CSTP 1.1
Using knowledge of students to engage them in learning
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CHOOSE YOUR SUFFERING ASSIGNMENT
The Choose Your Suffering Assignment was the first work I had my 12th graders complete for me when I began my long-term student teaching placement in January 2022. Coming from my short-term student teaching placement, I knew that relationship and rapport building would be critical, so I wanted to introduce an assignment right away that would allow me to be vulnerable with students and receive their vulnerability in return. I worked with my resident teacher to develop and assign a slideshow presentation, wherein students were asked to consider what challenges in life they believe are worth struggling or suffering for, after reading an excerpt about how any worth having or doing in life comes with some degree of work, responsibility, or sacrifice attached to it. Students needed to include three slides in this project: one for their past sufferings, one for their present, and one for future goals. The artifact included here is a sample I made so that students could get to know me, as well as see the assignment expectations clearly.
This assignment gave me early insights into students’ strengths, interests, and needs. It also began to build some trust between my students and I, and helped us to quickly form relationships. I used information I learned from each student’s project to get to know them as both people and learners, so that I could begin to leverage their values and out-of-school literacies in the classroom.
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MIDTERM REFLECTION
Over the course of my long-term student teaching placement my students completed many reflective assignments for me, where I would ask them to evaluate both themselves as learners, myself as their teacher, and the resources and materials provided in class to support them. One of the most critical of these assignments was the Midterm Reflection, which took place halfway through the semester. Instead of having students complete a traditional exam for midterms, I determined that it would be more beneficial if students were given an opportunity to synthesize their learning so far in the semester, reflect deeply on their own performance, and voice their opinions on what was or wasn’t working in the class. They did this in the form of a slideshow presentation. The presentation needed to include three specific parts: a reflection on themselves, a reflection on the class, and a reflection about how they’d like to finish the year. The artifact attached here is a sample of one student’s presentation.
This assignment helped to give students ownership over their learning in the classroom by challenging teaching strategies that didn’t work for them, and celebrating ones that did. This assignment also helped to stretch students academically and social-emotionally by having them practice reflection, using academic language. Perhaps the biggest benefit, however, of this assignment, was that I was able to use student responses to gauge how well students believed they had been learning. This assignment informed me as to what I needed to reteach, as well as what students wanted to learn next. As a result, I was able to adapt my teaching in the second quarter of the semester to better reflect my students’ knowledge, as well as better differentiate my instruction, per what students deemed to be their own strengths.
EXTRACURRICULAR INVOLVEMENT
I learned that in order to teach to students as both learners, and as people, I had to leverage who they were outside of the classroom, and I had to build authentic relationships with them based on more than just class content. One way I went about this was by trying to be visible to students outside of the classroom in their extracurricular activities. This artifact shows pictures from when I chaperoned prom, which many of my seniors were quite excited about. I also, during the course of my long-term student teaching placement, went to rallies, participated in spirit weeks, and engaged with students about what clubs they were in. These experiences really helped me grow as an educator, so I could build trust with my students and foster relationships so that students could thrive academically.
CSTP 1.2
Connecting learning to students’ prior knowledge, backgrounds, life experiences, and interests
IRP PROJECT
The Independent Reading Project, which my resident teacher and I implemented during my long-term teaching placement, after designing together, was the culmination of many of my pedagogical commitments and strengths coming together. This long term, choice based research assignment challenged students to learn about, analyze, and speak to real world issues that they are passionate about.
The root of the project was based around connecting classroom learning to students’ life experiences and cultural backgrounds, while also introducing a long-running unit that would capture student attention and interest. The artifact included here is the initial assignment document that was given to students, to lay out expectations for the project. After conducting shared research on prevalent, real-world social issues, students then had to pick a narrowed down topic to research further. Students were encouraged to choose a topic that they had personal experiences with or connections to, and then to leverage those personal experiences to deepen both their and their peers’ learning on the topic. Students chose a wide range of topics, from barriers against undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, to the mental effects of drug abuse, to the damage caused by racial slurs against members of the black community. Each student chose a topic that was relevant to them and their lives outside school, that allowed them to speak about their communities and analyze their rhetorical positionality.
