Darcie Badami

PEDU 671
Edcuation Professional Action Plan

1
Darcie Badami
PEDU 671 Education Professional Action Plan

Teacher Goal Setting is an essential factor in a teacher’s development. Goal setting is designed

to place a certain amount of importance for teachers and administrators on developing and

become skilled at distinct skills that will impact the global teacher’s performance.

By setting SMART goals at the beginning of the year and tracking progress toward those goals,

teachers can focus on improving a limited and precise, high-impact skills rather than trying to

improve everything at once.

Teacher development and growth is the most important thing schools can invest in to improve

student achievement. Teachers and administrators will use the goal-setting process as one of

many possible strategies to improve teacher preparation and delivery. Teacher goals should be

accompanied by continuous feedback, open and honest dialogue, and additional instances for

teachers to learn and grow through large and small group professional development. According

to the Wilson, D., & Conyers, M article on Growth Mindset, Teachers should agree on the

positive changes they expect to see from developing and implementing the project and commit to

the work that will be required for success, which is referred to as planning. Secondly, work to set

these into action; using collaborative preparation which is needed to turn intentions into actions.

One of the final steps of the action plan is to create clear, concise goals that are measurable, take

action, chart the course, revisit and then refect. .All of these components simultaneously to help

teachers develop and improve.

The focus for Ms. Patrick’s action plan and goals are to improve her students writing, explicitly

preparing them for second grade. Writing is a primary way that students can reflect on what they

have learned. We have to think more about learning and less about “good writing.” This is not to

say that we should be careless with helping students develop as good writers, able to put together
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PEDU 671 Education Professional Action Plan

a report, and in good mechanism over their sentences. However, some grammatical mechanisms

to the sentences and structure to the sentences will come naturally if teachers use frequent

writing across all classes, in both informal as well as formal ways, (Bernhardt, S. A.)

The goal for Ms. Patrick:

To make sure 100% of my students are ready for writing at a second-grade level by the end of

the school year, I will monitor student learning through the development of student writing

portfolios that demonstrate progression in writing one complete sentence and then progressing to

2 complete sentences. With students utilizing; a capital at the beginning of the sentence and

punctuation at the end of a sentence. I will track student progress using a writing development

rubric to assess each student’s work on one student-selected item each week, including digital

examples of a published writing piece.

A majority of students have less developed writing skills than previous years there is a clear need

to increase utilization of technology resources within the school as well as differentiate the levels

of expectations for the writing assignments for students.

How: Differentiation, Achieving Expectations, Communication, Content Knowledge and

Expertise.

After attending professional development on incorporating writing and reading professional

literature, sharing this information with Ms. Patrick, coaching Ms. Patrick based on my own,

experience her students will have opportunities to write independently, collaboratively, and

give/receive feedback. They will also have access to visual rubric/expectations of what their

work should look like to obtain a 4, 3, 2, or 1 on their assignment. Using this visual guide or
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PEDU 671 Education Professional Action Plan

rubric allows the students at any level to see and compare their work with the expectations set

forth by the teacher. Thus, they enable students to take a moment to self-assess. Self-assessment

can be useful in any subject. If students produce it, they can assess it; and if they can assess it,

they can improve it, (Andrade, H. (2000).

How will it be monitored: Student writing samples, journals, open-ended responses, lesson

plans, and reflection. In the article, “Writing as an Instructional Practice,” Bernhardt, outlines

some great ideas of how to encourage and increase writing in the primary grades. Ms. Patrick

and I thought overall these would be beneficial to her students. We further discussed which of

the following we would implement in her room to try out. The first is merely a learning log; the

idea behind this is to collect knowledge on a subject and write a reflection on a topic you are

interested in; it is student-centered and inquiry-based. Alternatively, the learning log could be

used differently for content areas for students to reflect on new topics covered in science or

social students. Another thought is to use micro-themes, micro-theme forces students to construct

a mini-essay or highly distilled discussion within a restricted space. Some teachers require

micro-themes to be written on one or both sides of an index card. Quick writes are just that;

students are given a set of time, 5 minutes to respond to a question or thought of the day. It is not

complicated — Freewriting where students have the opportunity to choose what they will write

about. Lastly, reflective writing where students are encouraged to take a moment to reflect on

what they have learned that day.

Based upon what Ms. Patrick is currently doing in class and has to do for the Williamsburg

curriculum we decided that adding some freewriting in as a rotation for the students would allow

for creativity and development of skills she is most concerned with — thus allowing her more
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PEDU 671 Education Professional Action Plan

writing work of theirs to assess and for them to assess. The more practice and opportunities they

have the better they will be be.

Darcie Badami
PEDU 671 Education Professional Action Plan

References

Andrade, H. (2000). Using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. Educational Leadership,

57(5), 13–18

Andrade, H., Du, Y., & Wang, X. (in press). Putting rubrics to the test: The effect of a model,

criteria generation, and rubric-referenced self-assessment on elementary school students’ writing.

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice.

Bernhardt, S. A., & University of Delaware. (n.d.). Writing as Instructional Practice. Retrieved

March 20, 2019, from http://www.nea.org/home/34959.htm

Wilson, D., & Conyers, M. (2016, December 15). Incorporating a Growth Mindset Into Your

Teaching Practice. Retrieved March 20, 2019, from

https://www.edutopia.org/article/incorporating-growth-mindset-into-teaching-practice-donna-wilson-

marcus-conyers