Internship Blog Portfolio

3.3 Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness in Persisting to Support Students. At my current internship, I have come to understand the importance of utilizing different approaches to support student learning. For example, in my yoga core class, student folders are collected at the end of class for classroom management purposes (i.e. attendance and record keeping). Which means, students do not have access to the instructional resources found in their folders outside of the classroom. This creates a learning gap for students that need more time or a different environment to interpret the instructional resources, such as their pose sheet. In order to rid of this gap between the

Figure 1. Yoga Core Website

classroom and home, as shown in Figure 1, I have developed a yoga core website for my students. On the internet resource, students have access to all of the instructional resources utilized during class time. In addition to this, when a student is absent they have the ability to access the website and read the information they missed. For example, if a student was absent the day that we discussed Sun Salutations, they would be instructed to access the webpage shown in Figure 2 that covers the content that they missed. This allows for both the teacher and student to

Figure 2. Sun Salutation Webpage

effectively work together to meet the common goal of student understanding of the content covered in the course. As concluded by Harushimana (2008), “Internet resources are essential in the education of reluctant and struggling adolescent learners.” This demonstrates my ability to show flexibility and responsiveness towards meeting and supporting student needs both in and out of the classroom.

Link to Yoga Core Website: https://sites.google.com/view/yogacore/home

Reference

Harushimana, I. (2008). Educating the web-savvy urban teacher: Website evaluation tips and internet resources for secondary educators. AACE Journal, 16(3), 275-291.

Internship Blog Portfolio

6.3 Designing Student Assessments to Inform Planning. To inform my planning of a unit or lesson, I find it necessary to assess my students’ prior knowledge in regards to the topic that will be covered. When thinking about my students, I define prior knowledge as information or understandings they have about a topic based on their previous experience(s). William et al. (2004)’s results present evidence that “Improving formative assessment does produce tangible benefits in terms of externally mandated assessments.” At my current internship, I have come to understand the many advantages to utilizing the results of a pre-assessment to plan for future instruction for my students. In my lifetime

Figure 1

sports class, before each unit, students take a pre-assessment on the upcoming sport through WELNET Focused Fitness (physical education online program). I have designed the questions in order to gauge where student understanding was in present time in regards to the badminton content that will be taught over the course of the unit. For example, if I wanted to assess students’ prior knowledge of Badminton Serving, I would ask the following questions: “Question 7: You serve overhand in the game of badminton. True or False?” After data analysis of students’ pre-assessment, I have the ability to quickly and efficiently determine the percentage of students that answered each question correctly. For example, if only 25% of students answered Question #7 correctly, as shown in Figure 1, I would know that the majority of the class does not understand Badminton Serving. In turn, if 89% of students answer Question #8 correctly, as shown in Figure 1, I would know that the majority of the class does understand Badminton Hits. With this information, I can then go forward with planning for badminton understandings. I do so by taking the data I received on the pre-assessment (i.e. the majority percentage) and devote time to the areas where understanding was lacking. Thus, I have designed student pre-assessments in order to form my unit planning.

Reference

Wiliam*, D., Lee, C., Harrison, C., & Black, P. (2004). Teachers developing assessment for learning: Impact on student achievement. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 11(1), 49-65.