Huffman

In January of 2015, I began my student teaching in Mrs. Friends

fourth grade classroom at Central Elementary School in Lawrenceburg,
Indiana. This school is set in a rural area, with a range of
socioeconomic status. Central Elementary School has two percent
Hispanic, two percent African American, and ninety three percent
Caucasian students. There are approximately 450 students, with fortynine percent male and fifty-one percent female. The classroom I was
placed in has 23 students, with ten boys and thirteen girls. Two
students get pulled out for speech therapy, and two students get
pulled out for tier three RTI in the afternoon. During reading time, five
gifted and talented students get pulled out for fifth grade math.
Due to the lack of diversity in this school, one of my main goals
is to incorporate multicultural materials into lessons I will be teaching.
By doing this, my goal is to teach students to look at other cultures
with a respect and understanding for them. I have previously had a
difficult time with incorporating multicultural goals into the classroom,
however I did it sometimes with out realizing it. I want to purposely
plan to incorporate it and make it beneficial for the students.
From previous experience I know I need some work on classroom
management. After last semester I believe it has improved
tremendously, but I still think there are some aspects of it I need to
work on. In this classroom they use a point system called classroom
dojo to reward students with points for doing things well, answering
questions, being respectful, etc You can also use if for things they
arent doing so well, such as, not on task, not following directions, not
turning in assignments, etc My goal is to use this as positive
reinforcement for the students. I want to motivate them to do well all
the time, and not just when answering questions. This would be one of
my main goals for classroom management, because after watching my
cooperating teacher use it I know its effective.
My third goal is to use more strategies in the classroom. I have
learned so many useful strategies from all of my previous classes that I
need to incorporate into everyday lessons. I believe these strategies
will be beneficial to students and provide them with another way of
looking at the material being taught. I also want to use strategies that
will benefit students learning styles. This is something I have been
taught, and want to work on implementing.
Meeting these three goals will improve my ability to be an
effective teacher in this fourth grade classroom. Included in this
portfolio are lesson plans, unit plans, assessments, letters, evaluations,
and other artifacts. The artifacts provided show my growth as a

teacher, and my ability to meet the InTASC standards and student

education themes as I transition into my own classroom.