My Showcase
This showcase represents my journey through my Master's of Arts in Education through Michigan State University and the growth I have made as a teacher and as a student. It consists of artifacts that present my learning throughout the program. My graduate work is organized into two categories, Literacy Development and Educational Inquiry and Reflection. The literacy development coursework developed my knowledge of and implementation of best teaching practices and assessments. The educational inquiry and reflection coursework built my critical thinking and problem solving skills while also building my ability to reflect on and evaluate my instruction. These artifacts highlight the transformation I have made in the way I learn, teach, and structure my classroom.
If you would like to see the project described please click on the circle or the title.
Literacy Development
Educational Inquiry and Reflection
Writing Motivation Research and Proposal
As a teacher it is important to be able to analyze areas in your practice that are in need of growth. After reflecting on my current classroom needs, I completed independent research on increasing writing motivation in the classroom. Then I created lessons that incorporated my learning from my research. This proposal shows my ability to diagnose the needs of my classroom, research best practice, use research to create lessons, and write a letter to the Dean of Curriculum citing my research and explaining why the lessons I created should be taught in my classroom.
Children come into your classroom at various stages in their development and leanring. This project showcases my ability to analyze assessment data results and propose a plan for the instruction I would plan and implement. I have strengthened my ability to create lesson plans driven by assessment data.
During my program, I particpated in a professional book club on the text, Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action. I read and discussed this book with my colleagues and wrote a book review and professional reflection on how I plan on using it in my classroom. This shows the growth I made in my ability to collaborate with others and passion to continue learning in a format similar to this throughout my career.
It is important to be able to analyze the literacy skills your students come to your classroom with and what they still need to work on. I chose a student in my classroom to dig deeper with and analyze his literacy skills thus far. I used the assessment data I collected to guide my individualized instruction for him. This report details the assessments chosen, the lessons taught, and the growth made at the end of instruction. This case study showcases my ability to use data to individualize instruction and meet each child's needs.
These are the artifacts from the case study above. They are evidence of the analysis, lesson implementation, and assessment process. They show my journey through the analysis and ability to differentiate lessons to accomodate different learners.
This is one of the two lessons I created in order to meet the needs of my student I completed my case study on. It exhibits my ability to not only create individualized lesson plans, but also create opportunities for adaptations or extensions for each lesson.
This is one of the two lessons I created in order to meet the needs of my student I completed my case study on. It showcases my strength in scaffolding learning and offering hands on activities that allow the student to manipulate the content.
As a teacher I read a lot of articles and research on what is best practice for my classroom, however one of the best forms of research is teacher inquiry. For this inquiry I studied Vivian Paley and teacher inquiry where teachers take reserach into their own hands. This solidified my understanding of what teacher inquiry is and gave me the opportunity to learn more about this practice, why it is beneficial for me to use it in my classroom, and make a plan for using practice. .
This children's literature inquiry pushed me to push past what award winners say is the best and independently think about what literature I thought was best for my students. It pushed me to formulate my own opinion as a reader and as a teacher. This project now only forced me to think critically about how I evaluate literature, but also I could foster this critical thinking in my own students. I was able to take my learning and create a developmentally appropriate plan that would support the grade level standards and fostering independent thinkers.
Classroom Management Best Practice
As I researched and learned about classroom management best practices, I was able to regularly reflect on how I could implement them into my classroom and how the practices I already had implemented were going. This reflection shows my ability to evaluate my practice and use my research to change and better my classroom environment. It also showcases my openness to change and the understanding that my growth as an educator is never complete.
My Classroom Management Philosophy
This is a culmination of the research I have done on classroom management best practice and the experience I have had in my own classroom. My philosophy and managment style is based off of data and research and this showcases my ability to clearly share my beliefs about how my classroom is managed.