ETS Task 2

Contextual Factorsa. Describe your classroom. Include the grade level, content area, subject matter, and number of students. Provide relevant information about any of your students with special needs. b. Describe any physical, social, behavioral, or developmental factors that may impact the instruction that occurs in your classroom. Mention any linguistic, cultural, or health considerations that may also impact teaching and learning in your classroom. c. Describe any factors related to the school and surrounding community that may impact the teaching and learning that occurs in your classroom.

a) The assigned classroom for my student teaching experience is a kindergarten class made up for 25 students. The school is smaller and is found in a rural area. Majority of the student at the school are of the African American race. The students in my class are bright and eager to learn material when it is taught in their learning style. I have learned to implement many different strategies into my planning and teaching of lessons to meet the needs of all of my students. There are not any students with linguistically, cultural, or health considerations that have an impact on my teaching and their learning. Overall, the behavior in the classroom is controllable and moderate for 5-6 year old children. Discipline is not a major issue in the classroom and the students are good at holding each other accountable for good behavior. 2.1.1
a) The state standard for this lesson was;1.L.1.1 Students are able to discover life needs of
green plants. The learning goal for this lesson required students to identify the specific parts of a plant and their purpose of keeping it alive.

b) The assessment plan that I used for this lesson had three main parts; a pre, during, and post assessment. I chose this design for the assessment of the learning goal because I have found in my experience in order to teach students you must first assess their prior knowledge on the content to have a reference point to analyze the gain of knowledge. The pre-assessment for this lesson consisted for asking get individual student to tell me things they knew about plants in the days prior to the lesson. I dictated student responses in the form of a KWL chart; know, wonder, learn. This was a great way for me to gain insight to what each student already knows about plants. In the wonder section of the KWL chart I listed student responses to things that they wonder about plants. This addition to the pre-assessment gave me a way to engage students during the lesson by answering some of the questions they had mentioned to me prior. By dictating each students individual response to their knowledge and wonder on the topic of plants I was able to meet all students needs, because kindergarten aged students are obviously limited on their ability to express their thoughts and ideas through writing. Students were assessed during the lesson on their participation in the whole group discussion and the song/physical movement activity. A lot of the students in my class have a hard time sitting still for long durations of time, therefore I incorporated an opportunity for movement that aligned with the learning goal by teaching the content. The post assessment for this lesson required students to be able to label parts of a plant based on the students performance level,

meeting each childs needs. I found this assessment format to align with the standard and learning goal successfully for me to analyze student understanding of the content taught. c) The rubric guide selected for the assessment of this lesson was recommended by my teacher because it was simple and applied for all students, even those with modified assessments. Students received a score of 1-4, 4 being the highest, based on their accuracy of completion on the post assessment. Because my assigned placement is in a kindergarten classroom, explaining the scoring guide to the students would not make any sense to them. Therefore, students were told to try their absolute hardest when completing the worksheet after the lesson which required students to label the parts of a plant. d) The evidence of student learning that I will collect from this assessment deals with their

gain of knowledge on the parts of a plant at the conclusion of my lesson. I will collect this data by inquiry on each students prior knowledge of plants, participation during the lesson, and ability to label the parts on a plant at the end of the lesson. This process has proven to be a great way to assess student learning throughout the planning, teaching, and reflection of lessons. 2.1.2 a) An instructional strategy that I will use to engage visual learners will be showing a video depicting a cartoon seed that undergoes changes until it has grown into a tree. To engage auditory learners in the instruction I incorporated a song to help learn the learning goal skills to music. For kinesthetic and tactic learners I allowed for students to be actively involved in the lessons instruction. I tried to cover many instructional strategies in hopes of all student understand the content in the style they learn best. b) The learning activity for the lesson will done as a whole group. I decided to do this because I want to ensure all students are taught the same content the same way for my post assessment of knowledge gained to be adequate. c) To administer the pre-assessment I will simply asked students individually during morning work time, what they know about plants and what they wanted to learn. I will dictate their responses in the form of a KWL chart. Materials needed for my post assessment will be in the form of a worksheet. 2.1.3 a) I have identified two Focus Students with different learning needs. Student 1 is a high academic performing student and Student 2 is on the lower end of the performance spectrum. I selected these students to closely gauge their progress throughout the entire planning, teaching, and assessing of my lesson. b) I have modified the pre and post assessments for my two Focus Students. Focus Student 1 is very bright and is always eager to share information or to ask questions about content.

