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Domain One: Planning and Preparation
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Planning and preparation is a necessary step before all lessons. As teachers, planning encourages us to think deeper about what we are teaching and how we are teaching it. It allows us to think about what we want students to achieve and learn during the lesson and how we might best promote this learning. An important part of planning and preparation is thinking about the different needs of our students and how lessons can be differentiated to meet the needs of all students. I believe a solid understanding of content, your students and the learning objectives are necessary to create the best plan possible. The following artifacts exhibit my experience with planning and preparation in the classroom.
1a: Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy
Teaching a Standard
I made this poster for standard CC.2.2.2.A.2, use mental strategies to add and subtract within 20. Understanding the standards you are teaching to your students is key to creating a good lesson plan and carrying out instruction. If you do not know what you are teaching, your students are not going to understand what you want them to learn. It is also important to know how it builds off and sets up for other standards. Knowing which skills they have that it builds on and what they will next learn is important. Knowing the standard will allow you to create a lesson focusing on the correct content.
1b: Demonstrating Knowledge of Students
Differentiated Math Lesson
Differentiating is always important, regardless of what the make up of your classroom is. You will always have students at different levels or that learn different ways. As teachers it is key that we craft instruction that benefits and teaches all students. In my student teaching placement we had a number of gifted students and so differentiated instruction had an important place in my classroom. This math lesson, shows how I gave students different math worksheets. I organized my groups so that the students who were ready for the more advanced worksheet were all in one group. When they came to the direct station I worked with them on more advanced problems then I did with the other groups.
1d: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources
Technology in the Classroom
Technology is not vital to a lesson, but when it is available it is great resource that can be used to advance student learning. My student teaching placement was the first time I was in a school that had one to one devices. Over the course of my time in third grade, I tried to take advantage of student's having Chromebooks. Technology I introduced to the classroom included Kahoot, Prezi, Powerpoint/Google Slides and Nearpod. My students fell in love with Kahoot and I found it worked well as a good tool to review before a test. We played the energy Kahoot the day before our science test. I also created a prefix/suffix Prezi that I used to teach students different prefixes and suffixes. I used Google Slides often in various math and ELA lessons. I projected the array powerpoint and students had to write a related number sentence on their whiteboards. We used this combination of whiteboards and powerpoint often. I introduced Nearpod as a way of enriching our social studies lessons. I wanted to make them more engaging and interactive then just reading from the textbook. I liked that Nearpod allowed me to present information and students could interact by answering questions, polls and matching vocab. I also liked that the slides showed up on their screen, allowing those in the back of the room to see clearly.
1e: Designing Coherent Instruction
Social Studies Unit
The first social studies unit of the year for third grade is Our Country Has a History. The school has a textbook, but I went beyond the textbook when creating the unit plan. Due to the end of my placement I did not end the unit with students, but I taught most of it and made it as engaging and hands on as possible for students. I used Nearpod for some of my lessons. This brought a technology resource into the class. Instead of just a slideshow this allowed students to interact with questions, polls and matching activities. I used a variety of instructional methods, including Nearpod, whole group and textbook reading. The unit also included a timeline project.
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