Kayla Marra January- April 2013

Teacher Professional Growth Plan: PS2

Goal #1: Incorporate practice of using well-structured and defined rubrics in the summative evaluation process.
Rationale: During my PS1 placement I had a lot of opportunities to practice formative assessment techniques; however I did not have any experience with summative assessment. Being a vital aspect of the teaching profession, I feel that I need adequate practice in this area so I can learn new ways to assess students understanding. Deadline: April 25, 2013 Strategies to Achieve Goal: Create assignments that will be collected for marks Establish well-defined and well-structured rubrics Participate in the summative evaluation process Indicators- I will know I have reached my goal when: I have developed rubrics and graded students assignments accordingly Evaluation: I believe that I have reached my goal because I have assigned and marked multiple assignments from Grade 8 and 9 Social Studies classes including short answer questions, multiple choice, persuasive paragraph, definitions, quizzes, an exam, a project and an oral presentation. I looked at a variety of different rubrics throughout my practicum and had the opportunity to try a variety of formats. I developed my own rubrics by altering existing ones to better fit my assignments with the help of my T.A. Finally, I also had the opportunity to give an oral exam to my Grade 1 students to complete the My Community Unit which I planned myself. I learned that marking can be very subjective which can make it difficult at times, however I feel more confident in the summative evaluation process now that I have had more experience. Goal #2: Establish my own classroom management plan including techniques to gain students attention and control noise level in the classroom. Rationale: Part of the PS1 experience was to begin developing my own teaching style and mannerisms, including exploring a variety of classroom management strategies. Now that I have observed a number of techniques, I feel it is important to develop my own classroom management scheme. Timeline: April 25, 2013 Strategies to Achieve Goal: Learn the pre-established classroom rules my TA has established and strategies to enforce the rules and procedures. Define my personal classroom rules which I will reinforce in every lesson. 1

Kayla Marra January- April 2013 Practice different management strategies (including different attention-getting and noisereducing strategies) to determine which ones are most effective for me.

Indicators- I will know I have reached my goal when: Noise level raises and students respond to my techniques to quiet the room when necessary. I have the ability to successfully capture students attention throughout my lessons. Evaluation: I feel that this was a major area of professional growth for me this semester! I learned techniques to capture students attention at Grade 1, 8 and 9. At the Grade 1 level, I found that saying Grade Ones and waiting until they stop and respond Yes? was very effective. I also found that saying Eyes on me by the count of three1...23 worked well. I tried a few other techniques at the beginning of my practicum and when I found these two were the most successful I stuck with them and found the students responded very well to me. Using these same techniques with the grade 8 and 9 students also worked and by stating three directions such as Pencils down, eyes on me, mouths closed was successful. The most important lesson I learned throughout my practicum was the importance and necessities of procedures in any grade level. Once I started looking for procedures I realized how many there were in every lesson I teach. There are procedures on how to respond to questions, sharpen a pencil, line up for gym, walking down the hallway, passing out papers, bell work, etc. The more well-established the procedures are, the better the students respond and the less discipline issues that exist. I set another goal for myself throughout the practicum, and that was to recognize the procedures that I teach and firm up the steps of each procedures. I found that the more aware I was of each step, the smoother the class ran. Teaching Grade 1 Physical Education has really given me the opportunity to practice and improve my wait time, and because of this I feel that overall my classroom management has drastically improved during the past six weeks.