Roles and Relationships In
Kate Dollard Brown Practice Based Standards SelfAssessment 3.25.15 Standard One: Roles and Relationships In terms of relationships with students, I feel that I have been able to convey that I care about the students through daily interactions, by creating a safe environment, and by acknowledging all students as equal participants and learners in my class. There have been moments earlier in the semester when students have made comments about other students that were not respectful, but when I expressed firmly that those comments were not part of our class culture, they quickly petered out in class discussion. I also have noticed that by changing the format of class discussions to allow for more voices (through onecent discussions), more voices are being heard more equitably in the classroom. I believe I have improved my ability to redirect and reinforce student behaviors as necessary, but I still need to strengthen my tone and to remind myself to not settle for almost 100% participation and engagement. I think I have gained more confidence in this area since having started student teaching, but I know that I can improve how I present myself in class. In general, I need to project a stronger sense of selfrespect, selfconfidence, control, and purpose in order to increase engagement and expectations for students. C. Relationships with colleagues and the school community I work with a variety of teachers at Alvarez, from the ELL Chemistry teacher, to another research teacher, to the rest of the ELL team, to varied consultants who work with teachers at the school. I have participated in regular PDs every Wednesday morning, and whenever possible I have attended several PDs for new teachers, for ELA teachers, for ELL teachers, and for teacher leaders. I have also taught a unit in another teacher’s class, and I have been collaborating daily with that teacher as she and I prepare lessons and units for those students. We have reached the point that we can be critical friends of each others’ teaching practices, and we help each other in the areas in which we each need improvement. For example, I am still working on my tone of voice and on classroom management in general. The teacher with whom I work regularly has excellent management skills, so I am learning those skills from her. At the same time, she has informed me that I am helping her plan her lessons around the principle of comprehensible input through some of the ideas and lessons that I have implemented (thanks in part to the methods I’ve learned in my classes). In that sense, I feel as though I am able to collaborate well with other faculty members. I am always cordial with other teachers and I try to assist these other teachers without stepping on another teacher’s toes whenever I visit other teachers’ classes.
Though I feel as though it is easy to reach out to other faculty members, what I have not yet done is reach out to parents personally. I have sent progress reports home, but I have not had any contact with parents (besides meeting one student ‘s (who is an ELL) parents. I also need to increase my interactions with Guidance Office and with the Principals and Assistant Principals. I know that as a fulltime teacher it is critical to understand the proper protocol for seeking out these important people in the building so it would be useful for both me and for my students if I was able to better reach out to these individuals during studentteaching. Standard Two: Student as Learner By individually conferencing with students, I have been able to challenge students’ assumptions about their own selfefficacy in my AP class. After my second unit, I asked students to reflect on their own learning, to tell me anything about them that would help me support them as students. One student who consistently receives poor grades confessed that she does not have much support at home, so it is hard for her to push herself without the familial expectation of academic success. Every few classes, I check in with this student to encourage her and give feedback. She once confessed that she feels as though her own ideas are not valid because other students around her are more confident in their literary interpretation and analysis skills. After explaining that her ideas (that I have heard her speak out loud in class!) are valid too, that they are just as valid as any other students’ ideas, I noticed that she sought out help about a project when she normally would not have. After seeking out help, she did deliver a presentation that was better articulated and conceived than her other projects that I had seen thus far. Though I know this student is still struggling academically, I know that I have reached out and positively affected this student’s sense of selfefficacy, even if the numerical results for this semester are not indicative of this change in mentality. Other students also need this sort of support and encouragement both during and outside of class. I explain both in class and in written letters to parents when I am available after school to conference with students. I stay after school as often as possible to answer questions, to conference with students, and to help students in the writing process when they revise essays or timed writes, when they write poetry responses or projects. Meeting with students has been a great opportunity for me to help students figure out their next steps to selfregulate learning. Another student who meets me at least once per week outside of class hours has been trying all semester to push past interpretation to deeper analysis of quotations in her timed writes. We looked intently at all her works, and after the student noted that whenever she feels confident in her analysis, she usually does not receive high marks and when she feels more unsure about her essay, she usually receives higher marks. At first I brushed this comment aside as a typical response to timed essays and tests, but I realized that there may be a connection between shoddy
