In 2017, I established three goals: 1) To grow professionally in the area of language arts, 2) To incorporate the Maker Movement into curricular areas, and 3) To be more decisive.
When I established my first goal, to grow professionally in the area of language arts, I was not aware the school would be making a significant change to the daily schedule, moving from a 5-day to a 6-day schedule. As a result of this change, I lost my extra writing periods with my students, and their writing activities took place solely within their extended language arts period, which is taught by another teacher. Next year, the intermediate level will be moving to self-contained classrooms, which means I will again have the opportunity to teach language arts. As a result, growing professionally in this area will continue to be one of my goals as I will have the opportunity to further develop my practice.
The change to a 6-day rotation also impacted my second goal from 2017-incorporating the Maker Movement into curricular areas. The schedule change reduced my pockets of flexible time within the daily schedule; however, I was still able to bring more "making" into the curricular areas in different ways than I had initially imagined. When I established this goal, I envisioned my students engaging in woodworking projects, but I learned my current group of students preferred projects involving drawing and the use of technology. As a result, I pivoted my strategy and provided opportunities for them to use these interests in the curricular areas. In math, this may look like drawing story problems in order to understand them or exploring equivalent fractions by creating a map of a river trail. In science, this may look like creating slide shows to present to their peers or drawing systems of the human body. I incorporated woodworking into science class in our study of magnetism in the Spring of 2019. Students were challenged to build contraptions that defied gravity. (There are pictures of two of the contraptions built by students in the Teaching section.)
One "making" opportunity I am especially excited about bringing to my students this year involves my work with a grant procured by an engineer at the University of Pittsburgh. Our work for this grant is called, "Exploring Engineering Through the Study of Friction. The goal of this work is to create a science curriculum that introduces students to the core concepts related to the practice of engineering. The grant team has been developing this curriculum over the past five months and I will begin piloting it with my class in January 2020. These science lessons will focus on friction and the engineering design process and will provide the students with opportunities to do making, to use iPads for documentation and programming, and to learn a new programming platform using Ozobots. A secondary aim of this work is to actively disrupt biases and stereotypes around who is seen as a member of the STEAM/Engineering community. Throughout the unit, student groups will be mentored by college students and professors who represent a wider range of gender and racial identities.
Of the three goals from 2017, I believe I have grown the most in being more decisive. This is a result of continued thoughtfulness, reflection, and the use of new forms of ongoing assessment. I am now more adept at analyzing where my students are, deciding on what experiences they need, and planning my lessons accordingly. Along those lines, I have also expanded my planning in an effort to provide students more opportunities to make choices during class based on what they feel they need most.
In collaboration with administration, I have developed three goals to work toward in the coming years: 1) To grow and develop my expertise in language arts instruction, 2) To incorporate more differentiation in my instruction, and 3) To work toward disseminating my teaching practices for the benefit of the Falk community and other educational communities.
As we move into self-contained classrooms, I find myself excited for new opportunities to teach language arts, but also nervous because it is a significant undertaking. While I have never been completely in charge of language arts instruction, I have had pockets of opportunities to explore language arts with my students. I have also had many ideas over the years that I am eager to put into action. There are three steps I would like to make toward achieving this goal before the start of the 2020-2021 school year:
Differentiated instruction is teaching in a way that is tailored to students needs in order to maximize each individuals’ learning potential. This approach may involve varying content, process, pacing, materials, and/or the environment. There are two aspects of differentiated instruction on which I would like to focus my efforts.
Teachers learn best through their interactions with other teachers. This is because they typically have shared hopes and struggles, a level of respect and understanding for each other, and a communal experience and language. To that end, I have been challenged by administration to work toward disseminating my teaching practices for the benefit of the Falk community and other educational communities. There are two steps I will make to begin to accomplish this goal.