Standard 1: Philosophy of Education

A teacher can describe the teacher’s philosophy of education and demonstrate its
relationship to the teacher’s practice.

Abbeduto, L. (2011). Taking sides: Clashing views on controversial issues in educational

psychology. Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

This book is a textbook that presents issue in educational psycology from two, often opposite,
perspectives, in the form of article or essay style writing. This was a text from my educational
psychology class, and I really appreciated the way it presented two sides of an argument. This
helped me to develop my own philosophy of education by allowing me to see the many varied
sides of an argument and thus seeing which sides struck me the most as my own beliefs.

Miller, D. (2008) Teaching with intention: Defining beliefs, aligning practice, taking action.
Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishing.

This book, from my early literacy class, is a book about how to form your practice and beliefs as
a teacher. I found helpful in informing how I approach children. This book focuses a lot on
preparing the classroom and yourself for each new school year. This was a regular theme in
classroom management books, that so much of the work starts before the children even arrive.

Montessori, M. (1984) The absorbent mind. New York, NY: Dell Publishing.

This is often considered the ultimate book on Montessori philosophy, and was the first book of
Maria Montessori’s I read. Because Montessori style education is what my philosophy is mostly
built on, I consider this the book that helped lead my down that path.

Perrone, V. (1991) A letter to teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

A Letter to Teachers is a multiple chapter book manifesto of what Perrone considers important
for teachers to know to be the best educators they can be. This book felt like Perrone was writing
it directly to me. While reading it, I couldn’t help but constantly nod my head and mumble
“yes!”. So much of what Perrone writes about were already my own beliefs and he helped me to
flush out and expand on what I already believed in.

Standard 2: Development and Learning

A teacher understands how students learn and develop and applies that knowledge in the
teacher’s practice. Candidates know, understand and use the major concepts, principles,
theories and research related to development of children and young adolescents to
construct learning opportunities that support individual students’ development, acquisition
of knowledge and motivation.

Slavin, R. (2018) Educational psychology: Theory and practice. New York, NY: Pearson.

This is a textbook overview of educational psychology. It is a wonderful overview of all the

different theories around children’s development in many different ways. This was where I
learned the basis around Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories on development as well as Kohlberg
and Erikson, all of which are the basis of my own understanding of development.

Montessori, M. (1996) From childhood to adolescence. Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson

Publishing Company.

From childhood to adolescence is the Montessori text that covers the elementary development
the best, since she talks about the developmental characteristics and educational needs for child
through their teen years. Most of the children Montessori worked with were ages 3-6, so there is
less development around her theory for elementary education. This book really outlines the
changes that we see happening in the elementary (ages 6-12) child.

Fields, M.V., Meritt, P.A., & Fields, D.M. (2014) Constructive guidance and discipline:
Birth to age eight. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Constructive Guidance and Discipline is a classroom management book that doesn’t focus on a
quick fix but focuses on helping children build their own awareness around social-emotional
issues. It is a constructivist classroom management book. It has become my “bible” for how I
view discipline and social-emotional development in my classroom. This book is a treasure trove
of information about appropriate development and how to help younger children (who I will be
working with) to learn social skills.

Standard 3: Diversity and Differentiation

A teacher teaches with respect for their individual and cultural characteristics. Candidates
understand how elementary students differ in their development and approaches to
learning and create instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse students.

Debs, Mira. (2019) Diverse families, desirable school: Public Montessori in the era of school
 choice. Location: Publisher.

Diverse families looks at the interesting issue around Montessori Public schools as schools that
people choose to send their children to. It focuses on who sends their children to our schools and
why diversity is such an issue in Montessori schools. This was a book our school read together to
discuss. Unfortunately because of my master’s program class load I wasn’t able to read it with
everyone else, but I found this book incredibly helpful in looking at how to help families who
feel like they don’t belong to the majority of the school population in a “magnet” school such as
ours. It looks at the power of diversity in Montessori schools and schools or choice.

Echevaria, J. & Graves, A. (2015) Sheltered content instruction: Teaching English learners with
diverse abilities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

This book is all about looking at best practices for teaching all school content to ELL students.
Learning how to teach to students whose first language or home language is not English is
becoming increasingly important. Sheltered content instruction was very helpful in looking a
specific ways to help make your classroom accessible to the language diversity that is the reality
in most public schools.