Therefore in my pre-assessment I will make sure to ask what kind of things he wants to learn about plants. I did this to ensure during the lesson I will satisfy some of the curiosities he has. Focus Student 2 needs more guidance during assessments. Therefore, I plan on prompting questions about plants to find out her prior knowledge on the subject, instead of asking her to just tell me what she knows about them. 2.2.1 a) My rubric aligned with my learning goal for the lesson about plant parts because it required students to recall and label the parts of a plant accurately at the conclusion of the lesson. The assessment was in the form of a worksheet. My scoring guide was a simple format that my cooperating teacher suggested I use for assessing the students knowledge gained after the lesson was taught. My scoring guide was designed to track whether the student learned the content or not, because that was my biggest focus in this particular lesson. I was not assessing the students on their ability to spell words correctly or the neatness of their hand-writing. If students labeled all of the parts of the flower correctly on the worksheet they were given a four, representing 100%. If students mislabeled one of the parts they received a score of three, representing 80%. If a student mislabeled two parts of the plant they received a two, representing 60%. If a student mislabeled 3 or more of the parts they received a score of one, representing 40%. b) The representation I chose to express the lessons post-assessment data in is in the form of a pie graph. I picked this because I believe a pie chart is a great way to visualize the percentage of students whom were able to meet the lessons learning goal compared to those whom had trouble grasping the concept. After analyzing the assessment data I was pleased to find that more than the majority of the students scored a four on the scoring guide and fell into the 100% correct portion of the pie chart. Approximately twenty-two of the twenty-five students were able to reach the lesson learning goal. The other two students fell into the 80% correct portion on the pie chart. I was pleased with the data because it told me that 92% of my students were able to meet the learning goal without any trouble. c) The data-collection process I used was effective because it assessed the exact content that was taught in the lesson, and required students to recall the plants of a part on a worksheet so I could assess each students understanding. The assessment met the learning goal because it was designed to test student knowledge on the content that had just been taught in whole group. Teaching the lesson in whole group was implemented to insure all students received the same information in the same form as their peers, so that the assessment could require the recall of information that all of the students received. d) The instructional strategies were effective that I used because it covered multiple learning styles. For example, I implemented song and dance into the lesson because I have observed that the student can recall knowledge better when in the form of a song or poem. Student

grouping for this lesson was effective because all students were included in the discussion of plants. The materials, such as the video I showed that related to the lesson helped grab the students attention. The worksheet I provided for the post assessment was a great resource to analysis student understanding of the topic taught. e) I engaged students in analyzing their own assessment by asking them what they wanted to learn about plants. I made sure to touch on a majority of the common questions students had to ensure the students were aware of their learning during the whole group teaching and activity.

2.2.2
a) Overall I learned that Focus Student 1 and 2 were both able to reach the learning goal when

the assessment was modified for each to be tested on ability level. Focus Student 1 is very intelligent and can become bored with content unless he is challenged, this is why his assessment was modified to required him to not only label the parts of the plant without a word bank and name three things plants need to survive, but he also had to tell me what each part did while I dictated his response on his paper. With the help of a word bank the lower level student, Focus Student 2, was able to complete the assessment with zero errors. Without a word bank Focus Student 2 would have felt overwhelmed and shut down without trying to complete the handout. b) Based on the assessment data that I collected and the observations I made throughout the lesson I believe that the modifications that I made for both Focus Student 1 and 2 made a strong impact on them being able to meet the learning goal. By answering some of the questions I had inquired form Student 1s pre-assessment into the lesson I was able to keep him engaged and kept him from becoming bored with the content if it did not challenge his achievement level. Another modification made for the assessment Focus Student 1 completed was requiring him to not label the parts and tell what they do, along with naming three things a plant needs to survive. Without requiring Student 1 to be assessed on his achieving ability he would have not of been challenged leading to disinterest in the content. By implementing modifications that were geared to help Focus Student 2 reach the learning goal, she was able to do so without trouble. For Student 2 I had to prompt the information she already knew about plants during the pre-assessment, because she tends to not apply her knowledge. By purposefully using a lot of repetition of content during the lesson I was trying to teach the content in a style that Student 2 best learns. Focus Student 2 was also given a word bank to guide her in completing of the post-assessment. I made this modification to her assessment because without some form of guidance on assessments she tends to shut down and convinces herself that she cannot complete it. I believe because Student 2 was given the labels she was

able to better recall her memory of the lesson and match each to the corresponding part of the plant. c) I found the instructional strategies, learning activities, student groupings, and materials and resources, including technology, to be very effective. I have come to this conclusion confidentially because my final data clearly depicts a very high percentage of student whom were able to meet the lesson learning goal. The learning activity in the lesson helped Student 1 and 2 with their need of visual representation of content. By dressing a student up as a flower and talking about each part and the purpose students could make stronger connections to the content being taught. The song taught to the class that used repetition to learn parts of a plant helped Student 2 learning the content in the style she best learns. d) To help Focus Student 1 and 2 understand the progress they had made from the beginning to the end of the lesson I sat down with them individually at some point after the lesson to look over their assessment with them. I praised them for listening during the lesson to be able to complete the handout correctly. We also talked about how they remembered what to label each part so that they drew the conclusion of the importance of paying attending and participating during lessons.

2.3.1

a) Since my data analysis shows 92% of student met the learning goal with 100% accuracy I plan on guiding future instruction for the whole class similar as I did for this lesson, in hopes of continuing student achievement. b) I plan to make the similar modifications to assessments in the future, because the data proved that the ones made helped both Focus Students achieve the learning goal of the lesson.

c) The modifications I will make in the future to influence my choice of instructional strategies, learning activities, student grouping, etc. will be guided from the success of student achievement for this lesson and the resources I used to teach it as whole group.

d) By using a different form of assessment, such as an oral assessment of knowledge, I could gain a better grasp on the extent of which students grasped the content by having them verbalize it while I dictated their response. This would allow for me to follow the childs thought process in which they develop their response from, giving me insight to their understanding.

2.3.2 a) Since both of my Focus Students were able to complete the assessment on their achievement level successfully it helps me guide future instruction in a similar manner. b) I would make the similar modifications as I did for this lesson in future lessons because the modifications helped both Focus Students meet the lesson goal. c) In the future I plan on making similar modifications in all aspects of planning a lesson because Focus Student 1 and Focus Student 2 had such high success rates with the modifications made for this particular lesson.