Regarding my teaching philosophy, every student needs to receive the same quality of education, regardless of their ability. Students should feel comfortable and use their creativity to express how they learn. Every student deserves a fair chance to grow academically, socially, and emotionally. I aim to create a safe, respectful, and engaging space where all students feel valued and empowered to succeed. Below, you can view my research paper that helped influence my teaching philosophy.
Teaching- Student Work
ELA
While learning about character traits, it was important for every student to have their thoughts. Early into my student teaching, I realized that students tend to have their answers persuaded by other students. This could be because they fear their answer is not good enough, they are not fully listening, or they do not know the answer. I had post-it notes for each student to put their initial on the back and have them write one or two words that described the character. I identified the students who needed additional support, which was a great way to avoid having each student's answers influenced by another student.
Students also learned about how poems are set up. They learned poems often follow a rhyme scheme and are broken into stanzas instead of paragraphs. For their project, students created their own fall-themed poem using a rhyme scheme. This project was student-centered because they got to pick their topic and decide how they wanted their poem to sound. It gave them a chance to be creative and connect what they learned about poems to their own ideas.
Social Studies
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A lot of our Social Studies comes from reading a textbook. At the beginning of my student teaching, we could do activities such as EdPuzzles, YouTube Videos, and Kahoots! However, we have been without internet for almost a month, so I wanted to do something where the students could work together and use what we learned from Unit 2 to create a map key for our school. The students learned that symbols stand for something important on the map. The students knew a place where we spent a lot of time and made our classroom rules. They knew to have a star for our classroom because, on the map, the capital is where the governor or president goes to make laws. This project allowed students to be creative, and they facilitated their own work by labeling and making symbols of their own choice. By the end, I could see if the students understood the assignment by choosing relevant symbols that best-fit classrooms. |
Assessments
During the unit, students learned about continents, hemispheres, and oceans. For the assessment, they had to do a summative assessment. They divided a blank globe into the four hemispheres and labeled what they remembered. I checked their work before they started coloring to make sure everything was labeled correctly.
This was a formative assessment we completed when we first started learning about verb tenses. Students worked on identifying verbs in different sentences and determining their tense—past, present, or future. This activity gave me insight into how well students understood verb tenses and helped guide future lessons to target areas where they needed more support.
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I noticed that using words like "test" or "assessment" can sometimes make students anxious, affecting their performance. To create a more comfortable environment, I designed an activity where students answered questions about the Greek myth The Tale of King Midas. This required them to cite evidence from the text to support their answers. Since this was one of the more challenging readings, the activity was an informal assessment to evaluate their comprehension and ability to find and use textual evidence. This approach allowed me to assess their skills without the pressure of a formal test.
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Lesson Plans
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Click the buttons below to view my other two lesson plans for Morphology and ELA.
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