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching & the brain: promoting authentic
engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

This book examines brain effects of bias in classrooms. It also asks the reader to examine their
own biases and helps to guide educators in ways to bring more equity and cultural understanding
into classrooms, allowing every child to reach their full potential. I have already used some of
her advice in how to handle students of the global majority and have found it very helpful in how
to frame my understanding of cultures other than my own.

Meyer, A., Rose, D., and Gordon, D. (2014). Universal design for learning: Theory &
practice. Web Edition. Wakefield, MA: CAST.

This is an amazing resource to understanding the need for UDL instruction. It is much heavier on
the theory than the practice but was very helpful in understanding the why behind differentiation.

Novak, K. (2016) UDL now: A teacher’s guide to applying universal design for learning in
today’s classrooms. Wakefield, MA: CAST publishing.
This is another book that focuses on UDL instruction and how to apply it in the classroom. This
book was written very simply and made it incredibly easy to understand what UDL education
was. I have used this book often to inform choices for how to differentiate instruction.

Zinn, H. (2009). A Young People’s History of the United States. New York: Seven Stories Press.

This is a younger reader’s version of A People’s History of the United States. It shows history
from more than just the rich, white, land owning male’s perspective. I really enjoyed getting to
look through this book, and it was really helpful for understanding ways that we can make our
history instruction more diverse. Though the text itself might be too complicated for the age
group I am teaching, I can see a couple things being taken and photocopied for a short in-depth
read for my older students and using the information for younger students.

Standard 4: Curriculum Design

A teacher knows the teacher’s content area and how to teach it (design of curriculum and
instruction). Candidates demonstrate their ability to plan and design instruction that
supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of
content areas, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and
the community context. The Candidate demonstrates the understanding and use of a
variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of
content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful
ways.

Koechlin, C., & Zwaan, S. (2014) Q tasks: How to empower students to ask questions and care
about answers. Markham, Ontario: Pembroke.

Q-Tasks is a book that focuses on how to build up the skills of questioning in our students. This
book was hard for me to read, but I can see it being a treasure trove of ideas for helping to sort
information and encourage inquiry learning. I appreciate all the pre-made worksheets and posters
included to help inspire organizing thoughts and note taking. All these pre-made materials will
be easy to adapt to use for assessment in other lesson plans.

McTighe, J. and Tomilinson, C.A. (2013). Integrating differentiated instruction and

understanding by design. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

This was a book that we referenced in our curriculum development classes. I found it very
helpful for informing the theory behind development and incorporating differentiation into the
classroom.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe J. (2005) Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.

This book outlines a way to design lessons and units for teaching from the standards, called
“backward design.” It teaches how to avoid the “twin sins” of lesson design – activities with no
content, and content with no end goal. This was the main book we used to learn about backwards
design. I found it hard to read at times, but it was great for examples and reference.

Standard 5: Content Knowledge

The Candidate demonstrates understanding of the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and
structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make
these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of
the content in the areas below.

Language Arts
Candidates demonstrate and apply understandings of the elements of literacy critical for
purposeful oral, print, and digital communication

Clay (2000). Running records for classroom teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann

This is just a long pamphlet that introduces a way to assess reading skills and miscues called
running records. I love running records! I have found this to be an incredibly helpful tool to
inform what mini-lessons I need to give certain students.

Daniels, H. and Nancy S. (2004). Mini lessons for literature circles. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann

This is a guide for how to get literacy circles started in your classroom. It contains over 50 mini
lessons that help children scaffold the skill of reading and discussing literature in depth. I plan on
using this book in conjunction with Debbie Miller’s Reading with Intention to inform the
“reading workshops” or “literature lunches” (as I plan to call them), that I hope to have with my
students. There are real-world applicable lessons that can be lifted directly from this text.

Freeman & Freeman (2014). Essential linguistics: What teachers need to know to teach ESL,
reading, spelling, grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
This book is all about linguistics and why it is important for teacher’s to understand language
development. It was very helpful in understanding the verbal development that happens with
children. A huge part of reading is the phonemic awareness of sounds as well as building
vocabulary. This book was helpful for me to not only understand why that is important but also
to understand how to better teach verbal skills.

