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I chose my third lesson observation and third lesson plan as my last Artifact to cover for this assignment. This lesson came out really well and it showed a lot of the improvements I have been working on this semester. It includes better standards than my first lesson plan that align with what the students will actually be doing, plans for a full closure with the objective of the class in mind, and it makes sure that students hit that objective. Aside for the planning going really well for this lesson, the lesson implementation also went very well. Students did great work that day, students were very engaged, and I even got the sleeping one to participate, and the class reached a full closure and students did all the work to meet the objective. This lesson also showed really positive relationships with the students. I even had a little bit of extra time at the end of class and had no idea how to fill those last several minutes. I ended up playing Simon Says with the students and after the class started to have fun with the game, an idea popped into my head. I started to ask the class questions and have them answer in the game about the content that was learned that day. A lot of the students were engaged, playing the game, and giving me a new form of formative assessment that I may use in my future years as an educator. This showed my quick thinking and creativity in the classroom, and I hope to create more spontaneous formative assessments like Academic Simon Says.

I'm also proud of this lesson because I showed a lot of growth from just my second observation. I planned effectively with the objectives in my mind, showed on the spot and quick thinking, my relationships with the students were showcased, and it really does cover a lot of the Teaching Quality Standards.

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Standard I- Teachers demonstrate mastery of and pedagogical expertise in the content they teach.

Element A- Teachers provide instruction that is aligned with the Colorado Academic Standards and district's organized plan of instruction.

This plan clearly states objectives and understandings that align with the Colorado Academic Standards. The students demonstrated their acquired skills by discussing about Revolutionary leaders and answering critical-thinking questions like "What if the Revolution happened". This plan also goes along with the school's plan of instruction.

Element B- Teachers develop and implement lessons that connect to a variety of content areas/disciplines and emphasize literacy practices.

I integrated different methods of literacy into the lesson. The students read, write, speak, and listen all in this lesson. Students applied their literacy skills in their individual work and their discussions with their peers.

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Standard II- Teachers establish a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for a diverse population of students.

Element A- Teachers foster a predictable learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior and efficient use of time which each student has a positive, nurturing, relationship with caring adults and peers.

In this lesson, I implemented Simon Says to keep students engaged at the very end of class. I had a sleeping student go take a walk around the school to help with the dozing off, and it actually worked. I also think I showed meaningful pacing in this lesson and even had some time left over that was not wasted at all.

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Standard III- Teachers plan and deliver effective instruction and create an environment that facilitates leaning for their students.

Element B- Teachers use formal and informal methods to assess student learning, provide feedback, and use results to inform planning and instruction.

This lesson allowed for me to create a new type of formative assessment on the spot called Academic Simon Says. I may be able to perfect this method later on and make it a great tool for teaching. If the high schoolers were having fun with it, I can definitely make it real fun for the middle schoolers.

Element E- Teachers provide students with opportunities to work in teams and develop leadership.

This lesson promoted student teamwork by asking the groups to discuss the most important leader of the French Revolution in their opinion. I also had students discuss their critical thinking to the questions "What if the Revolution never happened" and received many great answers.

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Building Positive Student Relationships 

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Building Positive Student Relationships 

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Even though I was only at my first placement for a short amount of time I think I made a lot of positive impacts and still built great relationships that I will remember for a very long time. I received five different S.P.A.R.K. awards and one of the students even nominated me twice. These are awards that students can nominate staff or other students, for modeling the traits of a positive member in the community. I was nominated for kindness and compassion, taking responsibility, and showing a positive attitude. There was also a list of several students who chose me as a staff member as someone they could relate to. I even overheard one of the other teachers telling another staff member that "Mr. Jones has gotten a lot of these". I even kept a list of all of the students who said that they had no adult in the building that they could connect with and made a note of which ones were in my classes. Sadly, I wasn't able to build those relationships because I moved to a different placement. Nevertheless, I will remember the connections made at CRMS for a very long time.

