My Philosophy
My teaching philosophy stems from my core belief about education: Every student is capable of learning and every student deserves to learn. This belief guides me as I learn about and apply various learning theories and instructional strategies to my lessons. One instructional strategy that I believe is imperative to implement in the classroom is accommodation. Teachers will of course have students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs) that require the teacher to accommodate the lesson and/or activity to best fit the student’s needs. However, teachers should keep in mind that all students can benefit from lessons that offer a variety of ways for students to engage with the material. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) makes this possible. UDL refers to a style of lesson design where teachers try to account for the needs of all students. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. For example, a teacher could provide multiple representations of the content such as having a verbal explanation, visual representation, and physical objects for students to manipulate. Another key component of UDL is having multiple ways for students to show what they have learned. An example of this is giving students the option of taking a test or completing a project at the end of a unit. These choices give students agency in their learning.
Teachers should also guide students to engage in meaningful learning. That is, learning that focuses on truly understanding the concepts of the subject, not merely memorizing isolated facts or formulas. I believe this is best facilitated with student-led, inquiry based lessons. Students should be given an opportunity to explore the topic and come to their own conclusions. Teachers assist students in this process by giving them activities that can guide them to the correct answers, and addressing any misconceptions that may come from inquiry. This approach is not only helpful for understanding the content, but it also develops critical thinking skills in students.
Every student will face challenges both in their home life and at school, such as discrimination, poverty, or struggles related to disability or their mental health. In schools there is often what educator Martin Haberman refers to as a “pedagogy of poverty”, or the idea that because students face challenges, less is expected of them and therefore they are set up for failure rather than supported towards success. As an educator, I believe it is my duty to support my students through the challenges they face. This takes form in the educational strategies listed above, but also through the culture I cultivate in my classroom. My first priority is creating a classroom culture where everyone feels safe, both physically and emotionally. This means having a classroom where discrimination of any kind is not tolerated and students feel free to be themselves.
Implementation
Learning Theories:
In my Knowing and Learning class, I completed Clinical Interview 2 (CI2) which was an in depth analysis paper about learning theories and their implementation. I write, “Learning theories attempt to explain the ways in which students process and store information, essentially describing the way people learn. This explanation informs best practices for teaching and by extension, lesson planning.” When planning my lessons, I use the 5e model which facilitates student centered, inquiry based learning. In CI2 I further elaborate on the 5e model, “Student centered means that students are doing a majority of the classwork, as opposed to the teacher. Inquiry instruction is described as, “involving students in a form of active learning that emphasizes questioning, data analysis, and critical thinking” (Bell, 2005, p. 31). Reports on the effectiveness of the 5E model state, “students whose teachers taught with medium or high levels of fidelity to the BSCS 5E Instructional Model experienced learning gains that were nearly double that of students whose teachers did not use the model or used it with low levels of fidelity” (Bybee, 2009, p. 12). The 5E model, when used correctly, allows students to be active participants in the learning process. Psychologist Jean Piaget, who made significant contributions to the study of cognitive development, also believed that activity was key to learning. “[...] as we act on the environment - as we explore, test, observe, and eventually organize information - we are likely to alter our thinking processes at the same time” (Woolfolk, 2007, p.28).”
Diversity and Special Education
Every teacher has a diverse classroom in one way or another because all students are different and have different needs to be successful in school. Because of this, various strategies need to be implemented to support all students. I implemented differentiation into my lesson plans for C&T 291 and C&T 366. In my Inequalities lesson, students are given the choice between two activities that both cover real world applications of inequalities. One activity is geared towards students who are less comfortable writing inequalities to model a word problem. The worksheet is more guided and helps students make sense of the information and symbols needed. The other activity is for students who feel comfortable writing inequalities to model word problems. It is a more open-ended activity that gives students choices about which inequalities to model and has them justify their reasoning. Both activities provide students the opportunity to model real world situations with inequalities, but through different formats that are tailored to their readiness.
Another way to address student needs is to identify students in the classroom that are struggling and ask them questions to better understand their learning needs. This will better help you choose teaching strategies to implement to help them. Supporting struggling learners was one of the goals for my Teach Two lessons. Information about my struggling learners can be found in my Struggling Learners Reflection and my analysis about the effectiveness of my strategies is discussed in my Teach 2 Analysis paper.
So far in my experience I have not had students who are English Language Learners (ELLs), so I have not had the opportunity to implement strategies for them into my lessons, however I did research into various teaching strategies that I write about in my ELL Reflection.
I also completed a presentation showcasing an equity gap for students in special education and strategies teachers can implement to ensure those students are not disadvantaged.
Classroom Management
Effective classroom management is essential for all teachers to implement. Without utilizing classroom management strategies, the class will be disorganized and chaotic which will prevent meaningful learning from taking place. These strategies are best implemented when the teacher has formed positive relationships with their students.
