Showcase Work
Welcome to my Master's of Art's in Education showcase page! Here you will find some of the work that I have completed over the last two years while obtaining my Master's Degree in Education (MAED). This work was created for the courses that I have completed over the past two years to represent the information that I have obtained throughout the MAED program. These artifacts represent my growth throughout the program and have added value to my own teaching practices within the classroom.
I have split the artifacts between three categories, Student Driven, Classroom Practices, and Lifelong Learner. The student driven category represents the projects and research that I have done that directly relates or effects my students understanding. This ranges from projects and lesson I created for individual and whole class instruction implemented to improve student understanding. The classroom practices category represents research that I have done and implemented in my classroom that affects the classroom culture, expectations, and grading practices. The Lifelong Learner section represents what I have learned through reading different articles, completing research, and developing my own understanding of education today.
I have split the artifacts between three categories, Student Driven, Classroom Practices, and Lifelong Learner. The student driven category represents the projects and research that I have done that directly relates or effects my students understanding. This ranges from projects and lesson I created for individual and whole class instruction implemented to improve student understanding. The classroom practices category represents research that I have done and implemented in my classroom that affects the classroom culture, expectations, and grading practices. The Lifelong Learner section represents what I have learned through reading different articles, completing research, and developing my own understanding of education today.
Student Driven
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Video Creation
As a middle school educator I find value in changing things up. Students are typically used to whole class instruction in class and so often I like to integrate my teaching with videos that are developed by other educators. I had the privilege of creating my own video to introduce the Order of Operations in one of my master's courses at MSU. By learning how to build my own video using online resources and integrating my own teaching, I am now able to create videos to share with my students. These videos can be utilized in whole group instruction or individual review.
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Student Focused
Every year I have a vast majority of students walk into my classroom all with different strengths and abilities. As their teacher it is my job to ensure that I give them every opportunity to be successful. One technique that I have implemented into my classroom I learned through a literacy learner analysis project. I was able to work with a student one on one and help recognize the students deficit in literacy and how that affects their mathematical capability. By doing this I was able to implement differentiated instruction to help improve her problem solving skills. This has helped me improve my ability to implement differentiated instruction in my current classroom and gave me strategies to better meet students with mathematical deficits.
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Multi-Modal
As a 1-1 school technology is something that my students experience everyday. By having this technology at their finger tips they are able to have access to many more outlets to review units and different topics. By creating an online "whiteboard", using Prysm, where students can utilize the tools on the webpage to flow through a basic review of information. By using this tool it allows me to spend time with students working on specific questions and clarifying any further questions.
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Resource Library
As an educator I believe you can never have too many resources! What you utilize each year may change, but having a place to easily access these tools is only that much more of a benefit. I was able to create a library of technological tools to utilize in my math class. I separated the tools into different categories making them easy to access. This website is also available to other educators as well as students and parents! |
Repurposed Lesson Plan
For this project I was asked to take a typical lesson plan from my curriculum and transform it by utilizing technology. By taking a lesson that I would regularly teach without technology and implementing technological practices and tools this allowed me to practice using technology in my own classroom. By practicing implementing technology within a lesson i am now able to more confidently utilize technology at a pure and effective level in a majority of lessons. By dong this it allows me to integrate into the digital world that my students live prominently in. |
Classroom Practices
Homework
One of the topics that I address on a yearly basis in my classroom is homework. Do I give homework? No homework? Less homework? More homework? With new research coming out regularly and every year the group of students I have seems to change and benefit from different methods, I want to be sure that I am enhancing my students understanding of the material and not overwhelm them with excess work. In this paper I have addressed the common arguments for and against homework and the best practices when it comes to this topic.
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Grading and Standards
Practices for assessing students understanding and growth of material throughout the year seems to always to be changing. In my 5th year of teaching, I was teaching in an inner city environment and my students understanding and test scores were tanking. Never having experienced such a large deficit in my students (2 grades below level) my partner teacher and I began to ask questions and do some research. This lead to the creation of this action research project in studying the effects of standard based grading overall and within my own classroom.
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Lifelong Learner
Technology and the Internet
One of the first essays that I ever wrote in my Master's program was about technology. In this particular course I was asked to reflect on each article, video, and essay I had read and watched over the semester. By connecting the effects of the internet and technology at the fingertips of most children to what I experience in my own classroom was enlightening. I was able to appreciate the value of technology that I am able to use because of the widespread use of the internet. I was also able to reflect on my own experience with technology and the internet and recognize the areas I lack in as well. |