Gentry, R., & Ouellette, G. (2019). Brain words : How the science of reading informs
teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse Publishers.

Brain words is a book that looks at brain studies how what does and does not work in reading.
This was a book I found while looking for sources for my portfolio. It is well written, with
accessible language and explores the way that brain studies have informed reading instruction.
This book helped to confirm to me the importance of writing in learning to read and I
appreciated seeing studies to back up what Montessori belief has been for over a hundred years.

Kuhl, P. (2010, October) The linguistic genius of babies. [Video File] Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies?language=e
n

This is a TED talk about a fascinating study that shows how the brain develops around certain
languages. It has been important for helping me to understand language development in children.

Miller, D. (2013) Reading with meaning: Teaching comprehension in the primary grades.
Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

This book address teaching reading comprehension in early elementary school with grace and
passion. While reading this book, which is a wonderful mix of theory and application, I felt like
Miller was talking to me specifically. Her outline of what an ideal classroom can look like, and
her openness to all forms of teaching reading all stem from her love of the written word, and her
desire to pass that passion on to her students. This book is heavily highlighted and marked
because I plan on using the lion share of it as a basis for my own literacy instruction.

Spandel, V. (2012) Creating young writers: Using the six traits to enrich writing process in
primary classrooms. Boston, MA: Pearson.

This book addresses how to teach the six traits of writing to younger, sometimes even pre-
literate, children. This book was mentioned briefly in another text from my intermediate literacy
class, and I immediately went out and found a used copy of my own. I have based a large portion
of my writing curriculum off the advice of this book and the six traits. I like the focus on
development of writing skills that Spandel uses.

Weaver, C. (2009). Reading process: Brief edition of reading process and practice.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

This book looks at the importance of analyzing miscues and discusses studies to support why this
is important. Though I found this book incredibly dry and hard to read, it helped me to
understand reading in a whole new way. This book talks about the importance of reading
instruction and understanding the difference between miscues as not understanding and miscues
as advanced understanding. Reading is the act of decoding meaning, and so often a miscue can
just be the brain reading over the words quickly. This was important for me to understand.

Science
Candidates demonstrate and apply understandings and integration of the three dimensions
of science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts (differentiation and technology),
and major disciplinary core ideas, within the major content areas of science

Contant, T., Bass, L., Tweed, A., & Carin, A. (2018) Teaching science through inquiry-based
instruction: Thirteenth edition. New York: Pearson

This book is a textbook about how to teach science to elementary through middle school grades
using inquiry as a basis for lessons. This book was the basis of our science instruction, but I
found it very hard to read. It was dry and not very interesting, but there were a number of very
helpful lesson ideas in the back of the book.

Moline, S. (2011). I see what you mean. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publications

This book is all about developing visual literacy in children. I borrowed this book from a friend
for the class and liked ended up liking it so much, I bought my own copy. It’s a great resource
for helping to teach visual literacy skills that I think we adults often take for granted. As a
Montessori teacher, the more ways we can empower children with knowledge for creating their
own follow-up work the better. I hope to teach all the different skills in this book to the children
in my class early in the year so that they can come up with their own timeline, graphs, maps etc.
when engaging in follow-up work from their research. This will be especially helpful with the
botany and geography (earth science) lessons because those lend themselves so much to graphs,
charts etc.
Montessori, M. (2007) The advanced Montessori method II. Amsterdam: Publisher.

This book contains the majority of the botany and geography lessons that Montessori developed.
Though I received these lessons in person during my Montessori training, and built my own
albums to incorporate them, this book is still something I can reference for different ways to
delivering those lessons and advice on how and why they work to teach children science skills.

Mathematics
Candidates demonstrate and apply understandings of major mathematics concepts,
algorithms, procedures, applications and mathematical practices in varied contexts, and
connections within and among mathematical domains.

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (ND) Standards for mathematical practice. Retrieved
from http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/

This is the breakdown of the common core standards for mathematical practice. It really helped
me to revise my thinking around math instruction. It helped to inform how I dealt with a
student’s “wrong answer”. Montessori mathematics is all about teaching the why behind math
instruction, and it was nice to see that the mathematical practice standards emphasized the same
thing.

