Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Artifact Description:
I have attached both the required graded rubric and the cover sheet for my case
study for the practicum course entitled EDUC 529/683. These artifacts represent
the assessment and intervention work that I completed with two elementary
students during this course. Both artifacts also exemplify INTASC Standard 9: The
teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually
evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on
others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts
practice to meet the needs of each learner; and WI State Standard 9: Teachers are
able to evaluate themselves. The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually
evaluates the effects of his or her choices and actions on pupils, parents,
professionals in the learning community and others and who actively seeks out
opportunities to grow professionally. Without being able to reflect on my practice
and what influence it had on each of the students I worked with during the
intervention period, I would not have been able to help them achieve at higher
levels.
Professional Growth
Prior to this course I had looked at assessment and intervention as separated skills
from those that I draw upon for my regular lessons and whole class instruction.
Students who struggled needed extra time with different instruction, I felt, while
during the regular teaching time it was business as usual for the majority of
students, and pairing up those students who were not able to access the text of the
grade level with more able students.
Participating in this practicum has helped me look more closely at the lessons and
assessments I utilize with all of my students. According to INTASC Standard 6,
the teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage
learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the
teachers and learners decision making. It was not that I did not do this in my
intermediate classes, but I do not think I did it well. This course has taught me to
use multiple assessments both formative and summative in a more purposeful
way. In this course we spent a great deal of time learning to select appropriate
assessments to address specific learning goals and individual differences as well as
I worked with two students during this practicum course: Simone, a sixth grade
student in an urban school, and Marcello, a third grade student in my own school.
I met with both students for 30 minute sessions twice weekly. Both of my
students had very good attendance for these sessions, and I feel that we made
some progress in the nine weeks we worked together.
Simones comprehension was greatly aided by the use of graphic organizers. She
had difficulty summarizing what she read, and identifying important details, so
the support of a graphic organizer improved her comprehension immensely. She
was able to chunk words and passages with 75% or better accuracy with minimal
prompting by the end of the sessions. Interventions for word study reinforced
syllables and affixes, but the bulk of future work should move to a more in-depth
focus on harder suffixes and base and root words to help Simone move from
decoding to understanding unfamiliar words she encounters. Semantic mapping
helped Simone cement learning of new vocabulary.
In the interventions with Marcello, we began with the QRI-5 word lists
and he was able to breeze through the primer lists. He also felt confident with the
first grade list and scored in the independent range. His errors were mostly
medial or ending sounds, and he did not sound out very many of the words. On
the post-assessment, however, Marcello was having a difficult time focusing and
scored only 80% to his previous 90% on the grade 1 list. We continued the lists
the following day to try and focus more carefully. He improved his score on the
Grade 2 word list from 60% correct to 80% correct. His automatic score did not
rise greatly, but he took much more time to fully analyze more of the words and
not just guess based on the initial consonants and vowels. Marcello still was at the
frustration level on the Grade 3 list, but has made gains there as well especially in
his total words correct score where he went from 50% to 65%. He also became
more self-aware of miscues and trying hard to look through his words fully to
correctly say the words and to improve comprehension of the passages.
The components of word work, comprehension, and fluency practice all play an
integral part in furthering the literacy development of the child. This course has
taught me to be more purposeful in my work with students who struggle with
early literacy skills. The assessment and intervention work with both of my
students in the practicum has enhanced my work as a teacher. I have a great
depth of knowledge and ability to pinpoint reading difficulties, and to plan
effective instruction to meet the needs of all of my students.