Alina's+221+Reflection



=How did my professional knowledge grow and develop over the semester?=

Taking Secondary Differentiated Instruction and Assessment allowed me to see much of the behind-the-scenes work of teaching. This class provided me with teaching “how to-s,” and I greatly enjoyed learning a variety of instructional strategies. Through this process, I learned that it is not as difficult as it may seem to create interesting, thought-provoking, and impactful lessons. However, I also learned that there are so many more aspects of a lesson teachers must think through that students may not know about. For example, teachers need to make sure that a sufficient level of scaffolding is present in their lessons; students should be challenged, but they need to know how to complete the tasks set before them. Students will not be thinking about levels of scaffolding – they will simply be focused on the task at hand. Another example is the fact that teachers cannot simply give a set of directions, but must also model what their students need to do. Once again, students would not be thinking about how they would explain a particular task – they are simply focused on the one they need to complete, and it thus needs to be modeled so that students can complete it well. Much of my learning in this class came through actually DOING what we had investigated and discussed – we created and gave mini-lessons, reflected and gave feedback, and actually taught at Garry Middle School. I am still in the process of transitioning from thinking like a student to thinking like a teacher, and I look forward to the many things I will learn in the future. The word cloud above consists of some aspects of teaching that stood out to me this semester.