Below, I detail my experience teaching a unit on rhetoric to four sections of a PreAP English course located in the suburbs south of the Twin Cities. To learn more about how I planned this unit to align with the learning goals of the school, course, and students, visit the unit planning page. In part …
Overview Observation of students’ reactions and behaviors is one of the main tools I use to understand if I need to adjust my instructional strategies to promote better student learning and to gain data that helps me decide how to modify a lesson. When first tasked with delivering asynchronous instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak, I …
Overview The instructional presentation and analysis below detail my experience delivering a “Six Traits of Good Writing” AVID-notes presentation to a ninth-grade English class. I describe how my co-teacher and I considered Freire’s concepts of banking (passive) and active instruction when designing the lecture, attempting to make it dialogic and interactive. Using theories of student …
Overview Every action within the classroom is also a reaction; it is a response to the other bodies and ideas in the space, and therefore, it is a feedback tool I can use to improve how I am encouraging those bodies and thoughts to interact. Process journaling helps me trace behaviors to contexts. On one …
Overview In the reflection below, I examine an incident I encountered while tutoring and eighth-grade student and describe what this incident taught me about how young teen’s desire to explore and further define their identities impacts the way they engage with subject-area content. Applying my learnings from the experience on which I reflect, I present …
In this portfolio, I provide twelve instructional that strategies instructors can engage students in considering either before, during, or after reading a text. Alongside each strategy, I discuss concepts from modern literacy theory as rationale for why I believe the activity will increase student learning. The strategy portfolio demonstrates my ability to recognize which learning …
Overview In this reflection, I apply theories of intrinsic motivation to consider the ways that assessments designed to motivate students to participate, rather than measure and increase students’ mastery, may decrease students’ intrinsic motivation to engage in learning activities. The reflection demonstrates how I use theories of motivation and mastery learning to shape my assessment …
Overview In this reflection, I consider how the type and quality of an instructor’s feedback affects students’ perceptions of their abilities and, therefore, can increase or decrease students’ intrinsic motivation to engage in content-area learning activities. The reflection demonstrates my understanding of the ways that lesson activities or forms of instructor feedback that encourage comparison …
Overview In this analysis, I apply my understanding of theories of knowledge acquisition form Piaget, Vygotsky, and Freire to consider how the theories of learning to which instructors ascribe will impact their perceptions of their curriculum’s likelihood to reinforce the false notion of White supremacy and dehumanize Students of Color. I use Vygotsky’s theory that …
Overview In this reflection, I discuss how the knowledge I gained about Second Language Acquisition through completing my Masters of Education program will influence how I differentiate instruction to support students acquiring English as an additional language. I describe Carlos, a student I met while volunteering in an academic intervention program, and discuss how my …