analysis and the student’s confidence. We discovered that the student often jumps to a larger “meaning” without finding quotations when she is “confident,” or excited about a specific interpretation. Instead, she seems to perform better on timed writes that ask her to rely on the text to understand the meaning. This realization helped me advise the student on her individual strengths and weaknesses, that she should focus more on and spend more time annotating the texts themselves before jumping to greater meaning in her timed writes. I feel as though I have a unique lens into what students are doing well and what students need to improve because I have students who are eager to improve, because I emphasize conferencing both in and outside of school. Standard Three: Planning There is a constructivist thread that runs through most of my lessons. Since my students are avid readers, they all have a lot of literary prior knowledge on which to draw. As such, I usually open units with some form of activity (like a KWL) that assesses knowledge before, during, and after the unit. Under the tutelage of my mentor teacher, I planned backwards for a pre1600s literature unit, a unit on three plays, a poetry unit, a short story unit, and an 1800s novel unit in one semester. Each unit was aimed to teach students content and skills that are related not just to the unit but these skills and content are also important for students’ future success on the AP English Literature exam. Before each unit, I explain the purpose for the learning activities and objectives and after each unit, I breach the connection to the next unit. For example, the culminating activity of the Poetry Unit emphasized the skills of connection between historical era/literary era and literary work that I wanted to develop in both the short story and the 1800s novel units. Students studied one poet in depth during the Poetry Unit, and students were asked to then identify what the connection their poet had to both his/her literary era, historical era, and to other poets (represented by other students in the room). This exercise served as a diagnostic for me to understand how well students could identify and place their poets within the context of history and literary movements. I then introduced the short story unit comprised of 1800s and early 1900s texts as a building block for us to then learn how to read older literature in the form of 1800s novels. Throughout the short story unit, I developed emphases on learning about the historical era, using reciprocal teaching strategies, and understanding the literary movement of which the short story was a part in order to better comprehend denser older texts. Each short story that we studied came out of a different literary era, and I used visual representations to help students conceive and remember how they could identify, categorize, and then glean meaning from their texts. Students were then asked to create an abstract object (and corresponding paper) related to a specific short story. Each object reflected the historical era, literary movement, or “single effect” of the work through purposeful design. Students also connected their visual
elements of their work (color, form, shape, etc.) to their given focus (historical era, literary movement, or single effect) in a written assignment. To bridge the short story unit to the novel unit, I explained to students that they would apply the same skills of learning about the historical era/literary movement of their selected novel in order to fully comprehend these older texts. Students began the activity by writing down what they knew about the era, followed by more independent research in literature partner groupings. The connection between these three units exemplifies how my backwards planning for making meaning is threaded throughout several units. The connection between the three units also exemplifies how I gradually release students to make meaning on their own not just within the time constraint of a lesson but also over the course of several units. My syllabus, my calendar, and my daily lesson plans serve as guides to ensure that I am building towards students’ final projects. Every day, the agenda is posted on the board and I explain the objective for that day. I utilize smart board technology daily to present directions, film clips, art, and sample writing texts. I have used this technology to model on the board how to annotate, analyze symbols and motifs, and revise theses. More recently, I have incorporated technology into my lesson plans to increase engagement when we are discussing AP multiple choice questions as a class. Recently, I led two lessons where students annotated a multiple choice section’s answers, writing why each answer was either correct or incorrect so that students would be able to defend their answers. Then, students texted their answers to an online polling site that collects and displays student answers anonymously per question. Once the results were “locked in”, students stood by their answers and explained their reasoning before I revealed the correct answer. This activity turned what could be a rather dry, unproductive, and unengaging activity into one in which students were able to work collaboratively, and in which all students were highly involved in learning. One area in which I need to improve is how I differentiate learning, even within an AP course. I have attempted to differentiate learning through different activity styles that