Long range plans
SECTION I
In the classroom, the students were highly communicative and very willing to give the instructor information regarding what they have covered in the classroom. After some observation, the students seemed to have a very thorough understanding of the topics the instructor informed me that they had covered already. The willingness that the students had regarding their interest in sharing learned information gave the impression that the instructor encouraged students to engage verbally in the classroom. There is a high level of parental involvement. Football is the most vastly discussed interest. Students tend to behave with turbulence often.
The information about the child is important because according to theory and personal experience, learning is most valuable when one is able to apply it to one’s life. Planning a lesson without knowing the students is like creating a motivational speech without knowing the audience. Sans student interest and student information, the the message and lesson could be lost on the teacher’s audience. Overall, I felt that the instruction given to the students was encouraging engagement in the students; while it is difficult to make decisions or assumptions regarding the nature of instruction based on observation, the overall impression given by the classroom was that it was a welcoming place in which students felt comfortable.
I will use this information to guide my long-range by being able to incorporate their personalities into each lesson, activity and unity. Familiarity with the students also allows me to cater to their own personal timeline, and decide how much classroom management needs to be modeled and “taught” and how much of it is innate to the students. I know the significance of the information will also aid in the same classroom management aspect as long-range planning. Knowing how the students and I navigate a day is valuable in knowing to plan for more transitions and modeling and less spelling practice.
Reflection:
Understanding the students and the ways that the students engage in the classroom is fundamentally important for the development of any kind of long term plans for the classroom. For instance, a classroom with few or no children with special learning needs will be vastly different from a classroom made up of children who have special needs or disabilities; because these students are young learners, it might also affect their maturity level in comparison with their classmates. Young students are sometimes at drastically different maturity levels, and this may affect the ability of certain students to meet maturity-based standards (Southern California Department of Education, 2016).
SECTION II
General goals for student achievement:
General, measurable student goals based on each content area (Southern California Department of Education, 2016):
English and Language Arts
Social Studies
SECTION III
Reflection:
When determining the instructional sequence, there were a few things to be considered. First, there must be continuity between the different weeks regarding the type of instruction given and the overall structure of the instruction that is given to the students. After all, routine is quite important for learners, particularly for learners that are quite young. However, there also has to be variation in the type of material learned so that students continue to get the variation and the different structure that they need in the classroom—many bright students, for instance, pick up new material very quickly, and “overlapping” new material with older material gives these students the opportunity to get ahead, while other students have the opportunity to really establish an excellent understanding of the information that has been learned previously. The key experiences for helping children really galvanize their learning come from the learning strategies and the assessments: when students participate in these kinds of hands-on activities, they understand better the applications of different in-class concepts. Many teaching pedagogies suggest that young students are still struggling with abstract thought, and engaging students through in-class and out of class enrichment activities is fundamentally important to continuously develop their innate creativity and thirst for learning.
SECTION IV
Much of the formal assessment done during these nine weeks will be done utilizing a project-based grading system. These projects will be based on a summative structure—that is, they will be given to students after the unit is completed. The goal of these projects is to inspire creativity and engagement in the material with the student; parents or guardians should not have a heavy hand in the creation of these projects, but parental guidance and assistance is welcomed as a positive part of the child’s education. These projects will be graded for completeness rather than correctness, although points will be removed if the project appears incomplete. Projects will be graded on a score of 20, with in-class projects and assessments given ten points apiece. Students will also be assessed on their various in-class and homework efforts during the course of the nine-week program. This formal assessment system is designed to ensure that students are both completing their work and demonstrating a good faith effort to finish this work.
The instructor will also keep a log of each student’s individual progress in each unit, taking particular time to note each student’s improvement or development every other day. This will be the informal progress and achievement patterns will be recognized by the instructor. The instructor will send a progress report to each student’s family after five weeks and then a final assessment after nine weeks. Students who are struggling will receive a weekly progress report.
Reflection:
There is important information that can be gained from doing official and summative assessments on students, but young learners tend to need much more engagement than merely summative assessments. Reading fluency, writing ability, and analyzing capabilities are all things that the instructor needs to assess in students daily. Most teaching pedagogy suggests that assessments for young children should not stress or harm children: they should only be used if they can benefit the child directly, and they should not be used to hold a child back.
References
Southern California Department of Education (2016). Standards - South Carolina Department of Education. Ed.sc.gov. Retrieved 23 March 2016, from http://ed.sc.gov/instruction/standards-learning/english-language-arts/standards/
