Plan+Instruction+and+Use+Strategies+Effectively

**Dimension of Effective Teaching:** Plan Instruction and Use Strategies Effectively || **Description:** Plans instruction and uses strategies that address the needs of all students. || **Successes:** My strengths in “Planning & Instruction” are designing instructional plans aligned to the learning objectives and using a wide range of materials and technologies to access and build upon students’ prior knowledge and experiences. I plan backwards from a final project or outcome, and use lessons to scaffold towards that goal. I also use all sorts of instructional formats and didactic materials, much of which I gather and make myself. I always provide opportunities to apply classroom learning to ‘real life experiences’ and practice and apply subject-specific learning strategies. What that looks like in a Spanish classroom is generally setting up scenarios that students might encounter where they need to use Spanish: ordering items on a menu, talking about what they like to do, clarifying a school schedule. At the same time, students are often highly engaged during ‘drill + kill” scenarios such as the dice game, mini white boards, and flyswatter. |||| **Challenges:** Despite my use of many instructional formats, I found that I assessed myself relatively low on the Dimension for organizing the class for “workshop” because a 50mn block doesn’t allow sufficient time for students to share learning and ask questions. This fits in with my goal to use questions on note cards as a form of assessing my sixth graders’ learning. || **Area for Growth:** My primary area for growth is with making appropriate instructional accommodations and/or modifications for students with IEPS. While I consider individual learning differences in planning instruction and find that different students excel when we focus on different modalities, I don’t yet feel that I adjust instruction to accommodate learning differences of all students with IEPs, because there are three students who continue to struggle with the material. || **Artifacts:** After our web-based session I contacted our special educator, as evidenced in this post: re: Riana's Strengths, Challenge & Growing Edge womenleaders Feb 24, 2010 8:55 pm Differentiating for ALL students is very challenging. Did you hear back from the Special educator? What did she recommend? Tell us some more about these 3 students that are struggling. What does this struggle look like in the classroom? rianagood re: Riana's Strengths, Challenge & Growing Edge rianagood Feb 24, 2010 10:09 pm I got copies of IEPs for students in _all_ grades. I have read them all and am now digesting them. For the most part, students who have difficulty with word attack and vocabulary in English are at a disadvantage in learning a second language. One student uses avoidance tactics (nurse, getting water, shuffling papers to look for work), another student wants to work independently and doesn't ask questions, and a third student has a fairly strong command of spoken Spanish, but extremely weak writing skills. As I digest the IEPs (which mostly recommend small-group instruction and graphic organizers), I will continue to incorporate methods that will reach their learning styles. I also modified the lesson plan that I created: Integrate a Web 2.0 Tool into Lesson Plan I incorporated an interactive clothing glog into my clothing lesson, with the goal using this as a jumping off point for students to create their own glogs about style and clothing (in Spanish) farther along in the unit. Yes, this will definitely be engaging for them! I was reminded of what I am not always a huge technology fan. In fact, doing this on PowerPoint would have been a whole lot faster, with fewer glitches. For whatever reason, my sound recording of a sample response wouldn’t ‘grab’ (upload) and when I tried to link to the page with additional flashcard practice for clothing, I was told that it was an “unsupported website”. I haven’t had such issues with PowerPoint, so I might continue to be semi-old school. Along these lines, I like to project my laptop onto a whiteboard and write directly on the whiteboard rather than use a SmartBoard, which has often given been a pain in the past. But, as these Web 2.0 tools become more common, I will slowly adopt them in the ways that I have other such technology that now seems commonplace. ¿Qué ropa llevas hoy? [] |||| **Resources:** Web-based resources from the sessions that supported growth: Common Lesson Plan Models: **[|http://mathcs.wilkes.edu/~rpryor/ed589/lessplns.html]** 150 Teaching Methods: **[]** || **Reflection:** The web-post serves as evidence of achieving growth in the DOET because it shows that I identified an area for growth and addressed it by contacting and following-up with someone who was able to help me. The lesson plan demonstrates that I incorporate new learning and new media into my lesson plans in order to address the learning and communication styles of all students. || **Future Learning Goals:** I still have two students who struggle with the material, so I will arrange a follow-up meeting with the special educator at my school to discuss other ways of meeting these students’ needs. I have also established contact with teachers at Brookline High School who would like to discuss and plan around honoring and challenging heritage and native-speakers in language classrooms. ||