PLANNING & PREPARATION
" The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it.
Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be genius about. "
- B. F. Skinner
Curriculum design, program implementation, professional collaboration, and lesson planning has always been my favorite aspect of the role of educator. Master teaching comes from master planning and preparation. The classroom is not a static environment, but a dynamic community; classroom factors are always changing and unpredictable. For educators, planning and preparation does not just mean planning for the ideal lesson, but also planning for those realistic and common deviations that occur within the daily class environment. Classrooms are communities built of individual, diverse, and unique students. Therefore, lesson planning should not be a "one size fits all" task, but rather a precise yet flexible plan to meet the needs of each student, individually. This wrangling of planning and preparing for the unpredictable leads to the productive flow of instruction and more time on-task for all students. Every teacher hopes to avoid chaos in the classroom, but I believe productive chaos is an integral part of the dynamic contemporary instructional area. Instead of being afraid of chaos, educators must use and structure chaos to the class advantage. Through extensive planning and preparation, I hope to harness a "constructive chaos" within my classroom to bring out the genius in all of my students.
Professional Collaboration
Professional Collaboration is an integral part to both professional and student success. I developed this Interdisciplinary Unit along with three other teachers working towards their Masters degrees. With the growing epidemic of obesity in America, we decided to create an interdisciplinary high-interest, meaningful, and effective unit that focused on the unity between healthy minds and healthy bodies. Through interactive activities in English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, students defined what it means to be healthy while exploring trends and controversies in contemporary conversations on health. Our goal was for students to construct their own knowledge on healthiness while becoming educated consumers and citizens through analyzing attitudes towards health over time. Health is an interdisciplinary concept and this unit was created to explore the multifaceted role of health in adolescent society through interdisciplinary implementation.
Writing for Health Interdisciplinary Unit | |
File Size: | 5515 kb |
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Creating a Reading Strategy Toolbox: Supporting English Learners with Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)
In the age of standardized testing and strategy based achievement tests, having a solid toolbox of reading strategies is more important than ever for student success. In this lesson, I explicitly teach two summary strategies for struggling readers: "GIST" and it's modified version "SWBS" Through meaningful and recognizable community texts, including the student created school newspaper, students are able to learn when to, how to, and why to use specific reading strategies. This lesson has been created using a modified Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) in order to support English Leaners--a large group within my classroom which especially needs specific reading strategies and skills training.
SIOP Reading Strategy Lesson Plan | |
File Size: | 2824 kb |
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Planning Meaningful Activities & Authentic Assessments for Different Learning Styles
When planning for student activities, it is essential to consider the type of learning style of each individual student. Giving students the power to choose can increase student motivation and confidence. Following the Multiple Intelligences model by Harvard's Howard Gardner, I designed a menu of student activities that provide multiple project based assessments for all nine different learning styles. Focused around the reading of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, this menu of hands on activities allows for students to construct and present their own knowledge through meaningful personalized experiences.
Into the Wild Multiple Intelligence | |
File Size: | 77 kb |
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