In my Classroom Management Reflection, I analyze the classroom management of my host teachers as well as research various strategies I think would be beneficial for me to implement. All of my C&T 291 lessons include specific classroom management strategies, and I will elaborate on the ones in my Surface Area and Volume lesson. Because we were limited in our time spent in the classroom, we had students make name tents so we could refer to them by name. Referring to students by name is an effective way to begin building a positive relationship with that student as it shows you know who they are. We also implemented the strategy of only providing materials for an activity when they are actually needed. Giving students materials at the beginning of class or keeping them out once the activity has ended can be very distracting for students throughout different parts of the lesson. We also made sure to be walking around the classroom while students were working. This made us more easily available for student questions and our presence around the classroom helped keep students on task as they knew their work was being observed. Our last strategy was setting an expectation at the beginning of the class period that phones and headphones needed to be put away. Establishing this boundary early helped us enforce it throughout the lesson.
Safety
The safety of students should be the top priority of any teacher. While most of the activities found in a math classroom will not have physical safety concerns, the emotional well being of students is just as important as their physical wellbeing. Teachers need to create a safe and welcoming environment for all of their students. Not only is this best for students' mental well being, it is also a necessary prerequisite for learning to occur. I explain this in my Clinical Interview 1 Paper, “Hammond continues, “All the while, the educator understands the importance of being in a relationship and having a social-emotional connection to the student in order to create a safe space for learning” (Hammond, 2014, p. 15). Students are unable to learn in an environment where they do not feel safe or welcome. This is known as “amygdala hijack”. The amygdala is the part of your brain that processes fear. When fear is detected, “all other cognitive functions such as learning, problem solving, or creative thinking stop” (Hammond, 2014, p. 40). Therefore it is imperative to create a classroom culture that is safe, welcoming, and inclusive.”
I incorporate safety statements into all of my lessons to help ensure the safety of my students. My lesson on Surface Area includes a statement addressing both physical and emotional well being. The lesson included the use of scissors, so we made sure to address that students are expected to use scissors safely and not spin or throw them. In addition, the inquiry activities encourage students to come to conclusions about the information on their own. Naturally, many of the conclusions can be wrong, that’s just a part of the process! We made sure to address that students are not to disparage their classmates for their answers.
My commitment to student safety is also reflected in my completion of the Flinn Safety Course.
Standards
For each lesson a teacher creates, the content should be aiming to address the state standards and practices for that content area. In addition to the standards, Kansas also emphasizes lessons that address math, science, and reading practices. A single standard can be quite broad and reference a large amount of content that is not realistic for a teacher to address in a single lesson. Therefore, teachers need to identify key aspects of the standard that their lesson is addressing. These aspects can then be turned into the objectives for the lesson. All of the lessons in the My Work tab show how I implement the standards, but I will go more in depth about how I used the standards in the Teach Two lessons.
The topic I was given for my lessons was covering the slope-intercept equation for a line. I began by looking through the Kansas state standards website to find the high school standards for algebra. I decided that standard F.IF.4 was the most appropriate and applied to both of my lessons over the topic. I then began the process of unpacking my standard, which you can see here. I underlined the concepts, circled the skills, and boxed in the contexts in which the concepts and skills would be applied. This standard had two skills, so next I broke it down into its two components. My first component became the basis for the Day 1 lesson and the second component was the basis for my Day 2 Lesson. From these components, I created the objectives for both lessons.
Assessments
Assessments are an incredibly powerful tool for teachers to gauge student learning. There are two broad categories of assessments that all teachers should utilize; formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments tend to be ungraded or given lower point values. The main objective is to provide students with meaningful feedback to improve their understanding of a topic. Summative assessments are given at the end of a unit to gauge what the student learned. Both types of assessments are incorporated into all of my lessons. I will elaborate on the formative and summative assessments used in my lessons on Understanding y=mx+b and Graphing y=mx+b. My formative assessments included a pre-test, observation of student work during the activities, and a thumbs up/down check in with the students to see how confident they felt about their understanding of the material. My summative assessment was an altered version of the pre-test to see what students learned after the lessons were taught.
Students in middle and high school would certainly be considered “novices” in math. It is not expected that students will reach an expert understanding of a subject, but one goal of teaching should be to move students in that direction by developing their critical thinking skills and independence. I elaborate further into this in my Clinical Interview 1 Paper.
Technology
Technology is an invaluable tool for teachers to utilize in their lessons. It is especially helpful for visualizations of mathematical concepts. I incorporate technology into several of my lessons. In my lesson on Identifying Triangles, I used a projector to show various types of triangles. Being able to project the images allowed for more accurate depictions than drawing them on the board. In my lesson on Surface Area and Volume I used a presentation to showcase student and instructor work for students to reference as they went through the lesson. For my lesson on Understanding y=mx+b I had students using Desmos graphing calculator to visualize how changing the coefficient or constant of the equation affected the line. This was particularly helpful as this was before we completed our lesson on graphing using slope-intercept form of a line.