Personal portfolio by Aajahne Seeney

Structures for Learning

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 20:08:02 UTC

On the first day of school, students worked collectively with the teacher to create a list of class expectations and a mission statement. Involving students in the process of making rules, allows for a sense of ownership over the expectations. Since the list is displayed, it can be referred to by the teacher and students alike throughout the day and whenever necessary. After seeing the benefits of this method of creating and introducing class expectations to students, my ideas towards how I will do it in my future classroom has changed.

Positive Classroom Climate

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 20:08:19 UTC

This was a piece of feedback that I received after an observation. I took this feedback as a learning opportunity, I spent a lot of time at the board, lecturing during this lesson which is not something I typically like to do. This was a point of growth for me because later, with a different lesson, I received feedback that I did very well visiting each group and engaging them. Specifically, visiting each group, hearing/observing their concerns and questions, asking them probing questions and moving on to allow them to solve on their own.

Objectives for Learning

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:44:36 UTC

In the beginning of my student teaching experience I really struggled with making a clear yet measurable objective. This is an example of one of my more solid objectives. The objective is aligned with the standard for the lesson which in this case was: CCSS.RL.4.Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text. The objective was also frequently revisited throughout the lesson. One way I learned to effectively revisit and consistently remind students of the objective is to tie any discussion into the objective when possible. For instance, one of the discussion questions was What warning is Ant referring to in his dialogue? While discussing, I took the opportunity to revisit the objective and make the connection between warnings and potential lessons learned in a story.

Presentation of Information

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:44:46 UTC

The procedures of this lesson are strategically sequenced and placed in a way that allows for the teacher to model, then give students an opportunity to practice collaboratively, and finally demonstrating their skills independently. This is called the I do, We do, You do model of instruction. This model guides students to mastering the objective independently by presenting the information in different ways. Over the time of my student teaching experience, I learned how to effectively use this technique with various different types of lessons.

Checks for Understanding and Feedback

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:44:58 UTC

One way that I learned to efficiently assess students and give them the valuable opportunity of assessing themselves is through the thumbs up/down/sideways practice demonstrating their comfortability with or understanding of the task. At the end of this lesson, I reminded students of the objective and criteria for success then I asked them how comfortable they felt with the objective which was to determine the theme of play. I was surprised to see that the students' responses varied, suggesting that there self-assessments were honest and not changed by the vulnerability of this type of self-assessment. Moving forward, I will continue to include self-assessments in as many lesson as needed/possible because there are methods like the thumbs up one or a fist-to-five that allow for quick and honest responses and feedback.

Rigorous Assignment

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:45:15 UTC

This assignment where students engaged with a investigative simulation demonstrates a relevant task that prompts students to apply their knowledge and answer realistic questions. I was surprised to learn that students were eager to participate in the simulation, the instructions were pretty complex in my opinion but by supporting students throughout the activity, they were able to experiment with the simulation successfully. Students recorded their observations and then came to a conclusion regarding if the predator found the prey to be safe to eat. This also helped students make the connection between the learning and a real-world scenario of predators not being able to gather crucial information about their prey due to the amount of life.

Questioning and Discussion

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:45:28 UTC

The current lesson focused on listening/reading a play and periodically engaging in discussion questions to support and assess comprehension. As the teacher, I took on the role of the discussion facilitator, I decided when it was appropriate to pause and ask questions. However, as seen in the first question, I gave students the opportunity to generate their own questions from the text. Since I felt it would be more beneficial for them to collaborate on this instead of raising their hands and sharing a question, I prompted them to discuss their questions and answers within their group. All of the questions asked aligned around the lessons objective which was to determine the theme of a drama. Therefore, I asked questions like how does Ant’s dialogue support the play’s theme and what lesson is Ant trying to teach grasshopper. After asking the question I provided adequate wait-time of about 20-30 seconds or until I felt most students had time to come up with a thought or response.

Academic Language and Vocabulary

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-19 21:46:12 UTC

This piece of student work exhibits a time when a student used academic vocabulary to explain and elaborate on their thinking. The vocabulary word was sensitive and while students were not directed to include scientific vocabulary it was impressive and a learning opportunity to see that some students will. It also demonstrated to me that my efforts of reviewing the vocabulary in prior lessons supported students and equipped them to be able to appropriately use the vocabulary in the lesson. This actually become a moment of clarity for me because while grading this assessment, I struggled a bit due to the possibility of variety in answers since it is a writing prompt. I began looking for academic vocabulary being appropriately used in the writing because this would demonstrate that students are understanding the concept.

Equitable Access

seeneyaajahne — 2024-11-26 01:32:40 UTC

In this short clip of small group instruction with MLL students, students are given equitable opportunities to respond and participate through the use of whiteboards responses and multimedia resources. In the beginning of my experience working with these same MLL students, I felt stumped when it came to understanding their level of vocabulary both in english and their native language. An activity like this helps students identify common objects, it provides the opportunity for me as the teacher to observe if the student knows the word in english or their native language. After naming the object, the students practiced writing the words on whiteboards. As noticed in the video, the students did not have to worry about getting the perfecting spelling, some students confused similar looking letters, others completely misspelled the word. However, perfection was not the goal of this task, instead it worked as an opportunity for me to gauge what each student knows and allow for every student to participate.