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Goal #1: I will work to differentiate instruction for my gifted learners in order to engage them, meet their cognitive needs, and support them emotionally.
I began working to increase my understanding of how to differentiate for my GT students by meeting with Amanda McKnight at Briarhill Middle School who is a veteran GT teacher. She encouraged me to review the 8th grade capacities for GT because 9th grade capacities are still being developed. Additionally, I have attended two GT trainings this year to enhance my understanding of what GT students need and how I can design instruction to serve them.
I designed a PBL that supports the needs of GT learners outlined in multiple capacities: communication, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and research. During our unit where we work to chart author’s choices, my students completed a PBL designed around the driving question: How might we respond when tragedy occurs? The rubric used to complete the project evaluated them on their ability to make choices that would impact an audience, and because the skills could be assessed over many different products, the kids had free reign when it come to how they wanted to approach the project and the level of creativity they wanted to utilize. How they chose to approach answering the question required them to critically think and problem solve utilizing research skills along the way. They presented to their respective class first, received feedback, and were able to make adjustments before presenting to members of the LISD staff including Andy Plunkett, our Assistant Chief of Schools; Sharon Nobis, our Secondary Supervisor for Gifted and Talented Education in Lewisville; Sean Hood, our Secondary Literacy and Language Arts Administrator; and various other district personnel.
During the project, my end goal, pacing, and approach differed significantly from my PreAP classes. My GT students’ capabilities allowed us to complete a project with fewer passes at each skill, faster pacing for skill processing, and more complex skill work as students were asked to, not only evaluate choices made by the author, but also make choices on their own transitioning them from evaluator to producer.
In addition to differentiating instruction for my gifted learners on a major project, I also have worked hard this year to differentiate for them even when performance tasks for PreAP and GT are the same. I have provided my GT students with more challenging texts and questions. I read their level of engagement and allow them time to explore their ideas through discussion if I glean that they are particularly interested in a topic.
I feel that evidence of my work to achieve my goal evolved as I worked toward it and can best be seen in the pacing of our CALENDAR and the variation in assessment between classes: PreAP students were summatively assessed on author’s choices through a writing and multiple choice assessment, whereas My GT/PreAP students were summatively assessed through a PROJECT complete with reflection resulting in various types of PRODUCTS.
Goal #2: I will work to develop my mentoring and leadership skills to enhance the strength of my team and develop continuity between classes for our students.
We added a new member to the English I PreAP team this year, and a goal that I had for myself was not only to increase my mentorship abilities to serve our new teacher but also to better serve our team as a whole. Barring any scheduling issues, English I PreAP meets every Thursday to plan, calibrate, and discuss the work happening in our classrooms.
In terms of giving feedback regarding question making, we typically collaboratively generate quizzes and test via Google Docs. I review my teammates’ questions and provide feedback in the comments section primarily asking questions that would help with revision as necessary.
Mrs. Hughes’ teaches a course that sometimes requires her to have to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of her students, so we often discuss what texts or approaches we might implement in lieu of our original plan. We also discuss student preferences and class preferences and try to pull texts that meet varying needs in terms of depth and complexity as well as topic of interest.
During our weekly planning and instruction, I work to model how to use the curriculum document to drive instruction. Our skills are always out as we plan. We look at the skills we plan to assess on the summative, and we break that summative rubric down into formative assessments. We consider skills that will need more repetition to master and embed time in the calendar to allow our students that practice.
In order to help my team thrive, I worked to ensure we had the framework of each unit on the calendar a few days prior to each unit beginning so that our team felt confident in the direction and weren’t faced with uncertainty day-to-day. During our planning meetings, we discussed skills and expectations regarding certain tasks as a group. All of our team members contributed to generating activities and finding texts to meet the needs of our students once we had an idea of the skill(s) we wanted to assess. The fact that we all contributed texts to each unit enhances each teacher’s level of comfortability with the unit. During our meetings Mrs. Hughe’s and I would discuss potential problems we have seen the students encounter in the past in order to help our new teacher anticipate issues that may arise. We discuss the content we are about to teach answering any questions along the way.
I feel that evidence of my work to achieve my goal is best seen in the consistent average amongst all three classes on the midterm (averages amongst classes differed only 1.5% at the max) and my colleague questionnaires that have been shared.