After choosing the topic, students then had to pick three sources on that topic to read and synthesize. One source had to be a book, one source had to be a scholarly article, and one source had to be in an alternative format, like a documentary or podcast. After weeks of structured reading and research, students then had to write, edit, and finalize an APA formatted analysis paper, introducing their topic, exploring their personal connections, and expounding on their research through clear rhetorical choices. After submitting their final analysis paper, the IRP project culminated in students writing speeches and creating visual symbols of the message of their IRP project. Both the visual component and speech were then presented during class finals, and marked the end of the project, as well as students’ time in the class.
Students eagerly engaged in this project and it was one of the highlights of my credential year. A couple of students wanted to give their speeches in Spanish, their native language, with the rhetorical purpose of having their classmates feel the way they did when they first came to this country and did not speak English. These moments, and truly all of the speeches in general, were impactful and meaningful to the entire class community, because students got to use research to speak to what they were already passionate about. They got to connect their own prior experiences and existing knowledge with academic and rhetorical study.
CSTP 1.3
Connecting subject matter to meaningful, real-life contexts
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE ASSIGNMENT
In their midterm reflections, many students stated that they were anxious about “adult life” after graduating high school and wanted the time and space to learn more. Using this knowledge, I adapted an existing Expository Reading and Writing Course Unit, called“What’s Next?”, to be more in line with my students’ needs.
I decided to introduce a Choose Your Own Adventure Assignment in order to tackle my students' questions about life after high school, because I recognized that many of my students would choose different life paths, and therefore have different concerns. Rather than focus on one “life path” being the “correct” one for students to choose, I chose to validate all options, and focus on making sure students knew that no matter what they chose to do, they needed to stay proactive and informed. In this way, I made sure to connect the subject matter, in this case research, to real-life situations and contexts, that students had already expressed an interest in addressing.
The Choose Your Own Adventure Assignment featured six different, self-paced lessons and assignment topics, and students were tasked with completing two, which they had the freedom to choose based on what their concerns or interests were. Each assignment had a project component that was based around building a student agency, by having them research on their own in order to solve real world problems. Options for the assignment included: going straight to a four-year university, transferring from a community college after two years, getting a job, buying a car, renting an apartment, and managing time/coping with anxiety. The modalities of the project-based components varied, so that I could accommodate the different ways in which students learn. When students completed their projects, they posted links to them on a shared Padlet, so that their peers could reference their work as a resource post-high school. The artifact included here is a picture of that Padlet, which is split into categories based on the assignment options.
CSTP 1.4
Using a variety of instructional strategies, resources, and technologies to meet students’ diverse learning needs
STORY FROM BEAR COUNTRY
The Story from Bear Country Lesson was one that I used early on in my long-term students teaching placement, but that students continually mentioned as a highlight of their learning experience as the semester progressed. The goal of the lesson was to help students explore the ways in which an author’s persona and perspective affects their rhetorical choices. For this lesson, I had students compare the perspectives of Leslie Marmon Silko, an indigenous author who wrote the poem “story from bear country”, and John Krakuaer, author of Into the Wild, the book we’d been reading in class at that time.
I knew that the poem, though it offered a really wonderful indgneous perspective on wilderness that simultaneously echoed and rallied against Krakuaer’s writing, was dense. If I had only read the poem to my students, I knew that I’d be doing a disservice to some of the learners in my class who require differentiated instruction. So I instead decided to utilize active literacy strategies I learned through UC Davis’ partnership with the Globe Theater in London. I then followed up those active literacy strategies, which took place outside, with a group poster project, and a brief written analysis. This lesson, therefore, offered a vast amount of UDL and differentiated instruction, and engaged students though tactile and visual means, while building their writing, reading, listening, and speaking skills. I would consider it an example of a well-adapted lesson that uses an integrated English language arts model to teach to a variety of learners.
