas for Future Development
As I continue to teach, I hope to provide students with greater opportunity to revise previous work based on the content of my feedback. I also wish to use tools such as Examview to help student receive immediate feedback as to areas of relative deficits so that he may identify areas where reteaching is necessary. I hope to devise assessments within this software that and provide feedback to students as to both areas of relative strength and those which require additional development.

3e: Demonstrating Flexibility in Instruction

Philosophy

Within the context of an alternative school, flexibility may be the most important quality that a teacher may possess. Within this volatile environment, material that is not working must quickly be reworked or abandoned. On any given day, a teacher is at the mercy of the fickle mood of the student population- an activity which may have been a smashing success at one time, can fall completely flate with another. An ability to "roll with the punches" is essential for success in an alternative school environment.

Progress Self-Assessment

Being flexible and adaptable in terms of my instruction may be my greatest strength as a teacher. In the course of every day's events I must adapt to meet the tone and behavior of any given classroom. If it is clear that an activity is not being successful, I do not have the benefit of performing a post-mortum after-the-fact. Often I must, "pull an audible" in that given moment, changing the activity or moving on to another one. At times, despite my best efforts, a lesson will end in total disaster. These moments provide important "teachable moments" and are useful for reflection and greater success in the future.

Explanations of Artifacts

Artifact 1: Lesson Reflection

In this reflection I examine how a poorly-thought out lesson led to a classroom management disaster and, later, a teachable moment.

Artifact 2: Observation report

Areas for Future Development

Improved preparation allows for greater flexibility. In the future, I hope to amass improved curriculum resources that catalog reflections on past successes and failures. Also, I hope to amass more alternate lessons and encorporate their potential use into daily lesson planning.