Laura Stevens’ philosophy of Co-Teaching

Laura Stevens is an English teacher who works with ELL students in Oswego City, New York. This article, written by Stevens in 2015 details a change she made in her co-teaching philosophy. Instead of focusing on the teacher-teacher relationship in a co-teaching setting, student needs must become the focus. Stevens provides steps and objectives for creating a more student-centered co-teaching environment, sharing her techniques and experiences along the way. Though she focuses on teaching English, Laura is a great example of a teacher with a fantastic co-teaching philosophy.

Classroom Elements Differentiation

Differentiation, the process of individualizing instruction in the classroom to meet all learning needs, is a difficult task to complete. You can differentiate your instruction, however in a certain "format", differentiating content, the teaching process, products, and the learning environment. Content-wise, you can vary reading levels, types of material that pertain to types of learners (auditory, visual, kinesthetic), and meeting with students (gifted, ELL, special education) to individualize learning, etc. Process-wise,  you can use tiered activities, provide interest centers, developing personal agendas, offering manipulatives, and varying instruction lengths. Product-wise, you can let students decide how they will present the information learned and how they want to work (paired or alone). Learning environments can be differentiated through developing guidelines and having different learning environments set throughout the classroom.

What Is Differentiated Instruction? (2015, December 31). Retrieved September 25, 2017, from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction

Differentiation

This website is called The Highly Effective Teachers. Although there is a lot of features to this website there a specific feature that is a very helpful resource to us as teachers that is a blog titled differentiation in the classroom. This specific blog entry gives the rundown on several ideas that teacher can use to cater to different learning styles, abilities, and interest of the students in the classroom by providing flexible and alternative learning experiences that engage the students.  Differentiation is important in our classrooms and it is beneficial to have multiple ways to teach content in order to help students be successful.

Amaro, M. (n.d.). Differentiation In The Classroom. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from http://thehighlyeffectiveteacher.com/differentiation-in-the-classroom/

Professional Learning Community

       

This Article is a great way to see how a Professional Learning Community can be formed in the classroom.  It discusses topics such as being taught in how to properly collaborate, creating an atmosphere of trust with in the community, and being broad and inclusive with each topic discussed.  It highly encourages outside help wheather it is someone else in the community the school or help involving research to help improve the classroom.  The article also has comments and feedback for other readers giving positives and negatives as well as sharing some of their personal experience in PLCs. Professional learning communities are helpful in the classroom. It is a matter of the teachers using this technique appropriately to collaborate together to discover new ways to engage their students learning.

Ullman, E. (2009, December 23). How to Create a Professional Learning Community. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/professional-learning-communities-collaboration-how-to

 Example Practices for Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities are established on practices that require more than a five minute meeting between two teachers telling each other about what they each did in class that day. Now that we have learned what PLCs are, it is important to understand practices that best create an environment of professional collaboration. Some example practices PLC members use to create this environment include:

1. Verbally sharing visioning and planning, as well as critical examination of what does and doesn't work to enhance student learning  (this could be self-examination or peer evaluation but a mixture of both would be most effective).
2. Emphasizing teacher leadership, involvement, and commitment since they are the "last line of defense", meaning that after participating in PLCs, teachers are the ones that ultimately choose what and how to enhance student achievement in the classroom.
3. Establishing a set of shared vision/expectations for all members.
4.  Matching tasks and roles to staff members who are interested and invested in them.
5. Trying to make all members of the school community feel involved- not limiting PLCs to just teachers.

Provini, C. (2012). Best Practices for Professional Learning Communities. [online] Education World. Available at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/best-practices-for-professional-learning-communities.shtml [Accessed 18 Sep. 2017].

The Basics of Professional Learning Communities

Link: "What Is a Professional Learning Community?" By Richard Dufour

A good way to utilize the concept of Professional Learning Communities is to understand Professional Learning Communities themselves. Therefore the article, "What is a Professional Learning Community" by Richard Dufour, functions more than adequately to provide this necessary information by summarizing the idea and goals of PLCs into three "big ideas." The first idea summarizes the goal of ensuring student learning and growth, the second goes over the goal of ensuring an appropriate learning and collaborative class culture, and the third idea states the PLC's base their effectiveness upon their subsequent results. While the article itself is slightly dated, being published in 2004, its style of a general overview of PLCs rather than an in-depth focus on the subject works well as an introductory article on the subject matter. To an educator in need of a quick reference for PLCs, Richard Dufour's article works as a well made overview to use. 

Source: Dufour, R. (2016). What Is a Professional Learning Community? TALIS School Leadership for Learning, 61, 121-144. doi:10.1787/9789264258341-9-en

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Breanna Grant

Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning

Lots of people think it can be complicated to be a Culturally Responsive Teacher (someone who includes students’ cultural difference in all aspects of learning). In this video on YouTube, lots of different techniques are shown that can be used in the classroom to include different cultures. Most of them are very simple and are things that you wouldn’t even think can be culturally inclusive. For example, using different forms of technology or having learning centers all around the room can be culturally inclusive. This video also goes on to explain how you can use these techniques in the classroom. The approach that I like a lot from this video was the “action thermometer” approach. The teacher used this in the video by seeing the student’s opinions about a question on the board which was an introduction to a book she was going to be reading. I would use this in the classroom to quickly see if students thought they knew or didn’t know information about the day’s lesson objective. This technique is good for pre-assessment so that teachers can visually see what the students know before going into a lesson. This method can also be used as a way for students to choose answers for questions and discuss with other people around them why they chose that answer.

Erker, J. (2010). Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uOncGZWxDc [Accessed 15 Sep. 2017].

Best Practices for Professional Learning Communities

Breanna Grant

Best Practices for Professional Learning Communities

A Professional Learning Community is something that is needed in schools to improve collaboration amongst school staff. The article by Education World goes deeper into what a PLC is. A Professional Learning Community is not just a meeting with a group of teachers discussing their classrooms. According to the article, a PLC represents a norm of practicing and focusing on continuous improvement in staff performance AND student learning. A PLC is also where all staff involved reflect upon their instructional practices and desired student learning benchmarks, as well as student learning outcomes to ensure success. Professional Learning Communities enable teachers to learn from each other about planning and what does and doesn’t work.
After recently attending a PLC, I better understand how they work and how they are beneficial to teachers who have the same students. The teachers were able to discuss what was and was not working for discipline and make new plans when things weren’t working. They all decided to stick to the same guidelines to keep solidarity. This could be a great technique for students when teachers and I collaborate to meet their needs.

Provini, C. (2012). Best Practices for Professional Learning Communities. [online] Education World. Available at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/best-practices-for-professional-learning-communities.shtml [Accessed 15 Sep. 2017].