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Within just a few weeks at my new school, Mountain Range High School, I received handwritten notes from a few of the students in my 5th period class. The notes were a definite surprise to me, and they contained words that motivated me to keep pushing through Student Teaching. They wrote phrases like "You are hands down the best teacher I have ever had" and telling me that I am a reason that they come to class. It felt really good to be a reason that students came to class, and this became a new reason on why I want to be a teacher. If I can create a presence and environment that students WANT to be in, then I can keep students in the classroom and creating meaningful opportunities for themselves. I hung all of these notes and the awards on a wall in my room along with other notes and gifts I have received from students in the last four years. This is the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning and hopefully one day, I can fill all the walls in my room.

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Standard IV- Teachers demonstrate professionalism through ethical conduct, reflection, and leadership.

Element D- Teachers demonstrate leadership in the school, the community, and the teaching profession.

The students see me as a leader and someone they can relate to. This gives students a reason to feel comfortable in the class and make the most out of their learning opportunities.

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Standard II- Teachers establish a safe, inclusive and respectful learning environment for a diverse population of students.

Element A- Teachers foster a predictable learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior and efficient use of time in which each student has a positive, nurturing, relationship with caring adults and peers.

In writing these notes and nominations the students are showing their respect for me. It also shows that I establish caring and respectful relationships with the students and do my best to create a very inclusive environment.

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This post relates to connecting with students on a more personal level in order to create meaningful opportunities in the classroom that will lead to a better environment. I learned this in my EDS 3280 class with activities like the Student info Sheet. I wondered when I first looked at the Student Info Sheet, "Why is this lady asking about my life" "Why does she care". Then after working with the students myself, I really found out what personal connections can do with the environment in a classroom. The relationship between me and that teacher has even grown since then, with our work together in Student Teaching.

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I did a lot of work with meaningful planning in both EDS 3130 and EDS 3280. In 3130, I started to work on my lesson internalization and putting myself in the mid of the class when I was creating my lessons. This was when I really started to think about revolving lessons around the objective for the day. In EDS 3280 (sorry to reference three times, just such a good class), I learned how to refine my planning skills with the Monster Lesson Plan. This plan was a lot to work with, but it really helped me with my timing and developments in my teacher thinking. At the end of the Student Teaching, I was able to effectively design a lesson that included a full closure, work that reflected the objective of the class, all while creating meaningful relationships with the students.

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For this assignment, I had different groups of students analyze different documents relating to the causes of the French Revolution. Students had to read the different documents and then find out not only the cause for the Revolution, but the reason for the cause. For example, "One cause of the French Revolution was the high taxes on the lower classes because it left the people hungry and angry at the king." This shows the students higher thinking and expands on their critical skills. In order to get the info from all the documents, I had students work in groups with a different document and they would present their findings to the class. This activity also had the use of roles to keep students engaged and responsible for their own work. One student would draw the pictures on the poster, one student would read and annotate the documents given to the group, one student would write the group's findings on the poster and label it, and the last student would read their findings to the class. After the two-day period, the students presented their posters and wrote the information into their note catchers for each document. This allowed for students to hear the common causes and reasons from each group and decide on the main causes of the French Revolution. The classes also did great work in every facet of this lesson. Most were able to apply this information to the other assessments in class which tells me this type of jigsaw activity did really work well for these students. I really like the creation aspect of this lesson as well; it is definitely something I plan to keep doing as an educator.

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Standard I- Teachers demonstrate a mastery of and pedagogical expertise in the content they teach

Element C- Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content, central concepts, inquiry, appropriate evidence-based instructional practices, and socialized characteristics of the disciplines being taught.

With this activity the students were able to provide a variety of explanations and multiple representations of the concept of causes of the French Revolution. The students drew images, wrote down their findings, and discussed their thinking with the class as a whole.

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Standard III- Teachers plan and deliver effective instruction and create an environment that facilitates learning for their students.

Element E- Teachers provide students with opportunities to work in teams and develop leadership.

I held students accountable for their own work by assigning the groups roles. The roles were displayed in front of the class so students could always refer back to their instructions for the lesson. I even provided a little more differentiation by pre assigning roles to specific students that better met their needs. I used the group process to build towards more group work in the class and a Socratic Seminar at the end of the Unit. A lot of students were very shy at the beginning of my arrival, but I have seen a lot of students do a full 180 when it comes to sharing in front of the class.

