List of Course Work that tells my Teaching Story
Language and Literacy – Build a Literacy Centered Classroom
Language and literacy- Midterm Assessment
Teaching and Learning- Creating a Test Bank
Teaching and learning – Mini Unit Plan
Science- Create a Science Experiment to teach the Class
Math- CGI lessons
Theoretical Frameworks- Personal Teaching Philosophy
Reflection:
They way teachers educate their students has changed drastically, even compared to my last year of high school. I remember throughout my history of education that teaching was often lecture based, and course work was often associated with answering questions from a textbook. However, this is no longer the center of teaching students. Learning is much more fluid in the sense that educators are aiming to meet the needs of all students. By this, I mean that teachers are adapting their lessons so that students can show how they best learn. A lot of the assignments I listed above allowed me to practice this part of teaching. Building a literacy classroom is important to make students feel like they have all of their literacy needs met. Students should have lots of choice in what they read, and where they read. The midterm assessment mentioned above focuses on different ways students can build their writing stamina in primary years. It allowed me to learn a lot of different strategies to help lots of students with different writing needs, such as; spelling, reading comprehension, punctuation, etc. Creating a test bank was a lot of fun but also very difficult. It is important to get to know your students and figure out if they have any testing fears and anxieties. The test bank allowed me to create a test that had many different options that students could take. The science experiment allowed me to treat my fellow classmates like younger students, and I had to create a lesson that would need differentiated instruction. The CGI math lesson was probably my favourite one thus far. I had such a terrible experience with math when I was little. I was always taught one way, and I was always told that was the only way. However, I have learned that in math now, it is more important for students to show how they got the answer, rather then focusing on getting the correct answer. CGL lessons are great because it allows students to show their thinking, and explain to their peers why they answered the question the way they did. Overall, throughout this year I have learned a lot about how to implement the new curriculum into my teaching practice.