Anna Good
Instruction
Rock Around the Clock -
This learning activity provided the students with the opportunity to practice telling time to the half hour in the form of a musical game. The students began with their own laminated blank analog clock on which they drew in a time. When the song Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley began, the students moved around the classroom as
if playing musical chairs until the music stopped. The students then went to the closest sheet and wrote the time showing on that clock. After everyone filled in the time, the music began again and the students begin to rotate once more. Again, when the music stoped, the students found the sheet closest to them and checked the other students' work. Then we began again!
Bury the Treasure -
This learning activity was the first of two culminating lessons in a unit on maps. The students were asked to begin writing directions from any point in the classroom to the place where their partner group had decided to "bury" their treasure. The students were given yarn, tape, rulers, yardsticks, and measuring tape to use as tools in writing
their directions. Once I had checked the students' work, all of the directions and blank treasure maps were bound in books with an answer guide at the end for each child try to "find" their fellow classmates "buried" treasure.
Effective Instruction
in My Classroom
Planning and preparation is the first step in providing effective instruction for students. This is what the instruction and learning looks like in my classroom:
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My classroom is physically set up for active, engaged learning. It is cheerful, clean, organized and set up for student group work. Classroom expectations and procedures are clearly defined and posted.
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The learning goals/objectives of the learning activities are clearly stated in child friendly words.
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In many cases, I explicitly teach by modeling although there are times when students may do the modeling. Modeling can include think-alouds in reading, math, other content areas and teachable moments.
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Learning activities are hands-on, providing students with opportunities to learn by doing – elementary age students are typically concrete thinkers and learners. Working as a contributing member, helps my students learn cooperative group work which includes being respectful and responsible and sharing both turns and materials.
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My students participate in a plethora of guided practice to acquire, apply and consolidate skills. Having a multitude of time to practice is especially important for primary students who are learning to read and evolving as active readers. It’s equally important for students to have many opportunities to write and to share ideas through discussions.
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Frequent, short formative assessment occur that help guide myinstruction.
My Most Creative Lesson
During my student teaching experience in New Zealand, I had the opportunity to go on a EOTC week (Education Outside The Classroom). The students biked 22 km. and participated in other outdoor adventures throughout the week: hiking and rock climbing as well as learning how to sail and how to orienteer. It was amazing experience to observe the students overcome obstacles and problem solve outside the classroom. For some students, this was a totally new experience. Successfully biking 22 km was a huge accomplishment! When we returned to the classroom, I asked the students to create an artistic response to their experiences. This response could be portrayed in almost any form. Some students drew, others created collages or dioramas. Some students showed their activities in a very literal sense while others took a more abstract approach. I introduced the students to artistic responses through a plethora of examples that I had gathered and was overjoyed by how they took to the project. While I could see a clear connection between a few of the students’ projects and the examples shown, many went further, thinking outside of the box when creating their responses. The students began their projects by creating at least two different sketches of how they would like their responses to look then they conferenced with me prior to beginning their final piece. The final piece of the project was a writing piece in which the students reflected upon their experiences with creating an artistic response. One student expanded on the project at home by creating her own artistic journal. She was very excited to share it with me and the class the following day! I believe the response project enhanced the week long experience as it helped the students see themselves as reflective learners and how the process of creating and reflecting can help them understand both themselves and the world around them better.
Effective Reading Instruction
Effective reading instruction begins with explicitly modeled instruction tied to the Common Core literacy standards. When I as the teacher model thinking aloud the process by which good readers decode and get meaning from text, students receive a model they can use themselves. This explicit teaching of reading skills and strategies may vary in how it’s delivered according to my students’ needs. It may be a mini whole group instruction, in a small group or individual to support a student who needs more help.
I know that effective instruction ensures that students are skilled in the five essential areas of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, semantics and comprehension. Acquiring phonemic awareness and a mastery of phonics are foundational skills students need to read fluently and master increasingly more complex vocabulary and comprehension skills. This, in turn, assures their reading success as they progress in their education and are required to synthesize information from text containing more abstract concepts.
I believe that effective reading instruction
gives students plenty of time to read so they can consolidate the comprehension skills they’re learning. For this reason, I think it is important that students should spend most of the instructional time actually reading not doing reading-type activities with a balance of close to 50/50 reading to writing ratio. Students should be reading from a rich variety of texts at their reading level and in a variety of formats – guided reading as well as independent reading. An effective reading program has students reading a 50/50 balance of literary and informational text as Common Core specifies. I give my students many opportunities to write all kinds of things – from simple lists, letters, and narrative writing to creative writing. When I model a think-aloud approach to writing and students are given time to use the modeled skills and strategies, my students will grow as capable writers.