Montessori, M. (2016) Psychoarithmetic. Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson Publishing.

This book explores in depth the lesson and reasoning behind the math materials and lesson in
Montessori education. She explores the theory of the time combined with her observation to
create the materials she did and how they work. I have gotten to see in action how these
materials continue to help children learn mathematics to this day.

Van de Walle, J. (2019). Elementary and middle school mathematics. Kindle Edition. New York:
Pearson Education.

This is a textbook about how to teach mathematics in elementary school and middle school. It
includes lots of lesson ideas as well as discusses what is developmentally appropriate to expect
of children during different periods of their lives. This book was the only book assigned to us for
our math class. It is a great overarching guide to teaching grades K-8 and all the subject matter
that could be covered therein. It has a great mix of theory and practice and really helped me to
deepen my understanding of mathematics instruction.

Social Studies
Candidates demonstrate understandings, capabilities, and practices associated with the
central concepts and tools in Civics, Economics, Geography, and History, within a
framework of informed inquiry

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007) Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for
understanding and engagement. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publications.

This book focuses on how to teach reading comprehension in all content. This book is incredibly
rich in information as well as lesson ideas for all ages. Though a bit dense of a read at times, I
can see keeping this book around for reference material and to use for future lesson ideas. Many
of the lessons in the book focused on critical thinking skills and finding fun and creative ways to
go deeper with texts. These are invaluable skills that we need to teach students!

Lesh, B. (2011) Why won’t you just tell us the answer?: Teaching historical thinking in grades
7-
12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publications.

This book presented new ideas and new ways of examining, studying and learning history! I
found this book helpful, if at times a little wordy. Lesh’s approach of delivering his methods to
the audience through lessons he teaches was at times interesting, and at time hard to wade
through. I really wish he had been a teacher for younger children so I could also get more insight
into how to teach my lower elementary children in these same thoughtful ways.

Lowen, J. (2019) Lies my teacher told me: Young readers’ edition. New York: New Press.

This book is adapted for young readers from Lies my teacher told me. It looks at the common
misconceptions that are taught in history classes. This book popped up for me when I was
searching for Howard Zinn’s book. I find this book very similar to A Young People’s History of
the United States because it has the same adapter: Rebecca Stefoff. I checked this out from the
library hoping it might be a little more lower elementary friendly, but even though the writing is
a little too advanced for my first and second graders, even for a read aloud, I can still see using
the information to base lessons on.
Arts Integration
Candidates engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and
communication to address authentic local and global issues using the arts (music, dance,
theater, media arts, and/or visual arts).

Layne, S. (2017) Acting right: Building a cooperative, collaborative, creative classroom

community. Chattanooga, TN: Foresight Book Publishing.

This book is focused on teaching techniques using acting and theater skills, to help manage
certain expected classroom behaviors. This book is a training I took during our beginning of the
2019-2020 school year during in-service and a curriculum program I plan on implementing in
my classroom. Much like the Wongs’ other procedures, this is best done at the very beginning of
the school year and practiced throughout the year as a way to remind children how to control
their actor’s tools (body, voice, imagination, concentration and collaboration) to be successful in
the classroom.

Montessori, M. (2015) Education and peace. Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson Publishing.

Education and Peace is Montessori’s book about laying out her hopes for the future and the
power education can play in creating a peaceful world. This book talks often about the power
and strength that comes from creating. Creation is the basis of why arts integration works so well
in classrooms.

Standard 6: Assessment
A teacher facilitates, monitors and assesses student learning. The candidate demonstrates
their understanding and use of multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their
own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learners’ decision
making.

Montessori, M. (1921) Suggestions and remarks upon observing children. London Training
Course Lecture 1921. Retrieved from https://montessoriguide.org/in-her-words-from-the-
london-course-1921

This lecture is all about using the tool of observation to see what work children are choosing and
whether or not they are practicing with the material in appropriate ways to show their
understanding. So much of assessment in the Montessori classroom is observation.

Taylor, C. and Nolan, S. (2008). Classroom assessment: Supporting teaching and learning in
 real classrooms. Location: Pearson.