Element F- Teachers model and promote effective communication.

A lot of these students were shy when they would share with each other, and some would just show their notes to one another and have their peers copy their work. I had to model effective communication to a lot of these classes. I would find a student who I had a good relationship with and then would stick the paper in their face and ask the class "Is this how I should share my information to ________". The class would reply "no" and I would model effective communication with the class.

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In my EDS 3280 class we talked a lot about group collaboration with the use of different discussion and comprehension strategies. I used this activity as a form of a jigsaw where the students could become masters of what the document they were assigned and teach the information to the rest of the class. In this class I learned that partner work can be very beneficial because it provides students with the opportunity to check each other's work for accuracy.

Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, 4th Edition

Doug Buehl, 2007

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After teaching the students about some of the Enlightened Thinkers using guided notes, I decided to have them create a small presentation. I went around the room and assigned students groups with numbers correlating to a list of Thinkers on their rubric. There were some students who had never created a slideshow or PowerPoint, and there were some students who were too worried about how to format the slideshow. Because of this I decided to create a skeleton for all of the students to use. The skeleton was uploaded to Schoology and made available for all students to see. The skeleton tells the students everything they need to accomplish on each slide. Starting with their first slide that says, "Enlightened Thinker's Name Here". Ending with asking the students how those ideas from that Thinker relate to the government today.

Not only did this method save time but it's also a method of differentiation. This also creates opportunities for scaffolding in the classroom, because with later projects I can give a little less help each time until the students become a lot more independent in their studies. The readings that students were given also had underlined sections where students could easily pull information from. This would be a great idea to incorporate with the sixth graders I may be teaching here real soon! Some of them may have not created a slideshow before and might need help with the formatting.

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Standard II- Teachers establish a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for a diverse population of students.

Element C- Teachers engage students as individuals, including all those with diverse needs and interests, across a range of ability levels by adapting their teaching for the benefit of all students.

This was created to help students format their slideshows and have somewhere to place their thoughts. This helped students self-select their tasks for the two-day period since they were able to work in groups and divide up the work. Each student could track what they needed to do for each day. With something like this, students can actively manage their own learning and check off what they need to accomplish for the day.

Element D- Teachers work collaboratively with the families and/or significant adults for the benefit of students.

This lesson was differentiated even more by having the SSN students work through the prompts with the PARA on paper first. I gave a key to the PARA before-hand and explained the work to allow for less stress on the students' side. The SSN students did great work, and all worked together on one thinker. This was a great experience to have because I continue to work with this PARA and continue to make more meaningful opportunities for the SSN students Every day, I let her know what we are doing, give her the answer keys, and frequently check in with the group to ensure progress.

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Quality Standard III- Teachers plan and deliver effective instruction and create an environment that facilitates learning for their students.

Element A- Teachers demonstrate knowledge about the ways in which learning takes place, including the levels of intellectual, physical, social, and emotional development of their students.

I planned this lesson with the ELL and SSN students in mind and tried hard to figure out a way to differentiate simply to allow those students to have a healthy balance between struggle and learning. This differentiation really helped all of the students in the classes with their timing, comprehension of what they were supposed to learn, and what they were supposed to present. I also collaborated with the PARA and my mentor teacher to continue to improve on my differentiation for the ELL and SSN students.

Element C- Teachers integrate and utilize appropriate available technology to engage students in authentic teaching experiences.

I used this skeleton to enhance the students' use of information and collaboration. I saw a lot of students dividing the work up very nicely over the two-day period. This was also one of the first PowerPoint assignments I have ever done, and it allowed for me to assess what the students were learning with the available technology.

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This skeleton relates to different methods of differentiation. Something I learned a lot about in my CLD 3510 class. I learned that some ESL and SSN students can fall behind due to just slight miscommunications in direction, and it will become hard to grasp new concepts. This lesson also gave the opportunity to translate what was on the computer screen since this work was done using the students' laptops. ELL students can translate the words into their L1, and SSN students can use programs that break larger passages into smaller and easier to handle passages.

Bilingual and ESL Classrooms

Carlos Ovando and Bryant Jensen

2018