Standard #8: Instructional Strategies. The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
8(a) The teacher uses appropriate strategies and resources to adapt instruction to the needs of individuals and groups of learners. (Performances)
8(l) The teacher knows when and how to use appropriate strategies to differentiate instruction and engage all learners in complex thinking and meaningful tasks. (Essential Knowledge)
8(q) The teacher values the variety of ways people communicate and encourages learners to develop and use multiple forms of communication. (Critical Dispositions)
In my words: As a teacher, I understand and will implement a variety of teaching strategies in my classes so my students will comprehend at a deeper level, allowing them to grow in their skills and apply their knowledge in and out of the classroom.
Gallery of Artifacts:
Who I Am/My Culture Assignment Sheet – selecting 3 artifacts that represent/symbolize you
Thinking of paper topics–looking at writing a research paper from the inside out!
Here is one student’s original poem with my suggestions/edits.
Working one-on-one with a student.
A relationship map I drew to help the students understand characters in TKAM.
Boring Words Funeral: a strategy for getting rid of overused words from sixth grade writing.
Hamburger Narrative: a strategy to learn topic, details, and concluding sentence.
Vignette Notes to help my students learn pre House on Mango Street.
Smore: a resource for creating flyer templates for the Wolves Research Project.
A collaborative, movable classroom for discussion on role of women, Marin and Alicia in House on Mango Street.
Switching roles with students–a different way of teaching vignettes in House on Mango Street.
List of Artifacts:
You Are the Teacher for the Day-I love switching up the way I teach lessons. Last night, I had this great idea of changing how I teach the vignettes in House on Mango Street. What if I made my students and I switch roles? What if they were the teachers for the day? What would they teach me about the given vignettes?
Sarah Plain & Tall – KWL Chart-Today's focus for Book Club is on the book, Sarah Plain and Tall, which is an easy read I selected to read with my students during the M-Th 30 minute class sessions.
What the Heck is Smore?-One of my students showed this website to me: Smore. This is a place where students, teachers, anyone can easily create an awesome-looking newsletter. FOR FREE!
Role of Women-The role of women is a huge theme in House on Mango Street, even in the early vignettes. Today's lesson focused on "Marin" and "Alicia Who Is Afraid of Mice" and my eighth graders compared/contrasted the two girls and related their stories to the already existing theme of the degradation of Mexican women.
What Does Friendship Mean to Me?-Today I had my eighth graders focus on the idea of friendship--What is friendship? What does friendship mean to us? What defines a solid friendship?--I had my students write their ideas all over the white board in a silent-discussion format and then we talked through them.
Teaching Figurative Language!-Figurative language is so complicated, yet so much fun! I created this AMAZING (okay, I might be bragging just a little, but I'm super excited!) resource to teach students. It is a scaffolded set of notes that include examples, pictures, and even song clips for learning figurative language in more ways than one!
What the Heck is a Vignette?-To introduce my students to House on Mango Street, I knew I had to teach them about the book's format: vignettes.
The Boring Words Funeral-Today my 6th grade co-teachers and I held a Boring Words Funeral for the overused, boring, '2nd/3rd grade' words in our vocabulary. This was a very somber event. Students and teachers wore black. We wrote words down on notecards, placed them in burial shoe box, processed around the room, and said our final words.
Assessing Character Symbols-Okay, Marisa. You can do this. I coach myself as I begin my first Standards-Based Grading. Just be honest. Be consistent. And be smart.
My Hamburger Narrative-The focus of my sixth grade classes is narrative writing: short stories about the student's own lives. To help with the structure of writing a short story, we explained a hamburger model of writing. The buns are the topic and concluding sentences, the 'meat' is the essential components of the story, and the condiments are the supporting details, evidence, and sensory details!
Hunger Games – Scaffolded Notes-I stepped into this placement at Forest City Middle School while my eighth grade students were in the middle/end of reading Hunger Games. This was a difficult spot to enter, but I squeezed myself into the lessons by reading aloud to the students and helping with scaffolded notes.
Relationships in TKAM-"Who the heck is related to who?" This is what one of my students said to me as we reached one of the final chapters of Part II and were introduced to the Christmas scene. I took a pause out of my lecture/discussion and drew a goofy map on the board.
Poetry Workshop-To connect on a deeper, more personal level to Tuesdays with Morrie, I had my students write poems about their 'Morries', the influential people in their lives.
Forest Scene Story-Okay, I'll admit it...sometimes reading The Scarlet Letter and its Old English can be difficult, and a little dry. I wanted my students to take a break for a minute and do something creative!
Who’s My Morrie?-I wanted to switch up activities in my English 10 classes and instead of having them write another journal or essay-type of response, I decided to have them write two poems. These would be about people who influenced them positively--their 'Morries'.
Old Man and the Sea Outline-My Honors kids have been struggling with thesis statements. They have great ideas, they just aren't articulating them into arguments. And thus their papers (and grades) are suffering. So I decided to do something a little different for their Old Man and the Sea papers. I wanted to help them out.
Old Man and the Sea – Paper Topics-Now that my students have presented on the Old Man and the Sea, their next objective was to write a paper on the book...but just like with the projects, I wanted the students to have ownership--they were going to pick their own topics.
Who Am I/My Culture Paper-For one of the first major writing assignments in my English 10 classroom, I decided to have the students write a paper about three items that define them, 'Who Am I/My Culture Paper'. This began as an assignment/mini-speech [to read more about that, click here].
Who Am I/My Culture Assignment-To dig a little deeper and connect my Tuesdays with Morrie unit to Narrative writing, which my students have and will be doing for the remainder of the year, I decided to create a 'Who Am I/My Culture' Assignment.
What Is My America?-One of my first assignments for my 11th grade American Literature class was called 'What Is My America?'.
Easy-Peasy Jeopardy Game-Today was New Mohawk Day at MCHS, a day where freshmen students get acquainted with school policies, such as reading the handbook...but I thought this was suuuuper boring! I wanted to spice things up! So I decided to create a jeopardy game of all the main points from the handbook!