promote engagement of less confident students, and through collaborative small group learning. Discussions that are scaffolded so that all students have an equal amount of time to come prepared with ideas allows less confident students to speak up, and activities in pairs benefit less confident students who will naturally have to participate and engage more than they might if they were placed in larger whole class activities. Despite these efforts, I still have some reticent students who may not participate in class for a host of reasons. My future goals include planning so that I can check in individually with students who may need extra support, guidance, or feedback in order to help students feel more comfortable and confident about their learning activities. By checking in with these students more frequently during class and after school, I hope to help struggling students engage more with their learning. Meeting Standard Four:
The student teacher exhibits confident control over a variety of approaches to classroom pedagogy. In direct presentations, s/he demonstrates sensitivity to pacing, timing, amount and sequencing of material, and form of presentations, as well as inviting student contributions and interactions. Questioning strategies are thoughtful, considering a range and arc of questions that develop logically from simple to complex. Group work is used effectively and students are carefully coached on the purpose and strategies for collaboration. Work required of students clearly reinforces basic skills (reading, writing, notetaking, oral presentation, listening) and builds toward more complex mastery (critical thinking, problemsolving, analysis, and synthesis). Technology skills are incorporated into lessons as frequently as possible, with the student teacher modeling the use of technology whenever possible. Standard Four: Classroom Practice A. Teacher Presentations I have been more conscious of building purpose and reinforcing that purpose within the last few units, but I need to constantly remind myself to take a minute at the beginning and end of each class to explain, reiterate, and reinforce purpose because it acts as a motivating agent for students to invest in the lesson/unit. B. Collaborative Activities Much of my class features collaborative activities where students are discussing meaning in groups. I hold students accountable by coldcalling after students have discussed reasoning to a question in groups and asking them to share out, but I need to be more purposeful about who is always responding. If a student opts out, I need some way to ensure that the next day they know that I will be calling on them in advance. If I have time to listen to ideas from students who do not normally share out, one strategy I has used is that I’ll encourage students who do not normally speak up to share their ideas with the group. If I explicitly tell target students that I will be calling on them, I can increase engagement and students who normally do not speak up are able to share out. However, if I fail to tell students explicitly that I want to hear from them, it is difficult to get responses from students who do not normally participate as often in class. I hold students accountable also by asking each student to have a different task. With reciprocal reading in groups, each student is focusing on a different reading strategy and must share out in a group for the whole group to succeed (to have a variety of question responses written down after each page of reading). I also hold students accountable with different tasks for projects, so that each student must come up with their own individual interpretations using varied lenses, though all students can discuss projects in groups.
One thing that I have to improve is my sense of timing with these activities. Some days, I plan the timing adequately, and I stick to that time purposefully, but other times I either do not give enough time or I give too much time for the whole group. I need to refine my sense of how long activities should take for this group so that I can maintain a fastpaced lesson. C. Questioning/Discussion I need to improve the types of questions that I ask, to make sure that I am not relying on IRE techniques. I want to make sure that I am asking more openended questions in class that are varied in form. When I script questions for socratics seminars, they often provoke good discussion, but I need to be more purposeful about creating questions that emphasize higher level thinking skills. Meeting Standard Five: Assessment: During the past semester, I have employed a variety of assessment strategies at the beginning of the unit, throughout the unit, and at the culmination of each unit. Every summative assessment from Socratic seminars to timed writes, to essays, to individual artistic and informative presentations have specific accompanying rubrics. These rubrics were all given to students ahead of time. A few of the rubrics were adapted from my mentor’s previous assignments for individual projects, but many of them were separately prepared and then approved by my mentor. Though I have worked extensively developing these rubrics throughout the semester, I acknowledge that many of them need to be adapted to ensure that the most significant percentages assessed are more intensely focused on the specific skills and content that I want to see from my students. At times, my rubrics do not appropriately assign points or percentages to the most important areas for assessment, so I need to work on developing more specific and focused rubrics. SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS: ● Presentations How to Read Literature Like a Professor ● How to get away with Murder Discussions ● Socratic seminars ● Timed writes ● Character mixer ● SHORT STORY artistic projects