The artifact included here is a video clip, which shows some of the active literacy close reading strategies utilized in the lesson. This video was submitted as a part of my CalTPA Cycle 1 Assessment.
OTHELLO ACTIVE LITERACY ACTIVITIES
I utilized active literacy strategies again during our Othello unit, for the same reasons as in the “story from bear country” lesson. The artifacts shown here are slides from a day of active literacy strategies in my class, where we tactically and visually played with the concept of status, while interacting with the text.
CSTP 1.5
Promoting critical thinking through inquiry, problem solving, and reflection
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HEXAGONAL DISCUSSION & REFLECTION
I was introduced to the idea of a hexagonal discussion through an educator’s Facebook group and instantly wanted to challenge myself to implement it at some point during my student teaching placement. A hexagonal discussion is one where students are given either paper or digital hexagons, write different concepts, terms, events, characters, etc. on them, and then have to organize the hexagons into a honeycomb, where all of the connections make sense.
I wanted my version of a hexagonal discussion to be highly tactile, so I decided to give students several paper hexagons, about 3 or 4 per student. The goal of the discussion was to get students thinking about and engaging with ideas surrounding the micro-level impact our positionality plays on our diction and word choices. To do this, I had students play with the notion of word associations. Students were given “starter words” to write on hexagons, things like, “politics”, “parents”, “middle class”, “sexism”, “racism”, etc. Students filled in the remaining hexagons with their first words they thought of when considering the starter words.
From there, students had to work with their small table groups to create an initial honeycomb, where all the words were connected to one another in ways that made sense. I challenged the students to really think about the links between the words and concepts they represented. Once students had honeycombs they were satisfied with, I created two “supergroups” by having students join with the other table groups around them. They then had to synthesize their honeycomb concept maps together by creating one, new, bigger honeycomb to represent the whole supergroup. Finally, we moved the tables and chairs from the center of the room, clearing a large space on the floor, so that the two super groups could work together to make one concept map to represent the whole class. The artifacts included here are pictures of the class’ completed concept map. Students immediately followed this activity by opening a digital discussion board, where they reflected on word association, positionality, and how this activity might help them make more mindful word choices when writing.
The hexagonal discussion and subsequent reflection gave students an opportunity to evaluate, discuss, and think about content in an innovative way. It provided students with an opportunity to discuss multiple potential ways to solve a problem (combing the honeycombs) and encouraged them to work collaboratively to create something that considered diverse perspectives. The discussion board they completed at the end of the lesson provided an additional opportunity for students to apply their learning in the hexagonal discussion to new learning, by asking them to evaluate how what they learned might inform their writing.
CSTP 1.6
Monitoring student learning and adjusting instruction while teaching
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SPEED DATING DISCUSSIONS
The Speed Dating Discussion was not my finest moment as an educator and this is one of the few examples within my Credential Year Portfolio where I am not completely proud of my work. However, I am proud of the learning that came out of this activity, on my part as an educator.
The original plan in the Speed Dating Discussion activity was for students to rotate every three minutes to a new partner, talk about a provided analysis question related to our American Skin unit, briefly record what they learned, and rotate again. I designed the discussion to be a quick, one-on-one activity because I had noticed many students were not willing to participate in whole-class discussions, but would talk in small groups with their peers. The artifact provided here is the lesson slides I originally designed for this activity.
Unfortunately, the way that I set up the discussion stations proved to be confusing and too fast paced. Students spent more time in the first few rotations trying to figure out what station to go to than actually talking about the analysis questions. I knew that I had to make an “on the spot” change, and so I moved students over to a digital discussion board, where I posted the same analysis questions. I asked students to instead just respond to five of the questions, and then add comments to five of their peers' responses, building on their ideas. The adjustment that I made at this point in the lesson salvaged the day Students sat down in their assigned seats and began engaging with the content. Many of their responses were deep and effective. The pacing of the lesson improved, while the learning goals stayed the same.
The Speed Dating Discussion was a day where I learned not to go down with a sinking ship- if an activity isn’t working, adjust instruction. This lesson really helped me continue to grow, and I am thankful for it because of that.