Assignment 3

Liza Drellack

Assignment 3

ED 4800 Standards of Effective Practice

Dr. K. Smith

 

1.    The unit I developed to teach with The Outsiders contributed well to my education of my eighth graders. Through the course of my student teaching assignment, I was able to recognize satisfaction of 8^th grade benchmark standards like word recognition, analysis and fluency when the students were using inferential context clues to find the meanings to their vocabulary words.  What was nice about our daily vocabulary activities was the students were utilizing these techniques in their everyday Accelerated Reading activities.  Vocabulary Expansion was an end result of all of our reading.  Along with context clues, students completed word maps routinely and one of the parts of the word map was the origin of the word as well as the Greek or Latin roots.  Students utilized these tools when we got new vocabulary words like the prefix “in” students were able to tell me how if you tagged that to a word it meant “not.”   With my creative Bio Poem exercise the students were accomplished writing in a different type of writing being that of poetry.  The students were expressive and creative in the process.  The students also worked on the Handwriting and Word processing.  The Bio Poem started out as students hand writing their answers on a template and ended with them word processing as well as integrating graphics to reflect their own style.  The general story line of The Outsiders with the lead character being about 14 was positive in the fact that the students were able to relate with the characters as well as with the rural setting so I believe this helped in the student learning.

 

 

2.    I did not have any set in stone expectations of my students other than “learning” I figured that with the diverse and different learners each student would find a different aspect of the lesson to their liking.  With all my lessons, especially the Bio Poem, I believe the students were able to be more engaged with the use of technology.  I utilized the overhead and the smart board whenever I could.  Having an example on the board and being clear in my communication as well as having paper for the students to touch and fill out with them in my opinion gave the students the best ability for success.  I don’t really believe their was any failure or un-success if you will but every time the students were a bit confused like with the level of diction I used with the question writing activity I was able to gauge from the student response and adjust my presentation as the day would go by.

 

 

3.    I guess an instructional material I enjoyed was the use of the smart board.  Having a lap top permanently connected to the smart board with the internet access let me expose the students to companion materials like YouTube videos as well as music genres that allowed the students to understand the 60s better before they entered the actual novel.  I used it for its interactive elements having the kids do some underlining of text. I used it as a projector when I showed the kids The Outsiders movie. I played music and YouTube videos.  Now, not everyday did we have a functioning internet access, I just adjusted and always came with a back up plan like one day I hooked the computer up to my phone and played 60s music I had on my phone.  I had a great group of kids and as long as I didn’t take too long in getting them working they kept on task and were able to adjust when I did.

 

 

4.    In the student work I accompanied with Assignment #2 I had both high achieving work and low achieving work.  With the high achieving work the students definitely put effort and time into their assignment.  I think they enjoyed getting to share information about themselves with their fellow students as well as with myself.  There was no set right or wrong answer you just had to try and if the students had problems I made myself available during class as well as spent my lunch time in the classroom to help anyone that needed assistance. With all my assignments I gave the class I always was flexible in matters of extra credit or the chance of a retake.  With he low achieving students they opted not to fix or adjust their assignment to the benefit of their grade.  It was at the end of the trimester and they focused on assignments that were a little “heavier” like tests and assessments.

 

 

5.    The assessment tool I used the most was that of the rubric.  My teacher showed me the wonder of Rubistar.  I liked the use of a rubric because it had consistent set of criteria that the students needed to meet as opposed to the curve because there a student might not do well and then it might seem as they did just in relation to how other students were graded. I gave the students copies of the rubric I used for the assignment so they knew how they needed to approach their work to get the best grade they could strive for.