Samantha Jackson

Graduate Portfolio

Standard 1 Reflection

EDEF 600: Child and Adolescent Development – Use developmental understandings in guiding

learning experiences for children and adolescents

Radford University

Fall 2022

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 Child and Adolescent Development is an extremely important subject for any teacher

developing their skills. To understand how to instruct the child, a teacher needs to know what

they are developmentally capable of. Most kindergarten students are learning how to write their

names. Elementary students are learning how to write complete sentences and form a paragraph.

A middle school student is beginning to learn how to write multi-paragraph essays, and so on.

This class has been extremely beneficial to my teaching practice. When thinking about creating

my lessons and activities I must think about what they are physically and mentally able to

accomplish in the limited time I have them in my class. It has caused me to reflect on my

assignments and activities to make sure that they are developmentally appropriate for all my

students. It has also given me ideas of things I could be doing in my classes to help my students

grow. This class gave me the idea to institute a grade check-in form and start Social Emotional

Learning (SEL) lessons. These are three important ways this class has transformed my teaching

and helped me become a better educator.

One activity I am implementing this school year is having my students complete a Grade

Check-In Form (Artifact 1a) every other Friday. The past two years I have noticed that students

have a lot of missing assignments for classes, and not just in mine. Either the students have a

tough time remembering to submit assignments to Canvas, forget to turn them in, or they do not

get their absent work when they return. My students who do not have parents that check their

grades often are the ones who have an especially challenging time remembering to check their

grades. When I talk with students about it, they either do not realize they have missing

assignments, or they see that they are missing so many, and they do not think there is enough

time to finish them all. Some students did not even know how to check their grades using their

student portal. Middle school is where my students are starting to become more self-reliant with

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their grades. The grade check-in form is a way to have them start guiding my students to

become more self-reliant by having them check their grades themselves.

The Grade Check-In is a Google Form that they fill out every other Friday in my class.

Once the students check their grade, they go to the Google Form to select their current grade,

type what their missing assignments are (if any), and they select how they want to complete it.

Then, at the bottom they enter their email and their parents' email. The Google Form then emails

the student and the parent a pdf with all the information they entered in the form. This way the

students are in control of making sure they have all their work submitted, but there is still some

adult guidance. The form also gives them the choice of where they want to complete the

assignment. They can complete it at home or during our review period (Tiger Time), at school.

I like to give them a lot of choice in the classroom however, if they are not completing the

assignment at home then I will automatically sign them up for Tiger Time to finish the

assignment. I am excited to see how this helps my students keep up with their grades in my class

and relieve the stress of having missing assignments.

Incorporating Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lessons is another way this class has

improved my teaching. Every Monday I plan to have a 5-minute SEL Lesson at the beginning of

each class. Emotionally, my students are still developing and learning how they feel about

themselves and others. They are pickier about their friend groups and take social standing at

school very seriously. To help them deal with this and learn how to express their emotions in a

respectful and healthy way, these 5-minute lessons will give them tools and a safe place to

practice them. Artifact 1b is a video of me teaching an SEL Lesson on active listening. At the

beginning of the lesson students will answer a question on a post-it note. The question my

students must answer is “how can you tell someone is listening to you?” After answering the

question on their sticky note students will stick it to the board and wait quietly until all students
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are finished. Once finished, I ask for students to volunteer their answers and we go over the

different ways we can show others we are listening. The students did very well with this activity

and gave some thoughtful answers on their sticky notes. This is one of my favorite activities to

do with my students because this is a skill they need to be reminded of throughout the year. At

the end of the lesson, we lead with a quote I got from an SEL Tik-Tok content creator

(@TheMissRProject) that says: “Today is a new day with new opportunities to make your world

a better place!”

The Child and Adolescent Development class has presented me with multiple ways to

improve myself as an educator. This class reminded me that throughout the year, I need to make

sure I am giving my students some grace. The students I have are only 12 years old and they are

going to make mistakes throughout the year. What is important is that I am there to help them

learn from that mistake and to improve themselves. This school year has been the first semi-

normal year they have had in the past three years. Students are bound to have some hiccups

during the day, and that is ok. While students have continued to grow and they have learned

things, they still lost out on being in a normal school setting. The mandate for staying six feet

apart is gone and so are the masks. These students are going to take some time getting used to

being normal kids again. Incorporating more Social Emotional Learning Lessons as well as

giving them tools, like the Grade Check-In, to help them succeed in seventh grade and beyond!