Standard #8: Instructional Strategies
Artifact #1: Get to Know You Survey
Performance 8(c): Collaborates with learners to design and implement relevant learning experiences, identify their strengths, and access family and community resources to develop their areas of interest.
Description: When I first got here, before I began teaching I gave each of the students that I would have a Google Survey that they could complete at any time before I began teaching. This survey gave me the opportunity to learn about the students that I'd be teaching before I began planning. The specific questions that I asked helped me to determine what kind of learner they were, what their outside interests were, past math experiences they'd had, and what kinds of after of school commitments they have.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because I used this information to develop lessons that were relevant to what they'd shared with me. I was able to identify that a lot of my students have a lot of outside of school commitments, so homework would be a challenge to get to sometimes. I also asked them what kinds of academies they attended, since a lot of them said that they attend math academy, I knew that I would be dealing with a lot of students who were already familiar with the material and I would need to find a way to keep them engaged, learning, and feeling challenged.
Performance 8(c): Collaborates with learners to design and implement relevant learning experiences, identify their strengths, and access family and community resources to develop their areas of interest.
Description: When I first got here, before I began teaching I gave each of the students that I would have a Google Survey that they could complete at any time before I began teaching. This survey gave me the opportunity to learn about the students that I'd be teaching before I began planning. The specific questions that I asked helped me to determine what kind of learner they were, what their outside interests were, past math experiences they'd had, and what kinds of after of school commitments they have.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because I used this information to develop lessons that were relevant to what they'd shared with me. I was able to identify that a lot of my students have a lot of outside of school commitments, so homework would be a challenge to get to sometimes. I also asked them what kinds of academies they attended, since a lot of them said that they attend math academy, I knew that I would be dealing with a lot of students who were already familiar with the material and I would need to find a way to keep them engaged, learning, and feeling challenged.
Here is a link to a spread sheet of the responses from the Get To Know You survey I gave to my students. I kept the originals because they had the student names on them. Each new page has the question at the top.
Survey Questions
Survey Questions
Artifact #2: Scavenger Hunt
Essential Knowledge 8(j): Understands the cognitive processes associated with various kinds of learning and how these processes can be stimulated.
Description: As a review activity, students in my geometry classes work as a group on an outdoor scavenger hunt. They are given a picture of a location on campus and at that location they are given a problem to work out as a group. Once they complete that problem correctly, they are shown the next location. The team that gets back first earned bonus points on their exam, but every team that completes the scavenger hunt also received points. This activity engaged them, because it was a game, but also motivated them to work together to solve challenging math problems, using their notebooks, textbooks, and other resources available to them to find the correct solution.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were using multiple cognitive processes to complete the activity. They were using their critical thinking, problem solving, and memorization/recall to find locations and work through a problem together. They were faced with more than just math problems here, they had the challenge of finding the location and dealing with any group conflicts that came up throughout the period. The math problems themselves were very challenging, so they had to work together to identify what the problem was asking them to solve for, the steps they needed to take to solve the problem, and the mathematical formulas they needed in order to take each step.
Essential Knowledge 8(j): Understands the cognitive processes associated with various kinds of learning and how these processes can be stimulated.
Description: As a review activity, students in my geometry classes work as a group on an outdoor scavenger hunt. They are given a picture of a location on campus and at that location they are given a problem to work out as a group. Once they complete that problem correctly, they are shown the next location. The team that gets back first earned bonus points on their exam, but every team that completes the scavenger hunt also received points. This activity engaged them, because it was a game, but also motivated them to work together to solve challenging math problems, using their notebooks, textbooks, and other resources available to them to find the correct solution.
Rationale: This fulfills this standard because students were using multiple cognitive processes to complete the activity. They were using their critical thinking, problem solving, and memorization/recall to find locations and work through a problem together. They were faced with more than just math problems here, they had the challenge of finding the location and dealing with any group conflicts that came up throughout the period. The math problems themselves were very challenging, so they had to work together to identify what the problem was asking them to solve for, the steps they needed to take to solve the problem, and the mathematical formulas they needed in order to take each step.