Professional Semester III Growth Plan

Name: Amber Mackintosh

School: Raymond Elementary School
Practicum Dates: January 4th April 22nd 2016
Teacher Associate: Jeff Hill
School Administrator: Marlin Hogg
University Consultant: Marlo Steed

1. Goal: To develop an expanded pedagogical awareness in literacy (KSA # 4)

Rationale: Literacy is a realm of education that as a math major I have not had the
opportunity to explore. Every curricular disciplinary has its unique pedagogical practices.
Being presented with opportunity to teach ELA during this practicum, I would like to
develop a better pedagogical awareness around instructional and assessment practices in
ELA. In elementary school, especially Raymond Elementary School, literacy is a large
focus. Therefore, I believe that gaining some experience in literacy pedagogy will be just
a start in this realm of professional development.
Strategies:
I will collaborate with learning support teacher, Teacher Mentor and/or
Administrator at school.
I will implement pedagogical strategy feedback from teacher mentor, and/or
Administrator.
I will respect my Teacher Associates strategies that they have implemented
I will observe my Teacher Associate pedagogical practices.
I will focus PLC and PD time toward learning about ELA pedagogy.
I will examine the ELA program of studies
Resources:

The Daily 5 Book and The CAF Book by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser
Other teachers pedagogy
PD session at school and outside school
Classroom Instruction that Work by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, an
Jane E. Polluck

Indicators of Success:

Feedback from my Teacher Associate, Administrator, and/or University

Consultant
Students are responding to instructional practices in ELA students development
in reading and writing skills.
Respect and positive environment is built between all in the classroom
I learn and implement three new pedagogical strategies and practices in ELA.

Timeline:
Consulting other teachers ongoing
Participate in ELA PD at SWATCA Feb 18th/19th
PD/PLC session in school (March 4th, March 18th)
Regular meetings with Teacher Associate ongoing
Reflection:
During my time at Raymond Elementary school, I believe that I succeeded at this
goal. I took it upon myself to consult with others in the school and their literacy practices.
Moreover, I gained expertise in pedagogical practice of guided reading that requires
differentiated system of student grouping and activities. I addressed and reinforced CAF
outcomes by using different strategies, such as: Making connections, synthesizing,
questioning, inferring, cross-checking, compare and contrasting, and evaluating for
reading comprehension. Using Secret Sounds to aid in phonemic awareness and
alphabetic principles for accuracy. Paying attention to punctuation and listening to fluent
reader for fluency. Lastly, students were asked to look up words they did not know in a
dictionary to improve vocabulary during guided reading time. Most of these strategies
were taught during guided reading time using mini-lessons. Upon the assessment of my
Teacher Mentor using Fountas and Pinnell, it was evident that students reading has
improved. Whether it was associated to the differentiated pedagogy or not, the Daily 5
literacy program is unquestionably a pedagogical practice that I will continue to use in
my own classroom teaching in the future.
Writing pedagogical practice was easily enhanced through project-based learning
and performance tasks, such as: letter writing, WebQuests, story writing, individual book
creations, etc.
Moreover, I took the time at SWATCA to gather resources and attend session
directed towards literacy pedagogy. Namely, literacy integrating into other subjects such
as science. What I learnt at this professional development session as that literacy can be
integrated into any subject with journaling. Moreover, I collected resources such as
Westwind School Division Literacy Guide, and Small Nation Inc.s vocabulary books
through professional development session provided by the school and SWATCA.
I attended LethCamp 2016, an interactive Ed Camp held by Education
Undergraduate Society, during this practicum. At this camp, I confirmed my new

knowledge in literacy pedagogical practices by consolidating with others at a session on

Inclusion and Instruction for ELL. Strategies such graphic organizers, verbal and visual
cues and partner work were all approaches to literacy that I have used in my practice,
which others described as literacy strategies.
In summary, the multiple pedagogical practices and strategies that I learned
during this practicum were: Daily 5 literacy program and the differentiated instruction
correlated to this program, differing performance tasks and project-based learning, crosscurricular literacy, and many strategies that address different learning types in literacy.