This book is the master guide for all assessment. I would have liked a little more focus on
practical classroom application, but it did a wonderful job helping me deepen my understanding
of what assessment is and the important role it plays in the classroom.

Standard 7: Classroom Culture

A teacher creates and maintains a learning environment in which all students are actively
engaged and contributing members. The Candidate demonstrates their understanding of
how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in
critical/creative thinking and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and
global issues, as well as demonstrates their ability to integrate a variety of instructional
approaches for all members of the classroom; considers learners’ needs, interests, and
goals in determining instructional strategies to engage students as both learners and
teachers.

Charles, C. M.. (2014) Building classroom discipline. [Kindle Edition] Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Building Classroom Discipline is a textbook that overviews the different theorists and
philosophies of discipline in education over the last 100 plus years. It was a great resource to
have to help me get an idea of what theorists I might want to explore more about. Though I
found the writing and style of presentation generally very hard to connect with, seeing the
general beliefs of certain behavior management styles let me see which theorists to delve more
deeply into.

Johnston, P.H. (2012) Opening minds: Using language to change lives. Kindle Edition.
Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse Publishing.

Opening Minds is the power of language and how to use it in the classroom to empower out
students. This book was for our early literacy class, but the book’s discussion on how we use
language with students to build growth mindsets is just as important to managing classroom
culture and moral as it for helping learners to be comfortable with literacy. This book has
informed the way I consider how we talk to and correct children.

Lemov, D. (2015) Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to
college. [Kindle edition] San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
This is a book that promises techniques and tricks to help keep a well-oiled and managed
classroom. This book had a couple very helpful techniques for giving lessons, but was less
helpful for me as a whole, since the classrooms that are set up here are very much teacher led and
not as much applied to a the more student-led constructivist style classroom so often seen in
Montessori schools.

Wise, B.J., Marcum, K. Haykin, M., Sprick, R., Sprick, M. (2011) Meaningful work: Changing
behavior with school jobs. Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest Publishing.

Meaningful work is a book that outlines a program of creating buy-in from students who are
normally considered “problem children.” This is a program I desperately want to bring to my
school. Montessori education is all about meaningful work and keeping children engaged and
interested in learning by letting them follow their interests and passions. I see a lot of the
children in my classroom who are “trouble-makers” rise to the occasion when given one and one
attention and/or an opportunity to really contribute to the class. I think finding classroom jobs
with more visibility for rejected children will also help.

Standard 8
Family Engagement
A teacher works with parents, families and the community. The Candidate demonstrates
their participation in appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility
for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other professionals,
and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession

Constantino, S. (2016). Engage every family: Five simple principals. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin.

This book talks about the importance of family engagement, especially in communities and with
families who might normally feel like they do not belong at the school. This was a book we
received as a school after having an all-day in-service with Dr. Constantino himself in January
2020. It has practical applications that I’ve already started planning on implementing in the
upcoming school year.

Standard 9
Professionalism
A teacher participates in and contributes to the teaching profession. The teacher
demonstrates their engagement in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to
continually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions
on others (learners, families, and other professionals, and the learning community), and
adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner.

Wong, R. & H. (2018) The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher. Mountain View,
CA: Harry K. Wong Publications

This book is all about how to plan your classroom and set up expectation within the first few
days of school to have a successful year. I plan on using large chunks of this book to inform what
procedures and protocols I teach for the first few weeks of school. In Montessori, we call these
kinds of lessons, “Grace and Courtesy” lessons, and I’ve already begun a list based on this book
and what I’ve seen in the classroom to help inform which lessons will get priority at the
beginning of the year. I plan on using this book when I see an issue cropping up and keeping it in
my room as a reminder and reference material.

Standard 10
Technology
A teacher uses technology effectively, creatively and wisely. The Candidate demonstrates
their understanding of engaging learners in evaluation and selection of media and
technology resources and their use of technology appropriately to engage learners and
enhance instruction.

Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008) Born digital: understanding the first generation of digital
natives. New York: Basic Books.

This is a book that talks about the issues and advantages of technology in schools. This was an
illuminating book for me, because it brought up a lot of issues in using technology I might not
have normally considered.