Inquiry Plan (part 3)

Now that I have progress monitored all of my students, I have been looking at their assessments and brainstorming ideas and strategies to use for instruction. Also, just returned from the CEC conference in Louisville, KY. This conference focuses on student with special needs and helps special educators learn more about how to better meet the needs of these students. I attended two different sessions about how to improve instruction for students with special needs in math.
I worked out perfectly, since i had just finished assessing all my students on their math IEP goals, I knew where my students were at and what they need to move forward in their math skills. Both of the session focused on how to help students focus on learning and create a more hands on approach to learning math. I have learned about a new multiplication strategy to teach to my 4th and 5th grade students that is more creative and hands on. I have also learned more about teaching math to students with special needs in a more exploratory way to help them learn by creating and doing. This will give them the opportunity to work together and learn about how and why instead of only doing what I (the teacher) says to do.
I am very excited to get back into my classroom after this holiday break and use some of the strategies learned that focus on the needs of my students based on the data i have collected from this project. I will be videoing my 4th grade group based on the assessments given and focusing on skills they need using new methods of teaching I learned at the CEC conference.

Inquiry Plan (part 2)

This past week I have been working on giving my progress monitoring assessments to students. They have taken a ton of time to complete. I tried to work on they one day during the math groups of each grade level and they ended up taking a lot longer than expected. The give the students all IEP accommodations for testing was very time consuming. First grade and kindergarten took the longest. Kindergarten and first grade needed scribes, readers, manipulatives and one on one testing. First grade is my largest group (seven students. Most of them were asked to write numbers to 100 and this took the most time.
I am looking forward to using this information to plan instruction for my students and see what their next progress monitoring assessments conclude.

Inquiry Plan (part 1)

This week I focused on creating all of the teacher made assessment tools for progress monitoring, based on students math IEP goals. This took a very long time :) I finally have them all ready and Monday I am going to try and test all 27 students individually. I plan on giving the assessment tool to progress monitor weekly during the implementation of the inquiry plan for this class and then bi-weekly to continue assessment.
This week I also gave the Voyager Math post module test for module one and the pre module test for module two in 4th grade. All students in the 4th grade intervention group improved their knowledge from the pre module one assessment by at least 33%. I am ver excited with these scores. Two of the students in this group will be retaught the portions of the module they scored poorly on. Next week I plan to give the post module assessment for module one and the pre module assessment for module two for second grade.
I am very excited about the data I have already collected. It has helped me to plan instruction for next week, to reteach and focus on the missing skills. I am also very excited to see the data from the assessment tools I have created and use the information for planning instruction.

Task Five

The blog I found is Five ways to enrich your teaching life
How does this relate to the work you do in your classroom?
Every day I collaborate with the other teacher in my special education unit, the seven classroom teachers our students have for their homerooms, the speech and language pathologist, the occupational and physical therapists and the principle and vice principal. We discuss curriculum, student levels and needs for supports, how the supports are currently affecting the student and their progress in the classroom, behavioral needs and how we can all meet the needs of our students.
How does this deepen your thinking about this domain?
I have never thought about how I mentor to other teachers until looking farter into this domain. There are two new teachers whom I work closely with. One is another special educator in the building and the other is one of the speech language pathologists. Both of these people have come to me for advice or reflection with their own teaching and practices and I give them professional support. We share thoughts about lessons and I have helped them not only with content and behavior issues but technology issues as well.
How could this fit into your inquiry plan?
For my inquiry plan I am looking to find ways to better assess student progress and keep more efficient and student involved records. This relates to the blog where it states teachers should become students. I would like to learn more about effective record keeping and implement them into my classroom so my students can see themselves being successful.

The Video I found is Comprehensive Assessment: An Overview
How does this relate to the work you do in your classroom?
Many times I base behavioral, on task and academic data collection on everyday situations and student performance on formative assessments and not “test –environment” settings and data.
How does this deepen your thinking about this domain?
I love the quote stating students are “Over tested and under examined.” This makes so much sense. Standardized tests are only looking at one time of student performance on how much they can memorize. They do not look at problem solving or real student knowledge levels. Students need to dive into their work and focus on explaining and solving problems; this will increase their understanding and knowledge about the subjects being taught and most likely with peek their interests about academic performance, leadership and working together as a collaborative team.
How could this fit into your inquiry plan?
For my inquiry plan I am looking to find ways to better assess student progress and keep more efficient and student involved records. This relates to the video because I will look at how I am assessing student performance and how I can better assess performance through projects and tasks to deeper their understanding and knowledge. I could look at performance based assessments to see how students problem solve.

