Standard Three Planning Overview

I believe that I have met this standard during my student teaching. I plan the term and units backwards from essential questions and learning objectives using the “Understanding by Design” and “Backwards Mapping” theories. I organized content coverage thematically and aligned it with both state and national standards (the Massachusetts scope and sequence as well as the National Council for Social Studies standards). I wrote detailed lesson plans each day that had clear agendas and objectives, took into account different learning styles, and outlined my modes of assessment. In addition, I consistently augmented textbook material with resources brought in from outside, designing handouts that included project instructions, research packets, debate preparation sheets, and vocabulary lists (to name just a few).

I have learned that instruction can only ever be as good as your planning. Thus, I take planning very seriously and thoroughly enjoy it. I have found that building a repatriate of lessons and activities is essential for a beginning teacher, and have generated very useful resources for myself during my student teaching. Overall, I am confident that I am proficient in Standard Three.

Reflection One: Unit Plan

Designing two-week units helped me to pin point what I wanted students to know and be able to do and to organize content thematically. Beginning term three at around 1800, I chose to teach three units which examined different aspects of historical change in antebellum America. First, we studied Westward Expansion c.1800-1860, then Social Reform movements including women’s rights and antislavery c.1800-1860, and finally we examined political and economic developments during the same period. The unit below shows how I organized these units to be closely aligned with state and national standards, chose essential questions and determined the learning objectives before hand, and even detailed the progression of lessons and content coverage.

Please click the link below to view a sample unit plan, the first artifact demonstrating my progress in meeting Standard Three:

Unit Plan Two Social Reform and Womens Rights.pdf

Reflection Two: Lesson Plan

My daily lesson plans helped me to develop certain habits of mind. By thinking about the essential questions, standards, objectives, instructional materials, learner factors, environmental factors, assessment activities, and instructional activities and tasks you gain clarity on what the lesson will look like and how well it will work. We were asked to make modifications to a lesson plan for ELL students as an assignment for Analysis of Teaching class, and I realized afterwards that many of the things I had though to do for students learning English were helpful for all students. Strategies for accessing a text, for example, benefited all students in my classroom regardless of the relative strength of their basic literacy skills. Similarly, I learned that teacher modeling and multiple modes of presentation to reach diverse learners are just good teaching, not some modification you make for a target subpopulation of learners.

Please click the link below to view a sample lesson plan, my second artifact demonstrating my progress in meeting Standard Three:

Lesson Plan Example with ELL Modifications.pdf

Reflection Three: Syllabus and Course Calendar

Before student teaching I prepared a syllabus and course calendar which I gave to my students on the first day. Although we did not follow the calendar precisely, it helped students to gain a sense for where we were going and to think about the material for the term holistically. It also helped me to establish clear expectations from the start and push the pace to show my students that I had high expectations and that they could rise to the challenge.

Please click the links below to view the U.S. History I syllabus and schedule, my third artifact:

United States History I Syllabus.pdf

U.S. History I Schedule.pdf

Benjamin Weber: Mid-Term Self Assessment on Striving to Meet the Brown University MAT Program’s Practice-Based Standards for Beginning Teachers

Standard Three: Planning

            I think that I am meeting, perhaps even exceeding, Standard Three. I have drawn on my content knowledge to plan the semester course into thematic units with clearly identified understandings and objectives for student learning. I have planned units to follow thematic as well as chronological sequence and bring in outside information almost every single day to ensure that my lessons are exciting, engaging, and meaningful. I have allowed some flexibility and check with students regularly to see if the find the material boring (a recurring complaint about high school history). I have offered to justify why I feel what we are learning is important and relevant and have only been taken up on this twice. So far, my students do not complain that they are bored, that they lack direction, perceive discontinuities, or feel lost in the chronology. My mentor teacher has also repeatedly praised my planning in her weekly observations and written comments.

            My daily lesson plans are ambitious, thorough, sequenced, and detailed. They consistently provide students with an opportunity to make connections with previous material and relate to broader themes and objectives for the unit. I use essential questions to guide my planning and they inform both my objectives and my assessment strategies. I have worked increasingly to tightly align my objectives with my assessments and this has allowed me to make my objectives for student learning more clear, observable, and measurable. I plan a variety of modes of presentation and always try to include activities that get students speaking with each other. I incorporated what I have learned in analysis class this semester, trying, for example, to ensure that every student engage in speaking, reading, and writing in every period. I use written plans and stated agenda and objectives and they are almost invariably an accurate guide to what happens in class.

            I have been improving in my planning for diverse learning styles. Although I had collaborative and student-centered activities as well as varied modes of presentation in my lesson plans from the start, I have been becoming more aware of how to use different strategies more effectively. I have also been working to balance planning that reflects an understanding of how diverse learners construct knowledge, acquire skills, and develop habits of mind with planning the appropriate pacing and transitions. I have not incorporated technology into my planning or lesson implementation very much, except to play audio (played a clip from a revival when teaching the Second Great Awakening, for example), one video (the movie Amistad), and use of the overhead projector to model. Generally, I prefer chart paper and the good old fashioned black board.