Showcase
Welcome to my showcase! This is where you will find work that I completed while studying for my Masters of Arts degree at Michigan State University. My course work over the last three years has helped shape me into the teacher I am today. I have taken the insights and new information and incorporated it into my classroom with my students. This has transformed my curriculum to fit the needs of all my students especially those that exhibit challenges. The work i have highlighted is broken up into three categories: Special Education, Technology, and Literacy.
Special Education
Special education was one of my main focuses while studying for my MAED. The first element I wanted to share was my project on addressing challenging behavior. I identified a student exhibiting challenging behaviors in the classroom and developed a plan to address those behaviors. This specific child was struggling engaging with his peers in a positive way. Over the course of the project I tracked his behavior, noticed common trends and developed a plan to address his social interactions during those times. The main part of the behavior plan was to be proactive and prepare him for a social situation before it happened. This challenging behavior assignment demonstrated my ability to evaluate what was not working and how I could fix it. It was not easy, and did not happen right away. It took months before we saw any imporvement. It taught me to be patient and not give up after the first failed attempt. It takes time to correct behavior.
The second element I wanted to highlight is a technology plan for a child with ADHD tendencies and social behavior problems. The plan was to use two forms of technology to help him focus on a task while also learning the content needed. The goal was to give him the tools he needed to be successful in the academic work while also interacting with his peers in a positive way. This assignment demonstrated my ability to research, evaluate and find a solution to a problem. This assignment gave a students a fighting chance to succeed. His diagnosis was holding him back. He needed the right tools in order to be a active participant.
The third element is a presentation I created on how to facilitate positive behavior in the classroom. The presentation tells what to teach, how to teach it and how to evaluate if it is working. This is how I teach positive behavior in my classroom. The main ideas is having the children help create a list of agreements to follow in the classroom. They are: I can be kind, I can be responsible and I can be safe. This assignment demonstrated my ability to take successful strategies I use in the classroom and teach it to other teachers that may benefit from the information.
Technology
Technology is ever changing. Children now are surrounded by it. It is important to intertwine technology into the classroom. It can be very beneficial. These three elements are examples of how I took technology and utilized it in our project work.
The first three assignments were technology tools that I implemented into the classroom. The first one is ZeeMap. We had been studying maps and how to travel using them. For this assignment I used ZeeMaps to pin the children addresses on the map. We then talked about how far away some people drive for school. The children also noticed how close they live to some fo their friends. The second tool is Epic! It was a website that reads books aloud to children. I use this every day for children to listen and look as the book highlights each word it reads. The third tool is Kahoot!. This is a app for your phone that allows a teacher to assign quizzes on certain topics to assess students learning. These tech tool assignment demonstrated my ability to adapt a lesson to make it more engaging to my students.
The last technology element I added to my portfolio is my project on repurposing technology. The goal of the assignment was to take a lesson I taught in the classroom but adapt it to include technology. For this lessons I changed a letter sound lesson into a learning station with iPads where the children learned the material by playing a letter sound game. This was the first time I had the children use the classroom iPad on their own. It was very successful and we still incorporate an online learning station weekly. This assignment demonstrated my ability to integrate technology into every day academic work.For this reason, the children are more engaged and it has shown improvement in letter and sound recognition.
Literacy
Literacy has always been a passion of mine. I love to read and I have always wanted to instill that same love in my students, but not all students enjoy reading. I wanted to showcase the work I have done to improve my curriculum to help those that are struggling.
The first element is a tool I designed to assist struggling readers. It is called a reading window. It is a piece of construction paper with a small rectangular window cut out. It is used to help children isolate one word at a time when trying to decode words in a book. This tool demonstrated my ability to see what students were struggling with and find a soltution to help them. This helped my kindergartners to learn their sight words. It is especially helpful with children with ADHD.
The second element I wanted to share was a project I did on vocabulary. I took two ESL children in my classroom and developed plan to teach them vocabulary words over the course of three weeks. I focused on the same set of works and taught lessons in three different ways to continue to expose them to the words. They showed great improvement in their understanding after the tasks were over. This assignment demonstrated my ability to target ESL children that were struggling and create a plan to teach them in a way that was effective to them. The post assessment showed great improvement in vocabulary recognition in both students still learning english.
Image Attributions:
Dual Endorsement Program, https://inside.ewu.edu/education/dual/
Designing a Classroom for the Future, https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/02/designing-the-classroom-of-the-future-technology-as-a-force-multiplier/
Children's books everyone should read, https://www.insider.com/classic-best-childrens-books-2017-4