On a daily basis, I check formatively for understanding through reflections, through informal checkins with students during a lesson when students are working independently and in groups. These checkins are not graded, but I also formatively assess student progress for a grade with brief comprehension checks to assess who indeed is reading or not. During my current literature partner unit, I assess daily how well students are keeping up with their own accountability schedules that they have set for themselves in groups. I assess (without grading daily) how well students are keeping up with their schedules, and on specific dates I ask for work to be shown so that I can give completion credit and feedback. At the end of the unit, I will then summatively assess student dialectical journals, character logs, etc. after students have had time to revise and improve their work. Students also have the chance to revise their written assignments. I stay after school at least one day per week for students who want to revise their timed writes, for students who want feedback on their essays. However, I have also built in time in class to revise student essays. During the Poetry Unit, students brought in their essays for peers to revise using colorcoding techniques. Students used different colors to highlight peers’ theses, quotations, interpretations and analyses and then to assess using the rubric whether their peers had used these components to advance their theses concisely and according to the focus for the assignment. Later, students had to selfassess their essays using this same method. Though I have been giving feedback regularly to students, I often have been providing more feedback at the end of a summative assessment than I have been doing during the unit, so one thing that I want to improve is how I build time during class to revise current assignments BEFORE final assessments. I also need to put an emphasis on having students bring in their drafts on time. If students aren’t aware that they’re being assessed on bringing in their drafts on time, only the students who bring their materials can participate in peerassessment activities! So I need to put more of an assessment emphasis on the writing process so students begin to see the value in receiving feedback and adapting/revising their work. I also need to be more strategic about spending more time assessing and giving feedback to students who may be quieter, but who need more assistance and guidance. Often the students who are struggling are not the ones who ask for help, so I need to make sure I build in time for students to receive feedback and revise their work so that they feel more confident in their final projects. Standard Six: Professional Knowledge and Growth I tend to reflect deeply on my classroom planning and implementation in hopes of making my lessons stronger, more unified, and more purposeful. Though accepting criticism can be difficult, I do feel as though I am able to reroute lessons to be more successful when given
specific feedback. My mentor has been most instructive in giving thoughtful and specific feedbackI am lucky to have a mentor who will take the time to meet with me almost every day to discuss each lesson and how to build upon it for the following day, week, or unit. Throughout this semester, I have come to realize that individualized feedback is what really makes teachers more aware of their shortcomings and strengths so that a teacher can constantly adapt and improve his or her pedagogy. That being said, I am still learning the importance of accepting critical feedback with a thicker skin; instead of taking criticism personally I need to constantly remind myself that criticism is always helpful because it is a means to improve students’ learning in my class. It embarasses me how much I take criticism to heart sometimes, but this semester has helped me realize that teaching is not about ego, and pride has no place in the classroom! Instead, as one of my professors from Dickinson told me before entering Brown’s program: “teaching is a humbling profession. You’re going to fall flat on your face,” but what defines a teacher’s ability most is the ability to pick oneself up after the fall. Standard Seven: Engagement with Subject Matter I demonstrate engagement with my subject both in and outside of school through my tone and through my interest in having discussions about books, poetry, and plays with students that may or may not relate to class. In class, I show that I am engaged in my subject matter in my tone and verbal expression when introducing new literature for each unit. I also encourage demonstrate engagement by referencing and showing modern day adaptations of classics in short film clips. I showed a clip of “A Knight’s Tale” during the Canterbury Unit to help students engage with material that could be difficult to relate to or understand. I showed two short clips of Hamlet’s soliloquy (by two different actors) when teaching a lesson on tone to engage students in analyzing literature in different forms, and I try to incorporate historical documents and articles that relate to the subjects at hand. For example, during my unit on Fences and the Death of a Salesman , I incorporated an article about baseball as a motif that is often connected to the American Dream. Lastly, during this most recent novel unit, I show engagement with literature by participating in small group discussions, by sharing my own insights with literature as I read alongside students. Outside of school, I show engagement with my subject by submitting individual book lists and recommendations to a few students in hopes of fostering students’ love for reading!
