Standard 9 Reflection

MEd. Program Standard 9

Teacher leaders will evaluate and use effective curriculum design.

Relevant Courses in Program:

Differentiated Instruction

Try DI

Reflection

Original Experience

Prior to this program, I was committed to backwards designing all units with my PLC team using our team assessment mapping tool and protocol. We also used Webb’s depth of knowledge framework, to appropriately scaffold to high bar, level three and four tasks with appropriate levels of support to ensure increased rigor and student success (Webb, 2002).  We would look at our standards and create or enhance rigorous lessons that align with our unit assessments. We used a model based on McTinghe and Thomas (2003) where we begin by looking at our unit assessments, and ultimate targets, and we plan our instruction backwards by splitting it into manageable chunks that led to our desired target. After each lesson segment, we use data to plan specific interventions for students who struggled. As a team, we have been fortunate to have a strong, viable curriculum with strong lessons readily available to us.  Most of our work has involved enhancing these lessons, and selecting formative assessments we can use to determine students requiring additional support. While much of the work that we do involves differentiating our instruction, after completing my differentiating instruction course, it has become very apparent to me that when designing lessons, it is also critical to consider the manner in which all students learn.

New Learning

            I was pleased to see that the differentiated instruction course that I took also suggests a backward curriculum design, and even cites McTinghe and Thomas (2003). When differentiating instruction, it is critical to have a strong understanding of what you want students to learn, and the critical culminating task prior to designing units, and lessons. This is why it is critical to start with the desired result, and work backward to design the necessary steps to reach the learning goal.

Dahl (2009) explains that effective lesson design and implementation is comprised of Goals, Exploration, Access to Understanding, Response to Instruction, and Strategies. In my classroom, I am committed to growing in effectiveness in all of these areas. It is crucial to reflect on my current level of expertise, and to understand that I will never be done improving my practice, and that there is always room to grow and becoming increasingly more proficient in each area. I have always been extremely aware of my long term, and short-term learning goals for all content areas in my third-grade classroom. As a team, when we plan our units, we always begin with the end goal, or critical task in mind and work backward to create tasks, lesson plans, and assessment maps. At the beginning of each unit, we also provide “road map” to our students using targets. We begin by telling students where we are heading, and what we expect them to know by the end of our unit. We also use success criteria to show student what it will look like when they meet the unit’s objective. It is critical to be intentional when teaching, which is why knowing your goals, and the path to reach those goals is so imperative to student success.

            When considering exploration, I would consider myself proficient, while also recognizing that I have plenty of room to grow in this area. In my classroom, we certainly explore content using a large variety of activities, and highly engaging tasks, but I am still actively working to find ways to do this exploration in a more differentiated manner. My prime focus is quality, core, whole group instruction, and creating highly engaging lessons leading to deeper student understanding. I need to focus more on focusing my activities based about student readiness, interest, and learning profile (Dahl, 2009). Quality core instruction will always be incredibly important, but I need to develop more opportunities to integrate student choice, and interests into my lessons. I want to create more learning tasks that require me to explore along with my students and fuel their interests.

            Providing access to understanding to all of my students is what I am most passionate about as an educator. Through scaffolding, and planning for student misconceptions, and adjusting instruction to ensure student understanding, this is an area that I am consistently pouring energy into making all of our content accessible to each student. For each unit, much of PLC time is devoted to planning interventions, and trying new DI strategies for struggling students and brainstorming ways to respond to learning barriers using high impact strategies such as accessing prior knowledge, feedback, and identifying similarities and differences (Marzano et. al. 2001). It is imperative that students feel confident and successful in school, which is why we use data to form intervention groups when our instruction is not successful for each student. Every student is entitled to a quality education, and though barriers are unavoidable and a natural component of the learning process, it is our job to scaffold, differentiate, and alter our instruction so that all student can access to content.

     Response to instruction is a growth area for me. While data truly drives every aspect of my instruction, I could certainly analyze this data in additional, meaningful ways. With twenty-five third grade students, it can be challenging to determine the trajectory and rate of student learning consistently for each student. This information is so important when forming appropriate interventions to improve student understanding (Tomlinson, 1999).I believe that it would be powerful for students to also take ownership of the individual growth through the creation of growth portfolios. This way students could conference with me and chart and understand their own progress and growth rate in all content areas. As I continue to grow my RTI practice, I hope to become more effective at adjusting my teaching to better fit the needs of all of my unique learners.

Impact

            I am committed to improving my practice in the areas of Goals, Exploration, Access to Understanding, Response to Instruction, and Strategies as they all contribute to increased student success in the classroom.

            Salend, and Whittaker (2017) expound the benefits of implementing a Universal Design for Learning, and the positive effects of this design on the learning of all students. This article aptly describes student variance, explaining that all students have learning preferences, strengths and challenges, all of which impact their daily learning in the classroom. This article explains that UDL is a framework that can help teachers differentiate to meet the diverse needs of all students in their classroom. The concept of UDL is similar to architecture, in that architecture involves creating buildings and services for that all people are able to access them, and UDL involves building lessons and structures that provide access to all learners. UDL involves differentiating all instruction in the classroom to appeal and work for a wide range of students with differing learning preferences and strengths. This article explains that UDL allows for representation, action and expression, and engagement. It refers to teachers as “educational architects” who create designs to build student achievement (Salend, 2016). A seven-step model is explained to successfully implement, and maintain a UDL design in the classroom. The seven steps are as follows, understanding student’s learning differences, identifying educational goals and learning objectives, examine aspects of the learning environment, identify barriers to student success, select UDL solutions to address the barriers, ensure that UDL solutions are well-implemented, and evaluate the efficacy, acceptability, and fidelity of UDL solutions. This seven-step model can aid in designing lessons and systems in the classroom, as well as a reflection tool to ensure that all of the steps are being appropriately met. This also allows teachers to make changes when all learning needs are not being met, or if students are unsuccessful.

Universal Design for learning provides a framework that allows for teachers to become “educational architects” who are committed to building lessons and classroom structures that support and empower learning differences, and create an atmosphere that fosters student achievement. 

 Artifacts:

Theory of Action

References:

Dahl, S. (2009). Why DI?: An Introduction to Differentiated Instruction [CD]. Spokane, WA: Virtual Education Software, inc.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Tomlison, C. A. (1999). Mapping a route toward differentiated instruction. Educational Leadership, 57(1), 12-16.

McTinghe, J., Thomas, R. S. (2003). Backward design for forward action. Educational Leadership, 60(5), p. 52-55.

Salend, S., Whittaker, C.,(2003). UDL: A blueprint for learning success. Differences, not disabilities. P. 59-63.

Webb, N. (2003). Depth of Knowledge for four content areas.