Ms. Rumble's Portfolio
Standard #3:
Learning Environments
The teacher works with learners to create environments that support individual and collaborative learning, encouraging positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self motivation.
Rationale: I split my students into groups that they wouldn’t necessarily choose themselves to give them the opportunity to work with peers who are not like-minded. Students had to work slightly out of their comfort zone and assess what role each student would play in the researching process. Learning the context of a novel can help to further understand the characters, plot, and author’s purpose, adding more depth to the text because the reader can make more connections. I brought my students on a “field trip” to Australia and along the way, they were able to collaborate with one another in their smaller groups, and then as a whole class as they pieced together their research. The Jeopardy Game further solidified their knowledge of the topic and created an entertaining, engaging, and motivating experience for all involved.
Artifact #1: Jeopardy
Description: To further understand the context of I Am The Messenger, I created a jeopardy game to research Australia. I split up the class into small groups and assigned each group an area of Australia to become “experts” on. These areas of expertise included, the Outback, the cities of Australia, the culture of the people, and the country’s profile. The students worked in groups to research their topic and developed an informal presentation of their findings to share with the whole class. After all groups presented their research, they stayed in their small groups to play the Australian Jeopardy game as a way to assess their understanding and have them interact with the material and with classmates.
Artifact #2: Contextual Factors Analysis
Description: Before even starting my student teaching experience, I researched and wrote a ten-page analysis of the context of where I was teaching. I looked at the community of Farmington, as well as Franklin County, Mt Blue Campus, and the school district as a whole. I learned the ratio of men to women in the town, as well as in the school, the socioeconomic status, the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, the towns that make up the school district, and other significant aspects of the town and its inhabitants. Everything I researched helped me to further understand my students and, furthermore, support them in a classroom environment.
Rationale: The CFA was a great resource for me to establish a very comfortable environment in our classroom. I understood that my students have very diverse backgrounds, which affect their learning process, so I wanted to create an atmosphere of respect. My students were able to be present in class and not stress about the possibility of being at a disadvantage because of their background. I wanted the classroom to be a safe environment, where students are encouraged to express their opinions and thoughts. The CFA gave me that necessary information to dissolve any barriers between the students and the classroom and myself.