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?