Sydney Farniok

ED 3350

Final Confirm

4/25/2022

Who will I be as an effective teacher is a loaded question. There is not definite answer on

how to be the best and most effective teacher because you must re-adapt your best teaching every

year. You can create consistency within yourself to provide a constructivist classroom for your

students every year. Being an effective teacher means to provide differentiation, engagement,

meaningful learning, and the list goes on and on. To be an effective teacher means to reach and

teach as many students as possible at the same time. As an effective teacher I want to provide my

students with foundational aspects of constructivist learning, partner with students to build a

strong learning environment, create engaging curriculums, and design opportunities for student-

centered learning.

The foundational aspects to constructivist learning are a complex and deep dive into what

it means to be an effective teacher. It is important to build a constructivist classroom and in

doing so you must do many things and it will change every year with a new class. In a

constructivist classroom you must provide your students with hands on learning. Allow the

students to be involved in activities. Worksheets are proven to be effective but there is a new

wave of kinesthetic learning. Providing hands on learning for your students is important because

it creates a real-life experience. Most of the lessons that students are exposed to fly out in one ear

and out of the other. I believe that hands on learning makes an impact, and it is more than just

listening to a lecture. Hands on learning leads to me my next strategy to being an effective and
constructivist teacher, it is important to connect your teachings to real world problem solving.

When you expose your students to real world problems, they get to learn how to problem solve

on their feet when they are not in the classroom. One of the main goals of being a teacher is to

teach kids/students how to be upstanding citizens. In doing so, we must expose them to real

world problem solving. Student-centered learning is an essential aspect to the constructivist

learning theory. I have learned that in a constructivist classroom it is beneficial to use the CCC

cycle, which was introduced by Goodwin. The CCC cycle is described as students becoming

engaged in new content, then putting their new knowledge of content to work, and lastly where

they will confirm what they know through a formative or summative assessment.

Student-centered learning is allowing the students to decide two things. The first being

what they want to learn and second, how they want to learn it. Academic standards are important

because it provides a framework of what needs to be taught, but it is also important to hear your

students’ needs and what they want to learn. The standards you use in your classroom should

reflect in the essential questions or the guiding questions. A quote that captures the big idea of

letting the students have a choice in what they are learning is: “Involve me, and I will

understand.” Most of the students in a class will be exceptionally more engaged if they can be a

part of their learning. In student-centered learning it is important to also keep your students

motivated. In doing this, provide them with frameworks and allow them to have input. Students

will feel far more engaged if they feel like they are involved in what they want to learn.

Building a positive classroom environment is one of the most important things an

educator can do. A student may find the classroom to the only place where they feel comfortable,

it may be the place that is their saving grace. Students come from different backgrounds and

home life might not be easy for some students. A lot of students come to school and the
classroom is a place that makes them feel like they are at home. It is essential to foster a positive

environment inside your classroom. To create a positive classroom environment, it may be

beneficial to allow for group work and partner work. In doing this grouping, make the groups

with purpose. It is important to create variety with the groups that way each student has the

chance to interact with the various students in the class and create relationships. Allow the

students to share stories, allow them to ask questions, and allow them to be express themselves

without judgement. It is known that students make mistakes. Most of the time when students

make mistakes it is a laughingstock, but when you have a strong relationship amongst your

students it may be a silly mistake that everyone can learn from. Always be sure to engage your

students, a great model that follows student engagement is the engagement ladder. When the

students in a classroom and completely consumed by the content and are diving deeper into the

content, they are the highest level of engagement. What you do not want to see in your classroom

is a student on the lower end of the engagement ladder. These students are actively disengaged,

and they may need extra support to move up the engagement ladder. This extra support can be

acknowledged in providing differentiation in your lesson and unit plans. It is important to keep

the students engaged because it keeps them on track and that will further their success in the

content you are teaching.

Designing a curriculum or a unit plan that is effective is important because it provides the

framework for how well and how effective each small layer of content will be taught. When

being an effective teacher it is important to utilize your resources and create engaging material

for the students. When creating a unit plan you must be intentional with your planning. The

Hamburger Model is a great technique to utilize. You should start with an introduction which is

the top bun, it is essential that you make the introduction engaging and bring the students in so
that they are the top of the ladder in engagement. The meat is the activities, these activities

should be hand-on learning experiences and should also connect to their prior knowledge. The

bottom bun is the conclusion of the unit, this should be a wrap up and a connection of all the

unit. This should be a wrap-up of the entire unit. This should be the confirm phase. To create an

effective classroom, this would be the time where you go back to the thematic or guiding

questions, and you ask yourself and your students, do these questions align with what was

taught? This is important because it creates a sense of mastery for the teacher and for the student.

You want to achieve mastery in your classroom because that is an effective practice. It’s an

effective practice because it allows for the students to show you that they know the content.

Designing the perfect lesson plan is never an easy task. It takes trial and error. Through

my time in education courses, I have learned that no lesson plan is perfect. You will need to re-

adapt and you will have to change things. Providing my students with opportunities for student-

centered learning is important because that is how they will the most engaged. While creating the

perfect lesson plan, you must plan for what the students may not know yet, or how the students

might interpret something, you will have to think about what the students already need to know

to fully engage in the lesson. Creating a lesson plan that will involve the needs of each of your

students also will involve the universal learning, this is the approach to many different learning

styles. It is impossible for an educator to use every style of learning in one lesson plan, but it is

important to do so throughout your units. The way I see a lesson plan is that it is important to

make the learning relevant. When creating a lesson plan, you will need to ask yourself “how is

this going to benefit my students?” Differentiation is a huge piece of a lesson plan. This is the

approach to how you are going to cater to each of your students. The students who may need

differentiation are the students with IEPs, students who struggle reading, writing, and focusing.
In a lesson plan you must consider these things because the goal of our lesson plans is to make it

student-centered, it is important to be sure to reach every student. Goodwin provides us with an

essential framework for creating anything in your classroom, which is the CCC cycle. The

consider phase begins with capturing the student’s attention, this part will make sure that the

students are excited to learn about what is to come. The construct phase is where the students

work hands-on with their new knowledge. In the construct phase it is essential that you create

authentic learning. The confirm phase is the greatest piece to learning new knowledge. This is

where the students create feedback loops, and this is where they will find any disequilibrium.

The confirm phase is also beneficial to the educator because the students are providing you with

what you know. If the student is receiving the information through a negative feedback, the

educator will be able to see where the student needs further understanding.

Through my time in Pedagogy, I have learned what it means to be an effective teacher.

These practices I have learned will be something I want to implement in my classroom.

Providing our students with a safe learning environment, letting the students be engaged with

their learning, and creating lesson plans that can reach as many as students as possible, all at

once. All of these things create a classroom that can be the most effective.