Teacher Work Sample Part 7

Teacher work Sample: Standard 7 Lauren M. Evins EED/495 May 13, 2012 Professor Mark McCall Teacher Work Sample: Standard 7 Standard 7: Reflections and Self-Evaluation In the education profession, it is necessary for teachers to create lesson plans that adhere to national, state, and district learning standards. The ability to successfully create and implement these lessons that have goals and specific learning objectives is the responsibility of the teacher. A way to evaluate the success of your instructional skills is through reflection and self-evaluation. Reflecting on your own teaching, shortcomings as well as successes, is a way to make sense of your own experiences and to gain perspective on the day-to-day workings of your own classroom. ” A reflection and self-evaluation will be listed for this Teacher Work Sample. , which will include an analysis of instructional and student learning, and the effectiveness of teacher instruction. Throughout the implementation of my lessons from the Teacher Work Sample the lessons that contributed the most to student learning were the activities that required students to apply their knowledge in activities.

These activities include the vocabulary words used in a sentence, the group discussion that allowed students to build on each other’s responses and knowledge, and the group projects that were a collaboration of student creativity. Some of the greatest barriers to achieving the desired learning results were overcoming the additional background knowledge that was needed to teach the unit lessons, which would consequentially be a need for improvement in the pre-assessment and the analysis of the pre-assessment.

One factor that would be done to improve the acquisition of the desired learning results and improving student learning would be to spend more time reviewing supplemental and background information for the unit prior to introducing the unit, and creating a more detailed rubric that analyzed students’ prior knowledge. The repeated interruptions and deviations that were taken during lessons required additional modifications in instructional time management and steering the lesson back on path of the learning goals and objectives.

Reviewing the seven standards listed in this Teacher Work Sample emphasized key areas of strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the work sample included Contextual Factors, Learning Goals and Objectives, and Design for Instruction. These strengths allowed a successful creation of goals and objectives that were aligned with Florida State Standards and were achieved with the majority of the student population, as seen in the Analysis of Learning Results.

The ability to properly gather data and information in the Contextual Factors helped understand why some students had prior knowledge of Native Americans and why other students has less prior knowledge. The Design for Instruction was implemented with little to no problems; however, the flaws in instruction did not occur from the design they occurred from the Assessment Plan, which was a weakness and needed additional improvement.

The Instructional Decision-Making was also a weakness in that student learning responses were not as anticipated regarding Native American background information and an additional need for improvement would include reacting and modifying lessons without deviating greatly from the original goals and objectives. My professional knowledge and skills were adequate to teach this unit, but my performance would have been enhanced if I had better analyzed the pre-assessment that was given at the beginning of the unit.

As a professional, I would need to improve my ability to read and analyze assessment results, which could be the difference in student achievement and failure. The most significant learning insight achieved from this unit would be the understanding that despite detailed planning and instructional preparation, modifications in instruction will always arise and it is the teachers responsibility to make the necessary deviations but maintain the unit’s goals and objectives.

In general, my analysis and self-reflection would e considered a success with minor weaknesses that would need improvement through workshops, training seminars, and/or with an experienced teacher’s help. Reference Module 6: Assessing teaching and learning. (2006). Retrieved May 12, 2012 from http://www. league. org/gettingresults/web/module6/teaching/teacher_reflections. html