The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.
As teachers, it is important that we tell our students that they are capable of learning anything if they keep practicing. In other words, if students have the stamina to practice math; language-arts; or social studies; or even learn a skill outside of school like riding a bike, they will achieve mastery of their learning. We call this method the growth mindset, or the idea that we can get better at something if we keep trying. This is the idea that not all students have a given ability level because they were raised to have that ability level by their parents, but that students’ ability level at any skill is what they practice it to be. As a teacher, I believe that students learn because they have the stamina to learn, and what they bring from their home life is not the only determinate of their growth in the classroom. While what a child brings from home is an important factor in determining that classroom growth, the most important factor of a child’s learning is his or her own desire to learn. As teachers, we must encourage our students to want to keep developing in their learning by creating engaging lesson plans for each child. However, it is not only the lesson that is important for a child to grow and develop. The teacher must keep track of the progress that each child has made to plan for future lessons for the child to grow. The teacher must know where the child is in the learning process of a particular skill to continue helping him or her learn, and that is why anecdotal records on the child is important. The teacher learns what the child’s strengths are and what the child has to keep practicing to help the student achieve mastery of the skill.
Beginning Ending Consonant Sounds Missing Letter Game
For a child to achieve true mastery of a skill, that child must have some prior knowledge of that skill. As teachers, we create lessons that build from one skill to the next to achieve mastery of one over-arching skill. My first artifact was my very first lesson my field supervisor observed. Prior to this observation, I had taught a lesson on beginning consonant sounds to prepare myself for when she came. The lesson my supervisor came to observe built off that previous lesson on beginning consonant sounds. The lesson reviews beginning consonant sounds during the anticipatory set when I put five pictures on the SMART board and ask them for the beginning letter of the word of each picture. Then, I had a student play a game in which I show a picture and the letters used to spell that word under that picture. However, one letter was missing, and it was either at the beginning or the end to address beginning and ending consonant sounds. The game started with the letters missing at the beginning, then I told the students that the letters would be missing at the end. In summary, the lesson started with a review of beginning consonant sounds and ended with them applying what they learned about finding out what beginning consonant fits a word to finding the ending sound. In other words, the students’ learning development went from finding beginning consonant sounds to ending consonant sounds. To address the learner differences in my class to help the learner development, I put the students in heterogeneous groups. This way, they can help their classmates grow and develop as learners.
This artifact shows that for students to fully achieve mastery of a skill like phonics, one must build off a set of smaller skills like using prior knowledge of beginning consonant sounds to apply to trying to master ending consonant sounds. I chose this artifact for my portfolio because it shows how I chunked learning consonant sounds into two smaller skills: beginning sounds and ending sounds for students to grow in the overarching skill of phonics. I originally wanted to teach both beginning and ending sounds in my first lesson when I asked students to come up to the SMART board and circle the words with the same beginning sounds. My cooperating teacher had showed me the game prior to my planning of the lesson, and I realized that the game was only played with beginning sounds. I thought that maybe it would be a better idea to start with beginning sounds, then transition to ending sounds for my next lesson. When I wrote this lesson, I had in mind that although I wanted the focus on ending consonant sounds, I knew it was a good idea to activate prior knowledge of beginning sounds in the anticipatory set and the beginning of the game to build off what they would learn to apply to ending sounds during this lesson.
I arrived at the decision to use my lesson plan as an artifact in my portfolio when I talked with my cooperating teacher about separating beginning and ending consonant sounds into different lessons. I realized that I was doing this because students must learn one component of consonant sounds at a time, so they are not taking in so much information at once. Learner development is a gradual process, and this artifact shows the transition from a review of beginning sounds from the previous lesson to the ending sounds they will learn during this lesson. This artifact helps me become a better teaching candidate because it shows that I am a thorough thinker as I plan my lessons. It shows that I thought about what I wanted to teach (beginning and ending consonant sounds). It shows how I thought about how my students would learn the information (splitting it into two separate lessons), and it shows how I wanted them to transition from one skill to the next (reviewing beginning sounds first and applying what they learned to finding the ending consonant sound). This artifact shows how I can take one idea for a lesson and plan it to be a set of lesson plans to develop one skill in one subject.
*My second artifact cannot be posted online because it has the names of students in my class.
While it is important for teachers to create lessons that are intended for children to learn and grow from prior knowledge of a particular subject, it is also important for teachers to keep records of that growth. The second artifact I want to use for my portfolio is the anecdotal records that I took from teaching my lesson on beginning and ending consonant sounds. I chose this artifact because it shows where my students are now and how they have learned and grown from the previous lesson I taught. While the artifact does not tell the full story of how my students have grown from lesson to lesson, there are interpretations of the story. For example, I have one student who struggles with literacy in class. In the previous lesson, I had asked the students to circle the picture with the same beginning consonant sound. He circled jam and turtle. However, when I did my ending informal assessment of this lesson, I asked the students what kind of letters the black letters are on their nametags. The black letters are consonants and the red letters are vowels, which I addressed before the students started playing the game. I called on this boy, and he was able to tell me that the black letters are consonants. It was a very fulfilling moment for me as a student teacher because a student who struggles with literacy was able to tell me what a consonant was at the end of my lesson. The reason this artifact is so significant is because I have on paper how my students have grown and developed throughout a lesson. I can see where they are after the lesson and what needs improvement for when I teach my next phonics lesson. That way, I can plan lessons in the future that will help each student grow. This artifact demonstrates my understanding of the standard because it shows that I am keeping track of how my students have grown from lesson to lesson. Another significant detail about this artifact is that the way they were seated and grouped is also recorded, so the observer can see who they worked with during the lesson and how their peers helped them grow and develop. One important note I took was that I had a group of all boys, and they were all fooling around. I wrote, “All these boys in the same group. Try to prevent if possible”. The boys in my class are rather hyperactive, so it is important to keep them all out of one group or else they are going to be easily distracted. In other words, it shows that I understand what needs to be done to help them learn and grow for the next lesson.
I arrived at the decision to use this artifact after I taught the lesson. I thought a lot about the boy who was able to tell me what a consonant was despite struggling with literacy. I thought it was interesting that he went from not knowing that jam and turtle do not start with the same letter to being able to tell me the definition of a consonant. It showed how different a child is from lesson to lesson. I understand that knowing what a consonant is and being able to say two words start with a consonant sound is not the same, but it tells me how the child understands the material. The boy probably understands these two pieces of information in two separate entities, but he will probably be able to understand that they go together in future lessons that I will create. I saw how the boy learns and grows through the notes I took on how he grew from lesson to lesson and saw that this lesson showed growth in this child. This artifact helps me become a better teaching candidate because it shows that I pay attention to how my students learn and grow across lessons. It shows that I take notes on what each child needs to work on and how I can plan that lesson to help those students grow. It shows that I understand the importance of taking anecdotal records to keep contributing to student growth. Furthermore, it shows not only how to plan for future lessons, but it shows how students grew in that current lesson. I have it written on my records that the boy who struggles with literacy told me what a consonant is, so I know that he made more progress from the previous lesson. This artifact makes me a better candidate because it shows how I pay attention to student growth and plan lessons around it.