Though I feel as though it is easy to reach out to other faculty members, what I have not yet done is reach out to parents personally. I have sent progress reports home, but I have not had any contact with parents (besides meeting one student ‘s (who is an ELL) parents. I also need to increase my interactions with Guidance Office and with the Principals and Assistant Principals. I know that as a fulltime teacher it is critical to understand the proper protocol for seeking out these important people in the building so it would be useful for both me and for my students if I was able to better reach out to these individuals during studentteaching. Standard Two: Student as Learner By individually conferencing with students, I have been able to challenge students’ assumptions about their own selfefficacy in my AP class. After my second unit, I asked students to reflect on their own learning, to tell me anything about them that would help me support them as students. One student who consistently receives poor grades confessed that she does not have much support at home, so it is hard for her to push herself without the familial expectation of academic success. Every few classes, I check in with this student to encourage her and give feedback. She once confessed that she feels as though her own ideas are not valid because other students around her are more confident in their literary interpretation and analysis skills. After explaining that her ideas (that I have heard her speak out loud in class!) are valid too, that they are just as valid as any other students’ ideas, I noticed that she sought out help about a project when she normally would not have. After seeking out help, she did deliver a presentation that was better articulated and conceived than her other projects that I had seen thus far. Though I know this student is still struggling academically, I know that I have reached out and positively affected this student’s sense of selfefficacy, even if the numerical results for this semester are not indicative of this change in mentality. Other students also need this sort of support and encouragement both during and outside of class. I explain both in class and in written letters to parents when I am available after school to conference with students. I stay after school as often as possible to answer questions, to conference with students, and to help students in the writing process when they revise essays or timed writes, when they write poetry responses or projects. Meeting with students has been a great opportunity for me to help students figure out their next steps to selfregulate learning. Another student who meets me at least once per week outside of class hours has been trying all semester to push past interpretation to deeper analysis of quotations in her timed writes. We looked intently at all her works, and after the student noted that whenever she feels confident in her analysis, she usually does not receive high marks and when she feels more unsure about her essay, she usually receives higher marks. At first I brushed this comment aside as a typical response to timed essays and tests, but I realized that there may be a connection between shoddy
analysis and the student’s confidence. We discovered that the student often jumps to a larger “meaning” without finding quotations when she is “confident,” or excited about a specific interpretation. Instead, she seems to perform better on timed writes that ask her to rely on the text to understand the meaning. This realization helped me advise the student on her individual strengths and weaknesses, that she should focus more on and spend more time annotating the texts themselves before jumping to greater meaning in her timed writes. I feel as though I have a unique lens into what students are doing well and what students need to improve because I have students who are eager to improve, because I emphasize conferencing both in and outside of school. Standard Three: Planning There is a constructivist thread that runs through most of my lessons. Since my students are avid readers, they all have a lot of literary prior knowledge on which to draw. As such, I usually open units with some form of activity (like a KWL) that assesses knowledge before, during, and after the unit. Under the tutelage of my mentor teacher, I planned backwards for a pre1600s literature unit, a unit on three plays, a poetry unit, a short story unit, and an 1800s novel unit in one semester. Each unit was aimed to teach students content and skills that are related not just to the unit but these skills and content are also important for students’ future success on the AP English Literature exam. Before each unit, I explain the purpose for the learning activities and objectives and after each unit, I breach the connection to the next unit. For example, the culminating activity of the Poetry Unit emphasized the skills of connection between historical era/literary era and literary work that I wanted to develop in both the short story and the 1800s novel units. Students studied one poet in depth during the Poetry Unit, and students were asked to then identify what the connection their poet had to both his/her literary era, historical era, and to other poets (represented by other students in the room). This exercise served as a diagnostic for me to understand how well students could identify and place their poets within the context of history and literary movements. I then introduced the short story unit comprised of 1800s and early 1900s texts as a building block for us to then learn how to read older literature in the form of 1800s novels. Throughout the short story unit, I developed emphases on learning about the historical era, using reciprocal teaching strategies, and understanding the literary movement of which the short story was a part in order to better comprehend denser older texts. Each short story that we studied came out of a different literary era, and I used visual representations to help students conceive and remember how they could identify, categorize, and then glean meaning from their texts. Students were then asked to create an abstract object (and corresponding paper) related to a specific short story. Each object reflected the historical era, literary movement, or “single effect” of the work through purposeful design. Students also connected their visual
