Standard+2

Standard 2: Teaching and Learning

__Reflection:__ Collaboration with fellow teachers is a valuable tool available for all teachers. When teachers collaborate, there are more opportunities to facilitate student learning. I also think it is helpful for teachers to provide feedback to one another. The attachment is my journey through collaboration and coaching with a first grade teacher at my school. The teacher was not new to teaching, but she was new to a self-contained elementary classroom. She was struggling with teaching poetry, which is one of my favorite things to teach in writing. As I was helping her with her writing unit, it challenged me to reflect upon how and what I teach when teaching poetry.

While working with her on this unit, I observed her teaching and provided feedback. We also took it a step further and her class shared their poetry with our class and after our class did our poetry unit, we shared our poetry with her class. This was beneficial for both classes because they were then writing for an authentic audience. Attached is my strategic teaching analysis from EDC 711 which explains the process that we both went through and my reflection on the experience.

Also, as a part of this class, I developed a PGP centered around differentiating instruction and setting high expectations for the higher level students in my classroom. One result of this was being able to compact some students out of certain math units. After attending workshops and reading about teaching gifted students, I learned that if they do not need the same instruction as other students, they can compact out of it and do different learning activities centered around the same subject. Attached is my PGP from EDC 711 and the form used when compacting students out of certain areas.

Also, to increase the achievement of all students I self initiated attending a professional development at The Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. This all day PD was one of the best PDs I've ever attended! After this incredible experience, I purchased the book //The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck 101 Extraordinary Solutions For Parents and Teachers// by Ron Clark. Another teacher that I attended the PD with and myself did a book study with this book and presented the information from the PD and the book to our faculty. [|Here] is the link to the prezi I created to share with the faculty.