Engages in professional growth.
a. Demonstrates habits and skills of continuous inquiry and learning.
I took the Letrs course in order to help me become a better literacy educator. Since I am new to the teaching world I have not yet gained a lot of teaching strategies. I want to be the best teacher I can be, and I know that I need to reach out and find opportunities to improve my literacy instruction. The Letrs training helped open my eyes to a new way of thinking about words and their sounds. As a teacher, I know learning is important and I want to instill the passion for learning into my students. I believe it is important for me to continue to seek out learning opportunities like the letrs training in order to help provide my students with the best educational opportunities that I can.
Click on the link to view the final: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxU0ncIPGuG3Qm5LNzlDcDl1SlE
(2017) I am a member of the Iowa Reading Association. One of the benefits is that we get to engage in a book study together! I enjoy learning as much as the next teacher, but sometimes with out the accountability piece, I let other things take over that time. I signed up for a book study on "Reciprocal Teaching." The book talks about how to implement reciprocal teaching in the classroom setting. I also found it interesting that reciprocal teaching has a very high effect size in student learning according to Dr. John Hatti as outlined in the chart.
During the class we were asked to keep a journal for our notes and answers to different questions. I used googledocs for this assignment. The final project was to write a 5 - 7 page overview of reciprocal teaching. The below link connects to my online notes.
https://docs.google.com/a/fairfieldsfuture.org/document/d/1JcDtw5o7E8GCqL8QXktqcwdfxCXieFI-h5Mzl35nQ6A/edit?usp=sharing
(2019) -
One way I chose to challenge myself and continue my learning as a teacher was to join VIPKid. This is an online teaching platform to teach ESL students. I have had the chance to teach some students who are ESL learners, but I had a lot of support through our school and other teachers. In this program I am responsible for teaching student the English language on my own. Moving through the interview process was more difficult than I had anticipated. I also had to learn how to use the technology in order to teach online. Their platform has a lot of teaching tools and in order to teach students it is important to be able to use them with little to no transition time. I also need to be very cognizant in the way I speak. We lack enthusiasm with our language and how we pronounce certain words. When teaching students who are learning English, it is imperative to speak correctly and clearly.
As teachers, we want our students to be life long learners. The best way to teach is through modeling. The picture shows the courses I have taken over the past 8 years through the AEA. I have also taken courses to extend my knowledge for PBIS implementation at Washington and Pence Elementary.
b. Works collaboratively to improve professional practice and student learning.
(2012) Each week another first grade teacher and I meet in order to create and plan lessons. We create mimios and lessons in order to help our students. When creating the lesson we brainstorm ideas that are based around the curriculum standards and think about how we can teach a specific lesson. We both are able to come up with great ideas collaboratively that we wouldn't have on our own.
I included one of the many lessons that my teammate and I created together. I feel that our work together has made my teaching better because I am able to talk through lessons before teaching them with my cohort and I am able to bounce ideas in order to make them better. I also feel more confident when I talk about it before teaching the lesson. Each week we also become more efficient at including the various standards from our curriculum into the lesson. This particular lesson included ideas for the Thanksgiving holiday to help make it more engaging for students.(2017) Our first grade data team meets once a week to discuss our students data. Our classes are divided into smaller groups so that we are able to target specific skills. Our goal and focus is to help improve our students reading. We also collaborate and discuss data for math groups as well. Having a team to work with and bounce ideas off is very helpful to enhance student learning.
c. Applies research, knowledge, and skills from professional development opportunities to improve practice.
During my first year of teaching (2011 - 2012) we spent a bit of our professional development time talking about and learning about the gradual release model. This picture below is a format that was sent to our group to look at and use. The model helps teachers to design their lessons to be student centered. The first part "I do" means the teacher models or teaches the concept. The middle portion "we do" has teacher and student interaction. The students are participating in the activity along with the teacher. The last part "you do" is where students are able to explore the concept or activity on their own or with a partner.
I like this model because it really helps students to understand new concepts and to try out new things with out feeling over whelmed. Before a student tries something on their own, they have already watched the teacher do it, and tried it with guidance. This helps ensure a greater success rate for the student.
(2017) see artifact 7d - Hourglass. http://www.schools.utah.gov/CURR/langartelem/Meetings/Principals-Literacy/2014/NovemberHourglass.aspx
During our Letrs training we were introduced to "The hourglass concept of skill progression". This has helped direct my reading instruction and when to teach different skills. I know that students need phonological awareness skills before we work on introducing the graphemes. If a student has a deficit in one of the skills, I know that it is crucial to work on that skill before moving through the hourglass.
d. Establishes and implements professional development plans based upon the teacher’s needs aligned to the Iowa teaching standards and district/building student achievement goals.
See artifact 7e.
During the 2012 - 2013 school year, our district spent a good chunk of time learning about and using the Dibels reading assessment. After receiving and reviewing the scores, as a team we discussed what the next steps were and ways to help students. I set SMART goals for groups of students who had the same issues with reading and taught them in small group and whole group focusing on specific skills. After two weeks I progress monitored the students again using Dibels and changed the groupings based on the new evidence. During small groups I used strategies suggested by the dibels website for word manipulating.
(2016) Our district has spent a great deal of time on LETRS training during our professional development, and I am very fortunate for this! We have completed modules on phonics, fluency, vocabulary and more. These strategies have help change how I teach reading, mostly phonics. I am more aware of letter sounds. I did not know before that letter sounds are called graphemes and sounds are called phonemes. During the courses, I also learned a lot about how our brain makes sense of reading. One of my favorite visuals from the training was the "Hourglass". This is something I refer to often (and have hanging up when thinking about reading instruction in my classroom) when I am wondering what to teach next in reading. I also use the "Valley of the Vowels" when introducing and teaching our vowel sounds in first grade. I hadn't thought about the order of teaching vowels. I just assumed it did not matter prior to LETRS training. I now have better knowledge and a great visual for teaching vowels. This training has also changed my perspective of teaching syllables and word parts and their importance in early reading.
e. Provides an analysis of student learning and growth based on teacher created tests and authentic measures as well as any standardized and district-wide tests.
During the 2012-2013 school year we began using the DIBElS diagnostic tool and resources. The first two scores are the beginning of the year scores for my class. CLS refers to correct letter sounds and WWR stands for whole words read. This particular test was a nonsense word test. I used this data in combination with BRI assessments and classroom running records to create SMART goals for my students. I created 5 groups and set goals for each group. Students who showed areas of greatest concern, I progress monitored via non-sense word assessment. Students who had goals based on words per minute I progress monitor via DORF and classroom running records. These scores are on a separate sheet.
(2017) To help monitor student learning, my team and I have created a google document where we kept track of how students are reading. Some students were monitored on their nonsense words or sight words. All students are progress monitored at least once a month to keep track of their passage reading and fluency. We are then able to use this data to direct our instruction in the classroom as well as in our data teams for our reading intervention time.
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