THERESA & ALISON

THERESA

ALISON

TPE 11

TPE 11

• Create a positive climate for learning.
• Maintain clear expectations for academic and social behavior through a classroom management plan.
• Build community with students and parents.
• Make necessary adjustments to promote academic achievement for all students, based on observations of students and consultation with other teachers and students' families.

"I have observed how it is critical to learn as much as I can about my students in terms of their personal disabilities, home life and cultural backgrounds. This will in turn help me identify the best course of action to meet their needs." -Theresa

"I learned how important it is to enforce clear expectations and procedures in the first few weeks of school. Hand signals are an effective way for students to communicate their needs without disrupting the class and auditory cues make for smooth transitions."
-Alison

TPE 8

TPE 8

• Create a culturally responsive classroom.
• Learn about families of students and involve them.
• Learn about socio-economic, cultural and language backgrounds of students.
• Make adaptions for students with special needs, health conditions, and those who are English learners, SELs or have different learning styles.
• Determine who these students are through assessment data, observation, reflection, and consultation.

"I have observed that being mindful at all times of where each student stands in terms of comprehending the concept being taught, is crucial in their development in my class. The student’s background is a large part of this assessment." -Theresa

"I learned the value of making parents a part of the education team to learn more about my students and help them succeed at school."
-Alison

TPE 6

TPA 6 (K-3)

• Create a structured day with opportunities for movement.
• Design activities that suit the attention span of young learners.
• Teach & model norms of social interactions.
• Make special plans for students who require extra help with self-control among peers or have exceptional needs or abilities.

TPA 6 (GRADES 4-8)

• Provide intensive support for students lacking basic skills as defined by state standards.
• Extend students' concrete thinking, abstract reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Help students develop strategies to cope with increasingly challenging curriculum, managing time and completing assignments.
• Encourage students to take intellectual risks like sharing ideas that may include errors.

TPA 6 (grades 9-12)

• Frequently communicate course goals, requirements and grading criteria
• Help students understand connection between the curriculum & life after school.
• Provide opportunities for students to develop advanced thinking and problem solving skills.
• Understand the social pressure to conform during adolescence and support signs of students' individuality.

"When designing a Social Studies lesson for a class of fifth and sixth grade students, I wanted to promote their critical thinking skills and show them that they were able to problem solve and provide the answers I was looking for by relating it back to their science class."
-Theresa

"After reading Elkin and Piaget, I had a better understanding of the developmental characteristics of the first and second graders in my site mentor's class. But it is important to remember that everyone develops at a different rate, and this is just one factor of many that we should consider when we differentiate instruction for a student."-Alison

TPE 5

TPE 5

• Ensure the active and equitable participation of all students.
• Monitor student progress toward academic goals as identified in state standards.
• Use strategies to re-engage students who are off-task and/or struggling.
• Provide opportunities and time for students to practice and apply what they have learned within real-world applications.

"It’s amazing how rephrasing and individualizing the concept for a student can create an 'a-ha!' moment”. -Theresa

"I saw how important the brain rule "inquiries with real world applications focus the brain" is to student engagement. If their lives connect to what you are teaching, chances are you will have a captive audience."
-Alison

TPE 7

TPE 7

• Implement an explicit instructional program that facilitates English language development including reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.
• Draw upon students' backgrounds and prior learning.
• Differentiate instruction based on analysis of student errors and use English that extends students' current level of development.
• Use systematic instructional strategies (like the SIOP Model) to make curriculum content comprehensible to English learners.

"I understand the importance of having a lot of resources in my tool box to pull from because you never know what you will need for a specific student. When teaching English learners, linking new knowledge to their lives and to their prior learning is a useful tool. "
-Theresa

"Sheltered instruction techniques like visuals, labels, manipulatives, and word walls are useful in teaching ELLs the key vocabulary they need to know to access the content you are teaching."
-Alison

TPE 9

TPE 9

• Plan instruction that is comprehensive in relation to subject matter and in accordance with content standards.
• Establish long and short term goals based on students' current levels of achievement.
• Select or adapt instructional strategies, grouping strategies, instructional materials, media and technology to meet student learning goals.
• Plan appropriate assessments to monitor and evaluate learning.

"I observed how beneficial integrating technology into lessons is for the students and their engagement."
-Theresa

"I learned how important it is to have a clear learning objective in every lesson plan, and that objectives are directly linked to assessments."
-Alison

TPE 10

TPE 10

• Recognize critical importance of time management in instructional planning.
• Allocate instructional time to maximize student learning and achievement
• Consider how to achieve long and short term goals within confines of available time.
• Establish procedures for routine tasks and manage transitions to maximize instructional time.

"I have seen how it can often be difficult to regain and reestablish a student’s attention after transitions, making routines essential." -Theresa

"To meet all of the academic standards for each grade level, it is crucial that we maximize learning time. Having established routines for transitions and sticking to a schedule are key."
-Alison

TPE 1

TPE 1: ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTS

• Understand how to deliver a comprehensive program of rigorous instruction in reading, writing, speaking and listening within standards that increase in complexity.
• Provide opportunities for students to read purposefully and listen attentively.
• Make language (vocabulary, conventions and knowledge of language) comprehensible to students.
• Help students develop oral communication and interpersonal skills.
• Encourage students' use of language to extend across reading, writing, speaking and listening.

TPE 1: MATHEMATICS

• Understand and teach the progression of content standards for mathematics.
• Facilitate understanding of mathematical concepts and support in making and testing conjectures and recognizing relationships within and among concepts.
• Provide secure environment for taking intellectual risks and encourage students to use multiple approaches to solve problems.
• Require student collaboration and written and oral communication that demonstrates students' ability to construct logical arguments.

TPE 1: SCIENCE

• Balance instruction between science information, concepts and investigations.
• Emphasize importance of accuracy, precision and estimation.
• Teach students to independently read and comprehend instructional materials that include increasingly complex subject relevant texts and graphic/media representations in diverse formats.
• Teach students to write opinion/persuasive and expository text in the content area.

TPE 1: HISTORY-SOCIAL SCIENCE

• Enable students to learn and use analytic thinking skills attaining content standards.
• Use timelines and maps to give students a sense of temporal or spatial scale.
• Help students understand events and periods from multiple perspectives by using simulations, case studies, cultural artifacts, works of art and literature, cooperative projects and research activities.
• Teach students to write opinion/persuasive and expository text in the content area.

"When reflecting on the Brain Rule,“Brains make sense of new information using previous experiences” I saw throughout my observation time in math, how essential it is for the teacher to help the students make connections with past lessons. They see the organization of the subject and why learning basic functions will help them grow in this subject."
-Theresa

"When teaching language arts, having students share their written work by reading it aloud to the class is a great way to build oral communication skills and connect reading and writing to speaking and listening as well."
-Alison

TPE 13

TPE 13

• Evaluate own teaching practices and subject matter knowledge (within state standards)
• Improve teaching practices by soliciting feedback and engaging in cycles of planning, teaching, reflecting, discerning problems and applying new strategies.
• Use reflection and feedback to formulate and prioritize goals for increasing our subject matter knowledge and teaching effectiveness.

"I have observed that having the students put what they learned in their own words is a great assessment of their learning. This allows me to reflect on what is working for them or how I can change my teaching methods to better suit their needs." -Theresa

"The instant feedback I received from debriefing with my advisor after my lessons taught me so much about what worked and what didn't. Without taking the time to reflect, we cannot become better teachers."
-Alison