Progress Toward Achieving Student Teaching Goals
Goal 1: To develop instructional plans to address a variety of strategies to address
student learning differences.
All classrooms include students with a variety of learning styles and abilities. It is
important to develop instructional plans to meet the needs of all students. Creating lesson
plans has allowed me to see the importance of implementing a variety of strategies to
reach all students. I worked a lot with my cooperating teacher to implement and plan
lessons including differentiated instruction.
My third observation lesson is an example of my progress. This lesson involved
students working in the computer lab to complete an organizer while taking a virtual tour
of Ellis Island. I incorporated differentiation instruction by giving the struggling students
an organizer that had examples filled in. For the enriched students, I gave them an extra
page where they must write a brief summary using the information on their organizers.
Students remained on task and at the same pace as well.
To continue professional growth in this area I must remain consistent. I must
strive to incorporate differentiated instruction by assessing individual needs of students,
and incorporate a variety of instructional strategies to reach all learners.
Goal 2: To develop a balance between student-centered and teacher-directed activities
and lessons.
The last month of my student teaching, planning all lessons allowed me to
recognize when I was being monotonous with instruction, and enabled me to make
changes to improve in this area. An example of progress in this area was during reader’s
workshop one day. Rather than having the class read an article together on immigration, I
had students work in groups to read the article together and write a paragraph as a group
about why immigrants moved to America. The closure activity involved groups
evaluating each other’s paragraph. Students were engaged in this lesson and it proved to
be a successful learning activity.
Professional growth in achieving this goal will continue as I plan to try new
approaches and make sure I am consistent with a balanced approach to teaching.
Reflecting on each and every lesson will allow me to grow in this area.
Goal 3: Establish standards of behavior and reinforce them according to students’
developmental levels to establish classroom management.
My cooperating teacher had an excellent management strategy for her classroom.
It involved a first warning which was a reminder, a second warning, a third warning that
was a time out, and a fourth warning which was a phone call home. I followed her
classroom management strategy, which was very effective. For example, there was a
student in the class that would often try to test me. As soon as I gave her a time out, she
changed her behavior for the better.
I believe I have made tremendous progress toward achieving this goal. For
example, during student teaching I implemented my own management strategy while
continuing to follow my cooperating teacher’s strategy. I came up with a motivation jar
where students earned gems for making good choices. Once the class received thirty
gems, they would get a reward from the list of rewards the class made together. The
students really responded to this strategy and enjoyed it.
To continue professional growth in this area, I plan on carrying the strategies I
learned to effectively manage a class in the future. I will base the management strategies
on my class and what works for the students as well. I will continue to search for
strategies to maintain classroom management by working with colleagues and
experimenting in the classroom.
Goal 4: To initiate instruction that involves effective initiation and closure.
This goal I was insistent on making progress toward because my internship
experience left me feeling uncertain with this aspect of instruction. The plans I
created left me forced to plan an initiation and closure, which has allowed me to
automatically include these aspects in my instruction.
An example of progress made in this area is a science lesson I taught on planting
seeds. The initiation involved students activating prior knowledge by completing a KWL
chart about what they know about plants. The lesson involved modeling planting seeds
for students. Students then planted seeds, and the closure activity involved students
making predictions about when their plants would grow. The initiation activity
encouraged students to begin thinking about plants to prepare them for the lesson. The
closure activity enabled students to make predictions, while getting them thinking about
the lessons ahead.
I believe this is one of my strongest progressions toward achieving a goal. To
continue professional growth, what must occur next is I need to remain consistent in
implementing an initiation and closure, while experimenting with more strategies
following the higher-order aspects of Blooms Taxonomy to foster students’ critical
thinking.
Goal 5: To develop meaningful content-specific knowledge, understanding, and skills by
connecting lessons and presenting content in an accurate clear way.
The content-specific text books I had in the classroom were very beneficial
resources. For example, science has always been my weakness, but the science resources
I was given by my cooperating teacher allowed me to read a lot about plants, and learn
from the resources. Therefore, when presenting the content to students, I was much more
confident. Furthermore, the mini unit gave me practice of connecting lessons. More
specifically, the fourth day of the mini unit involved students creating a pictograph with
the symbol equaling one. The fifth lesson involved students surveying and creating a
pictograph with the symbol equaling two. The connections between lessons allowed for
students to transition into the more challenging lesson and succeed in doing so.
As an educator I feel I am constantly learning new content. To continue
professional growth, I plan on reading lots of resources to gain more knowledge to offer
my students, as well as create lessons connecting to other lessons to build higher-level
thinking to challenge students.
What I Learned From My Students and Cooperating Teacher
My student teaching experience has taught me that each student is different.
Students need support, guidance, praise, and management to get the most out of their
learning. Students need to be interested in learning; therefore a balance of instructional
strategies is key to reach all learners. For example, providing students with the chance to
turn and talk during writer’s workshop about their writing, having students work in
groups to make graphs, and modeling a science lesson offers students a variety of
instructional strategies.
I have learned a great deal from my cooperating teacher. I have learned the most
important thing is that students learn what is taught. For instance, in the beginning of my
student teaching I taught a math lesson that was very lengthy that left students confused. I
decided to re-teach this lesson on place value focusing only on the tens place. This
allowed for students to understand the lesson without feeling overwhelmed. I have
learned that adjustments are often made on the spot during a lesson. Overall, I have
learned that teaching involves constant planning, evaluating, adjusting, and clear, wellpaced instruction.
How My Instruction Contributed to Student Learning
Following Bandura’s social learning theory, including modeling in my instruction
allowed students to take part in observational learning where they learned through
imitating a model. This is seen in a lesson where I modeled writing a journal entry
pretending to be an immigrant. Students were then able to write their own journal entry.
I measured the impact of this approach by reading their journal entries, recognizing all
students gained knowledge about the challenges immigrants face coming to America. My
instruction has also followed the theory of constructivism, where students create and
invent their own knowledge, while engaging in discussion. Examples of this are in
lessons during student teaching where students were given the opportunity to work
together in groups to solve word problems in math, or when students had to work
together to discuss ways to improve their drafts for writing. I was able to measure how
my instruction contributed to students’ learning by monitoring the class to listen to
students conversations working together, assessing students’ math work, and reading
students’ drafts to notice improvements in writing.
What I learned About Myself as a Teacher
I have learned that my areas of strength are maintaining classroom management,
including effective initiation and closure in a lesson, and self-assessing. For example, I
noticed that the motivation jar and following the teacher’s management strategy kept the
class well-behaved. The initiation implementation left the class prepared, and the closure
for each lesson enabled students to gain a sense of understanding and accomplishment.
An example of this is when students shared their projects for the book Charlotte’s Web.
This gave them a chance to close the lesson by celebrating their success.
To continue the development of my strengths, I will collaborate with colleagues
about effective classroom management strategies, and through trial and error I will
experiment with strategies in the classroom. I will use the knowledge gained in courses
and professional workshops in the future to gain knowledge about effective lesson
development as well.
My weaknesses are creating a balance with a variety of instructional strategies,
and pacing lessons. For example, one reader’s workshop lesson became very lengthy one
day, where students had to silently read and fill out a sequencing organizer. I noticed
students becoming disengaged reading and realized the lesson could have been shorter. I
will work on my weaknesses by being flexible during lessons to make necessary
adjustments when needed, and use teaching resources to search for different instructional
strategies to incorporate in the classroom. Continuous evaluation is important also to
observe strategies that students benefit from and vice versa.