Standard Eight:
Instructional Strategies
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to access and appropriately apply information.
Artifact: Poverty Professional Development Day
Performance: 8(a) Uses appropriate strategies and resources to adapt instruction to the needs of individuals and groups of learners.
8(b) Continuously monitors student learning, engages learners in assessing their progress, and adjusts instruction in response to student learning needs.
Essential Knowledge: 8(j) Understands the cognitive processes associated with various kinds of learning and how these processes can be stimulated.
8(k) Knows how to apply a range of developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate instructional strategies, to achieve learning goals.
Critical Dispositions: 8(p) Is committed to deepening awareness and understanding the strengths and needs of diverse learners when planning and adjusting instruction.
8(s) Values flexibility and reciprocity in the teaching process as necessary for adapting instruction to student responses, ideas, and needs.
Description: On March 18, 2016 the entire RSU #9 came together at Mt. Blue Campus to hear Dr. Donna Beagle speak about poverty and its effects on the children and family who live in it. The is was a district wide push to better serve our students in the area because Franklin County has the highest poverty rate in the state of Maine.
Rationale: In the area of my placement poverty is prevalent and one of the biggest problems that my students face on a daily basis. Attending this six hour professional development day was crucial in better meeting the needs of my students and understanding how I could tailor my instruction and actions to increase engagement in my students who sometimes perform at a lower level due to different circumstances. Learning a new way to think about these diverse learners and how to encourage them to feel safe and welcome in my classroom is something that also benefits the rest of my students because the entire environment becomes more open and friendly. This data driven and district wide movement gave me tools to better understand some of the cognitive barriers that many of my learners face and how I can remove those barriers and help them be successful.
Artifact: Human Graphing (Geometry Lesson: Rotations)
Performance: 8(d) Varies her role in the instructional process in relation to the content and purposes of instruction.
8(e) Provides multiple models and representations of concepts and skills with opportunities for learners to demonstrate their knowledge through a variety of products and performances.
8(g) Engages students in using a range of learning skills and technology tools to access interpret,evaluate, and apply information.
8(h) uses a variety of instructional strategies to support and expand learners’ communication through speaking, listening, reading, writing, and other models.
Essential Knowledge: 8(l) Knows when and how to use appropriate strategies to differentiate instruction and engage all learners in complex thinking and meaningful tasks.
8(n) Knows how to use a variety of resources including human and technological, to engage student learning.
Critical Dispositions: 8(q) Values the variety of ways that people communicate and encourages learners to develop and use multiple forms of communication.
Description: In order to teach my students how shapes rotate in a coordinate plane I taped a coordinate plane to the floor with two different colored duck tapea. Students volunteered to be points of a polygon before and after its rotation and then worked as a group to figure out how much it rotated and what the rules of rotation are.
Rationale: Mathematics is often taught in the methodology of lecture, notes, practice, and examination. However, most students lose their love for mathematics after elementary school due to this methodology. I have a firm grasp of who my students are and how they like to learn; the Human Graphing activity was a way to get all students engaged and forced to practice the skill. Students worked collaboratively and were able to see the rotation in the coordinate plane because they formed the before and after shape and saw the change in the points coordinates. This activity also incorporated technology using the SmartBoard to graph the rotation in a traditional manner to connect the kinesthetic activity to the actual mathematical concept. Students were able to demonstrate their understanding of the topic in a kinesthetic way and I was able to give them immediate feedback; ultimately they were more prepared for the mastery check and all students met the standard on the firs attempt.