The article I found is An Educator’s Journey Toward Multiple Intelligences
How does this relate to the work you do in your classroom?
Because I teach students with special needs many of my assessments for progress monitoring involve manipulatives and verbal responses.
How does this deepen your thinking about this domain?
Assessments need to be based on the student’s best functional form of relaying information. If a student needs to move around or use counters to perform what he/she know at the highest level then those things should be available for him/her to use on progress monitoring assessments and all other assessments as well.
How could this fit into your inquiry plan?
For my inquiry plan I am looking to find ways to better assess student progress and keep more efficient and student involved records. This relates to the article to help me focus on the types of assessments I am giving students in relationship to the way they learn.

I am thinking about using this information and focusing on progress monitoring to not only learn how to achieve the highest about of information from the students but to do so in the way the student can perform best. Also, to give feedback relevant to the students where they are able to see their progress in the area being assessed.

Task Four

In domain 4, I am most comfortable with Component 4a: Reflecting on Teaching. I reflect a lot on my teaching and try to come up with better ideas and different strategies to move my student to achieve higher. This may sound weird but I love observations because I like the constructive criticism. I need others help to give me suggestions on all aspects of teaching especially when they have suggestions that will help my students move forward academically and socially.

Both components 4a and 4b strongly ties to instruction. Without reflection teachers are unable to fully understand lessons taught. They are unable to know if the lessons were effective and if the students learned or what the students learned and why. Record keeping is also very important. Teachers should have student work, formative and summative assessments and other student records to make instructional decisions and to know what students already know.

I would like to zero in on component 4b. I am able to reflect on lessons and do mostly, I have taken on many leadership roles in the district and school levels and I take to parents and give progress continually. Records are hard for me to keep and I would like to learn what is important to keep and effective strategies I can use for data collection. This leads into my questions:

What records do you keep?

How do you collect data? (how often and with what measure?)

Do you keep behavioral data or on-task/reminders data and how much?

Task Three :)

All students do have the ability to learn. I am a special education teacher and I have seen many different types of students and different types of learners from students labeled SLD to FMD. All of the students who have special needs are able to learn and have learned something while working with me. It might not be core concepts or even to use the bathroom independently but, all of these students are able to learn. Teachers have a great influence on the learning process and capacity to which students are able to learn. For example, if students are put in a room and are expected to “hang out” all day without access to curriculum or even life skills then they will not learn much and what they will learn they will pick up from conversations or their surrounding environment. On the other hand, if teachers are able to meet students at their ability level and teach them in ways they are able to process and understand then those students will be able to learn many different skills and information sets. Students capacity to learn is a lot about their ability level, but all students have the capacity to learn it just depends on the knowledge presented and how that knowledge is presented. The fact that all students have the capacity to learn makes my instruction in my classroom more student based. I always assess what my students know and then how they best learn and work on teaching them important and relevant information that is taught in a way they are interested in and can understand.
I would like to pick the last domain, domain 4.

Task Two

What is the purpose of curriculum and what role do we have as teachers in this purpose? The purpose of curiculum is to give teachers a guide line to what is important to be taught and how is would be best taught in the right environment. I believe the role of curriculum is different in every school and the role as teachers towards curriculum is different in every school. In my first year of teaching I was not given a curriculum program, book or topic pacing guide and was told to teach high school algebra and geometry. This was very different from where I am teaching now and hae access to many different curriculum programs.

How much control do we have in the designing of curriculum? How much should we have? As a special educator I have a lot to do with the designing of the curriculum in my classroom. I am able to look at what the students in my classroom need to move forward in their education and create lessons that will best meet their academic needs and hopefully interest them. I think we should have a lot of control in the designing of curriculum especially in special education.

Ho does the curriculum that you have look like in your classrooms in a day to day environment? In my classroom we have many different curriculum and intervention programs to choose from. I teach all of the math in the MMD unit in my building and have assess to pull materials from the everyday math, number worlds and V-math curriculum. This year we are trying the V-math program and supplementing the other curriculum when we feel the students need extra practice or another way of looking at a math concept. I also pull a lot of materials from the internet and use many computer intervention programs. I feel very blessed to be in a teaching position where i am able to be flexiable and have the resources to pull the best curriculum for each of my studnets.