Teacher Extraordinaire - Portfolio of a Teacher and Lifelong Learner

Given that I am currently doing my Masters program, we are constantly in the process of learning, discussing and producing artifacts. The most recent course that I completed was PME 841 Critical Foundations of Literacy. For our final assignment we needed to produce a 9 slide assignment (barring the title page and resource page) outlining three different Literacy concepts, what they are, why they are important and then outlining one or more teaching strategies for each.  Since the school that I teach at is comprised almost entirely of students learning English as an Additional Language, and we frequently get students who are new to English in our classrooms, I thought I'd focus on the K-Grade 3 audience, and the audience of those teaching students who are new to English.  The first two concepts I looked at are related: "Phonological Awareness" and "Phonemic Awareness." My slides define Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, so that practitioners ...

Often implementing change in schools can be difficult, but sometimes we need to be the leaders, find other like-minded people and help in making that change happen. We need to realize that change does not and should not happen overnight, and look towards long term sustainability. This is fueled by sharing the load, changes occurring laterally (from the top to the bottom to the top), creating new leaders within work situations, having time to collaborate, valuing all opinions and then following through with actually collaborating. Teachers having time to collaborate, having an atmosphere/work situation of respect and not overloading teachers is all essential in keeping up the energy and drive necessary to affect change. Changes should be based on innovation, research, patterns and changing trends. In other words deep knowledge in an ever changing world needs to be valued. It is only through these aspects and methods that we can hope to close the achievement gap. Of course teachi...

Envision the classroom you would like to have in the future. Are all the students learning at their own pace, using the information of where they are right now to inform your practices and groupings OR is it only whole group with very little addressing of individual needs or skills that need to be developed? It is my hope that your answer was the former, as this is the way that the highest number of student needs can be addressed. This kind of classroom can only be achieved with excellent planning, assessment and classroom management at the forefront. Developing reading skills should be a core element of elementary school teaching. In order to gain the most mileage from planning, including the three kinds of assessment is necessary in your classroom. You can only reliably implement/impart assessment if you: 1.  Know your material and standards. 2.    Begin with the end in mind. 3.    Design material to appropriately meet and measure achievement...