elements of their work (color, form, shape, etc.) to their given focus (historical era, literary movement, or single effect) in a written assignment. To bridge the short story unit to the novel unit, I explained to students that they would apply the same skills of learning about the historical era/literary movement of their selected novel in order to fully comprehend these older texts. Students began the activity by writing down what they knew about the era, followed by more independent research in literature partner groupings. The connection between these three units exemplifies how my backwards planning for making meaning is threaded throughout several units. The connection between the three units also exemplifies how I gradually release students to make meaning on their own not just within the time constraint of a lesson but also over the course of several units. My syllabus, my calendar, and my daily lesson plans serve as guides to ensure that I am building towards students’ final projects. Every day, the agenda is posted on the board and I explain the objective for that day. I utilize smart board technology daily to present directions, film clips, art, and sample writing texts. I have used this technology to model on the board how to annotate, analyze symbols and motifs, and revise theses. More recently, I have incorporated technology into my lesson plans to increase engagement when we are discussing AP multiple choice questions as a class. Recently, I led two lessons where students annotated a multiple choice section’s answers, writing why each answer was either correct or incorrect so that students would be able to defend their answers. Then, students texted their answers to an online polling site that collects and displays student answers anonymously per question. Once the results were “locked in”, students stood by their answers and explained their reasoning before I revealed the correct answer. This activity turned what could be a rather dry, unproductive, and unengaging activity into one in which students were able to work collaboratively, and in which all students were highly involved in learning. One area in which I need to improve is how I differentiate learning, even within an AP course. I have attempted to differentiate learning through different activity styles that promote engagement of less confident students, and through collaborative small group learning. Discussions that are scaffolded so that all students have an equal amount of time to come prepared with ideas allows less confident students to speak up, and activities in pairs benefit less confident students who will naturally have to participate and engage more than they might if they were placed in larger whole class activities. Despite these efforts, I still have some reticent students who may not participate in class for a host of reasons. My future goals include planning so that I can check in individually with students who may need extra support, guidance, or feedback in order to help students feel more comfortable and confident about their learning activities. By checking in with these students more frequently during class and after school, I hope to help struggling students engage more with their learning. Meeting Standard Four:
The student teacher exhibits confident control over a variety of approaches to classroom pedagogy. In direct presentations, s/he demonstrates sensitivity to pacing, timing, amount and sequencing of material, and form of presentations, as well as inviting student contributions and interactions. Questioning strategies are thoughtful, considering a range and arc of questions that develop logically from simple to complex. Group work is used effectively and students are carefully coached on the purpose and strategies for collaboration. Work required of students clearly reinforces basic skills (reading, writing, notetaking, oral presentation, listening) and builds toward more complex mastery (critical thinking, problemsolving, analysis, and synthesis). Technology skills are incorporated into lessons as frequently as possible, with the student teacher modeling the use of technology whenever possible. Standard Four: Classroom Practice A. Teacher Presentations I have been more conscious of building purpose and reinforcing that purpose within the last few units, but I need to constantly remind myself to take a minute at the beginning and end of each class to explain, reiterate, and reinforce purpose because it acts as a motivating agent for students to invest in the lesson/unit. B. Collaborative Activities Much of my class features collaborative activities where students are discussing meaning in groups. I hold students accountable by coldcalling after students have discussed reasoning to a question in groups and asking them to share out, but I need to be more purposeful about who is always responding. If a student opts out, I need some way to ensure that the next day they know that I will be calling on them in advance. If I have time to listen to ideas from students who do not normally share out, one strategy I has used is that I’ll encourage students who do not normally speak up to share their ideas with the group. If I explicitly tell target students that I will be calling on them, I can increase engagement and students who normally do not speak up are able to share out. However, if I fail to tell students explicitly that I want to hear from them, it is difficult to get responses from students who do not normally participate as often in class. I hold students accountable also by asking each student to have a different task. With reciprocal reading in groups, each student is focusing on a different reading strategy and must share out in a group for the whole group to succeed (to have a variety of question responses written down after each page of reading). I also hold students accountable with different tasks for projects, so that each student must come up with their own individual interpretations using varied lenses, though all students can discuss projects in groups.
