Intasc #2: The teacher uses understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures

and communities to ensure inclusive learning environments that enable each learner to
meet high standards.
2(m) The teacher respects learners as individuals with differing personal and family
backgrounds and various skills, abilities, perspectives, talents, and interests.
Evidence: It is important to make sure that the students are
understanding what they are supposed to be learning or reading. This is
quite difficult to do when they don’t know how to read high frequency
words. There are four students in the class that I am in for my FA- 21
semester of student teaching, that don’t know how to read these words.
One of the four is ESL. I think that it is important to note that in this
class, a majority of the (3rd grade) students tested at a kindergarten or
first grade level. This was a little frightening at first but we made
adjustments as needed and we continue to do so. At this point we have
put up a word wall because a wide variety of the students will benefit from this for spelling and for the four
who cannot read high frequency words, we pull them back individually and go through flash cards with
them. We break down the word parts and also use pictures or numbers. For example the word “eight”
might have the 8 next to it or for the word laugh we might draw a laughing face next to it as a cue.
A lot of the writing does encourage students to show off personal skills, abilities and interests. We
were working on personal narratives which allowed us to hear a little bit of an important moment in the
students' life. Now we are working on onomatopoeia which helps us see a little creativity. Both are
individualised and we can work with each student at the level that they need to be helped at.

Narrative: As I mentioned in the evidence, one of my four lowest academically achieving students is ESL.
The first day of class, she was working on an about me sheet and for things like favorite movie, favorite
color, and favorite food, she put “NA”. At first I was very confused. How did she not have a favorite color?
Was she rushing? Did she not want to do this? But then as I read it aloud to her she started to fill it in.
Another concerning incident was when my mentor teacher and I were walking around helping the
students come up with ideas for personal narratives. My mentor teacher asked her what her brother's
name was. Her response was, “I don’t know”. My mentor teacher had her sibling so she knows that she is
the baby in the family but I was shocked.
She is making tremendous progress this year. Part of this is also that she
gets pulled out for a bit of time to go work one-on-one with another teacher in
the building to work on her english.

Reflection: As we go through the flashcards and continue to work with

students individually during independent work time, the students are getting
better and better at it. The growth is so impressive to see because at the
beginning of the year I had students come up to me asking how to spell the
word “in” and now the students are so independent and mostly ask me to spell
more complex words that pertain to the subject we are writing about.