I know from my own experience that reading generates new ideas so it’s important that a reading program offer plenty of opportunities to talk – student to student, student to teacher – to share ideas and keep reading motivating. Participating in meaningful discussions will help my students make many different connections to the text – text to self, text to text and text to world. Participating in rich discussions will also promote higher level thinking skills and links well with the Common Core’s focus of reading, writing and discussing more richly and deeply.
Including all of these components will help foster students who are successful, feel successful and are motivated readers and thinkers.
How I Differentiate to Best Meet Students' Needs
I address a wide range of skills in my classroom through the use of carefully prepared lessons that address a variety of learning styles and abilities and are appropriately challenging and differentiated to meet the needs of all students. I believe that it is important to use a variety of lesson formats, including pair share, whole class, peer buddies, small groups, and independent work, and methods to teach the material as not everyone learns in the same way and to best keep the students engaged.
To provide an optimal learning experience for all students, I vary the content somewhat by providing reading selections at different levels so that each student had a good reading fit. I also vary the process and end product of some learning activities to address different learning styles. The primary differentiation I provided in my job as a long-term substitute was behavioral support for a few students: one who moved in during my assignment, one who had a very difficult family life and one who struggled with attention deficit disorder that was diagnosed at the end of the school year. Until that time, none of these students had yet been formally identified by the school team so none were receiving related services. To help them be successful in the classroom, I implemented a variety of strategies including the use of timers, first/then work and reward strategies and lots of genuine praise. I often allowed these students to work alongside me, even when I was working with other groups of students. This seemed to really help them focus and stay motivated to complete their work. When it was time to assess them, I typically assessed them one-on-one or in a small group as that seemed to help them best show what they knew.
Common Core Math
Practice Standards
The Common Core math practices identify skills students need to be mathematically proficient. Here are a few highlights of work I've done with students which focus on some of the practices.
Practice 1 - Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them: When tutoring both a middle school student and a high school student who seemed to perceive themselves as failures and struggled in math, I helped them set goals and provided the scaffolding to reach their goals. The boost in confidence that they gained, helped give them the stamina they needed to persevere with more complex work.
Practice 4 - Model with mathematics: To help students learn the commutative property of addition, I had the students themselves act out changing the order of the addends. As a class, we discovered that five (The students wanted to include me as one of the girls!) girls plus three boys equals the same as three boys plus five girls.
Practice 7 - Look for, and make use of structure: One of my students struggled to make sense of the concept of fractions. I reminded him that he excelled at probability then helped him make connections between probability and fractions. Now, he gets that having a one in three probability something will occur is similar to identifying one third of a whole.
How I Use Assessment
I have used assessment in several ways to promote student learning. First of all, I’ve used assessment as a tool for evaluating my own methods and pace of instruction. I’ve reflected on students’ responses and used them to determine when skills needed to be retaught in a different way. For example, one of my students struggled to subtract using a number line although she had the basic idea of counting down. I offered her counters as an alternative and her accuracy immediately improved. I then paired the use of the number line with the counters, and she now knows to immediately begin counting back from the given number.
I routinely use the quick checks at the end of math lessons to determine which students would benefit from enrichment for that skill or re-teaching to master the skill.
While assessments typically address Common Core learning standards, I believe they should vary in format and look quite different to support students’ various styles and their developmental levels. For example, students could demonstrate their knowledge of cardinal directions kinesthetically by acting out the directions, visually by including them on a map and by explicitly writing the directions.
One of the great advantages of inquiry based learning projects in that it allows students to show their knowledge in the medium that works best for them.
Inquiry Based Learning
Current research values the use of inquiry based learning in the classroom. Students learn best when they are invested. It is important to provide students with opportunities for rich exploration and choice while addressing common core learning standards. Inquiry based learning can look very different at different grade levels. Recently, in the first grade classroom where I am a long term substitute, I facilitated a Dr. Seuss book inquiry project. Students were asked to choose a book written by Dr. Seuss and respond to the book in almost any form. Students responded immediately with many different ideas and seemed enthusiastic as they both presented and watched their peers present their projects, which included videos, posters and dioramas. When viewing all the projects, one student observed that several of them had chosen the same book. He seemed both surprised and pleased that all their projects looked very different.
Current research also encourages the continued use of scaffolding. Scaffolding has played an important part in my differentiation of lessons and learning tasks so that I reach all students.
Encouraging students to set their own learning goals is a popular topic in current research. This idea is an important component to Daily 5. The Daily 5 system encourages students’ growth by allowing the students to create their own goals thus playing a larger role in their own education and helping the students to take ownership of their own learning. I have had the opportunity to assist in the implementation of Daily 5 in two different classrooms. I have seen the difference that having ownership in one’s learning can make in a classroom.