One thing that I have to improve is my sense of timing with these activities. Some days, I plan the timing adequately, and I stick to that time purposefully, but other times I either do not give enough time or I give too much time for the whole group. I need to refine my sense of how long activities should take for this group so that I can maintain a fastpaced lesson. C. Questioning/Discussion I need to improve the types of questions that I ask, to make sure that I am not relying on IRE techniques. I want to make sure that I am asking more openended questions in class that are varied in form. When I script questions for socratics seminars, they often provoke good discussion, but I need to be more purposeful about creating questions that emphasize higher level thinking skills. Meeting Standard Five: Assessment: During the past semester, I have employed a variety of assessment strategies at the beginning of the unit, throughout the unit, and at the culmination of each unit. Every summative assessment from Socratic seminars to timed writes, to essays, to individual artistic and informative presentations have specific accompanying rubrics. These rubrics were all given to students ahead of time. A few of the rubrics were adapted from my mentor’s previous assignments for individual projects, but many of them were separately prepared and then approved by my mentor. Though I have worked extensively developing these rubrics throughout the semester, I acknowledge that many of them need to be adapted to ensure that the most significant percentages assessed are more intensely focused on the specific skills and content that I want to see from my students. At times, my rubrics do not appropriately assign points or percentages to the most important areas for assessment, so I need to work on developing more specific and focused rubrics. SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS: ● Presentations How to Read Literature Like a Professor ● How to get away with Murder Discussions ● Socratic seminars ● Timed writes ● Character mixer ● SHORT STORY artistic projects
On a daily basis, I check formatively for understanding through reflections, through informal checkins with students during a lesson when students are working independently and in groups. These checkins are not graded, but I also formatively assess student progress for a grade with brief comprehension checks to assess who indeed is reading or not. During my current literature partner unit, I assess daily how well students are keeping up with their own accountability schedules that they have set for themselves in groups. I assess (without grading daily) how well students are keeping up with their schedules, and on specific dates I ask for work to be shown so that I can give completion credit and feedback. At the end of the unit, I will then summatively assess student dialectical journals, character logs, etc. after students have had time to revise and improve their work. Students also have the chance to revise their written assignments. I stay after school at least one day per week for students who want to revise their timed writes, for students who want feedback on their essays. However, I have also built in time in class to revise student essays. During the Poetry Unit, students brought in their essays for peers to revise using colorcoding techniques. Students used different colors to highlight peers’ theses, quotations, interpretations and analyses and then to assess using the rubric whether their peers had used these components to advance their theses concisely and according to the focus for the assignment. Later, students had to selfassess their essays using this same method. Though I have been giving feedback regularly to students, I often have been providing more feedback at the end of a summative assessment than I have been doing during the unit, so one thing that I want to improve is how I build time during class to revise current assignments BEFORE final assessments. I also need to put an emphasis on having students bring in their drafts on time. If students aren’t aware that they’re being assessed on bringing in their drafts on time, only the students who bring their materials can participate in peerassessment activities! So I need to put more of an assessment emphasis on the writing process so students begin to see the value in receiving feedback and adapting/revising their work. I also need to be more strategic about spending more time assessing and giving feedback to students who may be quieter, but who need more assistance and guidance. Often the students who are struggling are not the ones who ask for help, so I need to make sure I build in time for students to receive feedback and revise their work so that they feel more confident in their final projects. Standard Six: Professional Knowledge and Growth I tend to reflect deeply on my classroom planning and implementation in hopes of making my lessons stronger, more unified, and more purposeful. Though accepting criticism can be difficult, I do feel as though I am able to reroute lessons to be more successful when given
specific feedback. My mentor has been most instructive in giving thoughtful and specific feedbackI am lucky to have a mentor who will take the time to meet with me almost every day to discuss each lesson and how to build upon it for the following day, week, or unit. Throughout this semester, I have come to realize that individualized feedback is what really makes teachers more aware of their shortcomings and strengths so that a teacher can constantly adapt and improve his or her pedagogy. That being said, I am still learning the importance of accepting critical feedback with a thicker skin; instead of taking criticism personally I need to constantly remind myself that criticism is always helpful because it is a means to improve students’ learning in my class. It embarasses me how much I take criticism to heart sometimes, but this semester has helped me realize that teaching is not about ego, and pride has no place in the classroom! Instead, as one of my professors from Dickinson told me before entering Brown’s program: “teaching is a humbling profession. You’re going to fall flat on your face,” but what defines a teacher’s ability most is the ability to pick oneself up after the fall. Standard Seven: Engagement with Subject Matter I demonstrate engagement with my subject both in and outside of school through my tone and through my interest in having discussions about books, poetry, and plays with students that may or may not relate to class. In class, I show that I am engaged in my subject matter in my tone and verbal expression when introducing new literature for each unit. I also encourage demonstrate engagement by referencing and showing modern day adaptations of classics in short film clips. I showed a clip of “A Knight’s Tale” during the Canterbury Unit to help students engage with material that could be difficult to relate to or understand. I showed two short clips of Hamlet’s soliloquy (by two different actors) when teaching a lesson on tone to engage students in analyzing literature in different forms, and I try to incorporate historical documents and articles that relate to the subjects at hand. For example, during my unit on Fences and the Death of a Salesman , I incorporated an article about baseball as a motif that is often connected to the American Dream. Lastly, during this most recent novel unit, I show engagement with literature by participating in small group discussions, by sharing my own insights with literature as I read alongside students. Outside of school, I show engagement with my subject by submitting individual book lists and recommendations to a few students in hopes of fostering students’ love for reading!
