Bondurant-Farrar Community Schools

Artifact
Artifact Title: Workshop Groups
Portfolio Author: Christina Cornia
Date: October 27, 2015
Iowa Teaching Standard 5 Uses a variety of methods to monitor student learning.

a. Aligns classroom assessment with instruction.

b. Communicates assessment criteria and standards to all students and parents.
c. Understands and uses the results of multiple assessments to guide planning and
instruction.
d. Guides students in goal setting and assessing their own learning.
e. Provides substantive, timely, and constructive feedback to students and parents.
f. Works with other staff and building and district leadership in analysis of student
progress.

I chose this artifact to show:

X strength and competency in this standard
Evidence to support attainment of this standard:
Description of artifact and how the artifact meets the standard:
Fourth grade teachers worked together to create math workshop groups for September. As it was early in the
school year, we used the first math chapter tests as well as our judgement of how each student does daily, to
create these groups. The first math chapter covered addition, subtraction, and place value skills. These are skills
we review in fourth grade, but do not spend a significant amount of time discussing after this chapter. As a team
we discussed students knowledge and success to decide where each student should be placed. We also decided
what concepts each teacher should work on with the students in their group.

Reflection on artifact:
One struggle we had was keeping groups small enough to be appropriate for the level of students in the group.
There are several students who struggled with the early math concepts. As a team we decided it was better to
keep the lower group(s) small so the students would get the most benefit. Students who were low, but not the
lowest, we decided to keep in the larger groups. We discussed having small group interventions for these
students as needed in our home rooms.
In my workshop group I use the time with my average fourth graders to re-teach, review, and reinforce current
math chapter concepts. This is time where I bring in the math activities Ive learned at math conferences. With
workshops being first thing in the morning these activities engage the students early. I also like to use this time
to review tough skills. In our division chapter we have one lesson on interpreting remainders. There are four
ways to interpret the remainder and they are all taught in one lesson; this can be overwhelming for student.
With the additional thirty minutes in the morning after teaching this lesson I plan to review the lesson. I feel
this will give my students another opportunity to be exposed to the material and ask questions.