idaho state standard 2
knowledge of human development and learning
The first artifact contains an excerpt from my lesson plan, which includes the activities and differentiation sections of a statistical comprehension lesson I taught at Thomas Jefferson Carter School on October 10th, 2011 in Mrs. Espinoza’s Integrated Advance Geometry 10th grade class. The second artifact is excerpt from my vocabulary lesson that I taught in the same class on October 6th, 2011. The third artifact includes a summary about Cognitive Development from the text, Educational Psychology: Reflection for Action, from my Educational Psychology class in the Fall of my sophomore year at The College of Idaho.
The vocabulary and comprehension lesson provided me multiple learning experiences in regards to understanding the necessity of matching an assignment with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) of the students. When I taught my comprehension lesson, I assumed it would the correct difficulty level as the statistical terms were new to most of the students. However, I was mistaken and the students quickly finished the exercise with a fourth of the time I had allotted and didn’t seem to take interest in what they were completing. This experience made me realize that I must structure my tasks for the students to be in their range of possibility and not assume that they will struggle with it. So I learned that utilizing the ZPD concept can greatly enhance the success of a lesson. For my vocabulary lesson, the students were seen to enjoy having an opportunity to engage with each other in their drawings through social interaction and be supported by their fellow classmates when presenting their work. This personally, encouraged my education philosophy of allowing students to engage with each other during an assignment. To see the students being successful in completing activities while being socially connected reaffirmed this core value for myself of how students should not have to be silent in order to be productive.
I chose these lesson artifacts because they display how I discovered how important it is to ensure a lesson is within the Zone of Proximal Development; so students have the optimal chance at successfully grasping a concept due to their learning and development level, and allow students to use group work to grown socially and academically by communicating about the task at hand as Vygotsky explains in his Social Development Theory. Additionally, I included my summary about cognitive development because it shows my research and knowledge of development theory as it relates to education. Hence, I put these artifacts in Standard 2, Knowledge of Human Development and Learning, because they exhibit how the teacher understands how students learn and develop, and provides opportunities that support their intellectual, social, and personal development.
The vocabulary and comprehension lesson provided me multiple learning experiences in regards to understanding the necessity of matching an assignment with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) of the students. When I taught my comprehension lesson, I assumed it would the correct difficulty level as the statistical terms were new to most of the students. However, I was mistaken and the students quickly finished the exercise with a fourth of the time I had allotted and didn’t seem to take interest in what they were completing. This experience made me realize that I must structure my tasks for the students to be in their range of possibility and not assume that they will struggle with it. So I learned that utilizing the ZPD concept can greatly enhance the success of a lesson. For my vocabulary lesson, the students were seen to enjoy having an opportunity to engage with each other in their drawings through social interaction and be supported by their fellow classmates when presenting their work. This personally, encouraged my education philosophy of allowing students to engage with each other during an assignment. To see the students being successful in completing activities while being socially connected reaffirmed this core value for myself of how students should not have to be silent in order to be productive.
I chose these lesson artifacts because they display how I discovered how important it is to ensure a lesson is within the Zone of Proximal Development; so students have the optimal chance at successfully grasping a concept due to their learning and development level, and allow students to use group work to grown socially and academically by communicating about the task at hand as Vygotsky explains in his Social Development Theory. Additionally, I included my summary about cognitive development because it shows my research and knowledge of development theory as it relates to education. Hence, I put these artifacts in Standard 2, Knowledge of Human Development and Learning, because they exhibit how the teacher understands how students learn and develop, and provides opportunities that support their intellectual, social, and personal development.