2. Goal: To find and/or develop a repertoire of assessment tools that emphasize on authentic
and differentiated assessment in English Language Arts. (KSA # 5, 11)
Rationale:
Differentiated assessment provides information about each students readiness, strengths
and needs in English Language Arts. Differentiated assessment will guide my
pedagogical practices and my first learning goal. Moreover, particular students would
favour in their learning progress from differentiated assessment.
Strategies:
I will collaborate with learning support teacher, Teacher Mentor and/or
Administrator at school.
I will implement differentiated assessment practices from teacher mentor, and/or
Administrator.
I will respect my Teacher Associates strategies that they have implemented
I will observe my Teacher Associate pedagogical practices.
I will focus PLC and PD time toward learning about differentiations.
Resources:

Other teachers implemented differentiation

PD session at school and outside school

Indicators of Success:
I learn three differentiated assessment strategies.
Feedback from Teacher Associate, School Administrator and/or University
Consultant
Timeline:

Consulting other teachers ongoing

Participate in ELA PD at SWATCA Feb 18th/19th
PD/PLC session in school (March 4th, March 18th)
Regular meetings with Teacher Associate ongoing

Reflection:
This professional goal directly related to my first professional goal. As a part of
the project based learning pedagogy, I conducted differentiation that varied through
product, process and content.
Product: During writing assignments in friendly letter writing and fractured
fairytales, I practiced inclusion with a student who has autism by differentiating
assignments by product. This student would get assistance from an educational

assist in writing. As well, this student created a friendly letter without the
requirement that were assigned to the rest of class such as paragraphs, or
questions. Moreover, students who were struggling writers created different types
of poems for their best part of me instead of a sonnet, one of the most challenging
poems we studied as a class.
Process: During writing activities such as studying forms of poems through the
WebQuest, I assisted students with one-on-one time to guide them through the
process of learning. However, this is definitely a domain of differentiation in
which I would enjoy to gain more experience in.
Content: During writing activities such as studying forms of poems through the
WebQuest, students were assigned forms of poetry based on their reading and
writing levels. For example, struggling reading and writers were assigned to
research shape poems, while enriched readers were assigned to research sonnets
and limericks. The students then conducted a jigsaw peer teach.
As a part of my experience with guided reading in Daily 5 literacy program, I
believe that my differentiated instruction pedagogy developed. With the connection
between differentiated instruction and assessment being closely tied, differentiated
assessment followed naturally. I assessed students in reading intervention groups with a
concentrate on phonemic awareness, which I would not have done with students at grade
level or in an enrichment group.
In conclusion, three of the many differentiated strategies that I learned and
practices were: 1) jigsaw, 2) tiered assignments and 3) differentiation by support. I
believe that differentiation is an area of professional development that I would love to
continue develop, since I do not feel I implemented differentiation strategies to the degree
that I could have with more knowledge under my belt.

3. Goal: To improve questioning strategies in mathematics. (KSA #4)

Rationale:
I personally believe that questioning is an area that I lack skill in mathematics pedagogy.
Questioning is a way that students can be actively engaged in the classroom. In
mathematics, open questioning is something that need to be purposefully formed into
planning due to the framing and content in mathematic curriculum.
Strategies:
Use of Hinge questions
Engage in purposeful assessment and questioning
Research around effective questioning strategies in mathematics
Consult University Professors who have expertise in Mathematics
Coordinate strategies with other teachers
Indicators of Success:
Open ended mathematical discussions are initiated in the classroom
Students able to answer high-level blooms taxonomic questions
Timeline:

Research ongoing
Consult other teachers, and university expertise ongoing.

Reflection:
The questioning strategies that I developed over this practicum were advanced by
the educational resources. I consulted with a previous professor, Richelle Marynowski,
who provided me with the following resources: Assessment to Enhance Teaching and
Learning 2015 by National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Making Math
Meaningful to Canadian Students K-8 by Marian Small, and Elementary and Middle
School Mathematics Teaching Developmentally, Third Edition, by John A. Van de Walle,
Sandra Folk, Karen S.Karp, Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. From these resource, I gained
different ways of approaching essential questions and topics in mathematics. A strategy
for questioning that I found useful were hinge questions, which guided students through
the purpose of every lesson. However, I felt the need present differentiated levels of
questions in order for students to be able to answer the questions at the end of lessons.
I learnt multiple Kagan, cooperative learning, strategies that provided opportunity
for more one-on-one time with students that were struggling in mathematics. As a result,
my questioning became directed towards aiding in students metacognition in

mathematics. I encouraged students to question their needs and understanding during

mathematics. Furthermore, I typically started off my
Even though I feel that I have succeed at this professional goal through the first
indicator of success, judging by the class discussion and teacher observations; I feel that
in the future I would like to explore better ways to enhance my questioning strategies by
using theme based, cross-curricular learning to reach higherlevel blooms taxonomy
questioning in mathematics.