- Home
- Philosophy Statement
-
Professional Teaching Standards
- 1. Content Knowledge >
- 2. Human Development and Learning >
- 3. Diversity >
- 4. Planning for Instruction >
- 5. Learning Environment >
- 6. Instructional Delivery >
- 7. Communication >
- 8. Assessment >
- 9. Collaborative Relationships >
- 10. Reflection and Professional Growth >
- 11. Professional Conduct and Leadership >
- Language Arts Standards
-
Technology Standards
- 1. Basic Computer/Technology Operations & Concepts >
- 2. Personal and Professional Use of Technology >
- 3. Application of Technology Instruction >
- 4. Social, Ethical, and Human Issues >
- 5. Productivity Tools >
- 6. Telecommunication and Information Access >
- 7. Research, Problem Solving, and Product Devolopment >
- 8. Information Literacy Skills >
- Impact on Learning
Work Sample: Student Poetry Book
Reflective Statement:
This work sample is a poetry book created by one of my second grade students I taught during my student teaching in the Spring 2013 semester. This poetry book was a summative assessment that I had students do at the end of a poetry-writing unit that I created and taught over the course of four weeks. This poetry book features four different types of poems that each use different poetic devices such as alliteration or personification. I chose to include this work sample because it illustrates a positive impact that I had on student learning with writing and poetic composition. I also chose this work sample because it represents the poetry-writing unit that I independently created, organized, planned, and prepared for using a diverse variety of resources and materials such as mentor texts, practice worksheets, computers, and construction paper. I put a lot of hard work into creating this poetry-writing unit for my students and each of them mirrored this hard work by successfully creating four different kinds of poems using various poetic or literary devices.
This work sample made an impact on P-12 learning in several ways. One main way was that it exposed students to many kinds of poetry and showed them new ways to write poems. My second graders learned that there are different kinds of poems, such as the clerihew or apology poem, and that not all poetry has to rhyme. This work sample also impacted students’ learning by allowing them ample practice with the writing process, which includes organizing ideas, completing a prewriting general outline, writing a first draft, editing or revising that draft, and then creating a final written draft. My students were able to become more comfortable with and efficient in the writing process as well as greatly increase their confidence with writing through the creation of these poetry books. Furthermore, this work sample impacted my students’ learning because it promoted deep understanding and accurate application of different poetic devices in writing. The poetic devices my students learned and featured in their poems are alliteration, similes, metaphors, rhyme, imagery, onomatopoeia, and personification. Not only did my students have to learn, understand, and identify these poetic devices, but they also had to accurately and effectively include them in each of their poems, which can be seen in this work sample.
The activities related to this work sample include prewriting, first drafts, poetic device worksheets, homework practice, checklists, writing conferences, summative assessment rubrics, and sharing presentations. These activities enhance my ability to understand and assess student learning by giving me informal and formal feedback on their progression throughout the unit. For example, the students’ completion of the poetic device worksheets, homework practice, and prewriting allowed me to better assess their comprehension of the various poetic devices that were featured throughout these poems. I noticed the students who most understood the poetic devices had more thorough and understandable prewriting drafts for their poems. The checklists that I used to assess the students’ first drafts of writing helped me to learn what structural concepts of the poem each student understood most and which ones s/he understood least by their inclusion (or lack thereof) of these different components. Also, the formative writing conferences that had with individual students gave me insight into not only what the student understood with the writing, but also how the student felt about his/her writing at that time. Finally, the summative assessment rubric that I used for this poetry book allowed me to holistically assess each students’ final work piece and knowledge gained throughout the entire writing unit.