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Folio C
by Jared Wright
Standard 9, Folder 1: The teacher candidate engages in ongoing
professional learning.
Artifact 1 - Required
Reflection on Artifacts
The artifact that I have chosen from this standard comes from the Fire Up conference (2). The
artifact is a document that contains tutorials and a list of websites that can be used to help teach
ELL students. This artifact represents the standard because it shows my ongoing professional
learning on teaching ELL students. I have very little experience when it comes to teaching ELL.
Before this professional development I had no idea who I would contact in my district for help on
teaching ELL students. I have some experience in differentiating content, but I will always
welcome more strategies. The artifact suggests my eagerness to continue professional learning.
https://www.livetext.com/doc/11478164?print=1 1/13
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Standard 9, Folder 2: The teacher candidate uses evidence to continually

evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and
actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the
community).
The artifact that I chose for this standard is a similar evaluation form that would have been used
during my evaluation by the principle. At the beginning of the semester I asked our school
principle if he would evaluate me. Through a stroke of luck, I was informed that there would be at
least three positions open at the upper elementary building in Sand Lake. My mentor teacher
diligently worked to sit up a time where I could be evaluated by Sand Lake’s principal.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 an evaluation by either principal was unable to be conducted.
I wanted a set of fresh eyes observing my strengths and faults. It was my hope to take the
evaluation and reflect on my teaching style. I had hoped to figure out, from an administrator’s
point of view, what I need to work on. I feel that this artifact is solid evidence that I yearn to be
evaluated for the betterment of my profession.
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Standard 9, Folder 3: The teacher candidate adapts practice to meet the

needs of each learner.
Artifact 2
Artifact 3
The artifact that I chose for this standard is an observed Science lesson plan (16). The science
lesson implemented 3 learning centers where the students would rotate to a new center every 20
minutes. I wanted to do a lesson where I was for certain that 100% of my students would be
engaged. Each station had a worksheet that needed to be completed. On each worksheet there
was enough room to record multiple observation; I expected my exceptional students to record a
few observations and my average students to record one or two observations. Once the stations
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were completed, we debriefed the lesson together so that students who did not record anything
got a chance to tell their findings and listen to their peers’ findings. As I exampled above, I feel
that I adapted the lesson to meet the needs of all three types of learners (exceptional, average,
and below average). As stated above I tried to make sure that the lesson engaged all my
students. For these reasons I feel that this artifact represents level and growth on this standard.
Standard 10, Folder 1: The teacher candidate seeks appropriate leadership

roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning.
Artifact 2
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The first artifact that I chose for this standard is my assuming responsibility plan (10). As you can
see, I tried to accept full control of the classroom early on. I was given the opportunity to be the
lead teacher in Math and Science during the second week of the school year last semester. The
reason that I wanted this responsibility is because I wanted the experience of being on my own
with limited help. In my opinion the best way to learn is to take the lead, figure things out on your
own, and ask for advice when things feel unclear.
The second artifact that I chose for this standard is under the category of student feedback (8).
The artifact was originally created in an action research project. I listed this artifact second
because I am using my action research for another standard. I used the artifact to gage how my
students felt during different times of the day. I used their answers to reflect upon my teaching
practices. For instance, what could I do to engage more students in one subject, and why did so
many students state that they did not like another subject? I feel that these reflections better fitted
me for the responsibilities that I had taken on as the lead teacher.
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Standard 10, Folder 2: The teacher candidate collaborates with learners,

families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to
ensure learner growth.
The artifact that I have chosen for this standard is a mock parent teacher conference letter (1). I
asked to take the lead for a few student conferences. Any parents that did not show up during
conference time I made the phone calls home to tell them how their child was doing in school. The
conferences were not student lead however there were opportunities in which the student could
provide insight. I was very nervous at the start of conferences and asked my teacher what I
should do. For the reasons stated above I feel that I have described how I have collaborated with
others to ensure learner growth.
Standard 10, Folder 3: The teacher candidate collaborates with learners,

families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to
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advance the profession.
Limiting Off Task Behavior with Incentives
Jared Wright
Grand Valley State University
Professor Goericke
EDI 685 3/19/2020
Introduction
Many of the schools in the state of Michigan are moving towards 40% of a teacher’s evaluation
being based on student performance. It is good practice to try to keep all engaged and on task.
The problem that I noticed is that students who were cable of listening to and following directions
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were frequently producing off task behavior which in turn lead them to miss important instructions
that were given. I decided that my ability to keep students on task would be an indicative
precursor to my effectiveness as a teacher. My action research is limiting off task behavior. This
paper will describe the process of how I completed my action research. The paper will be broken
down into four parts which are; academic research, recording data and incentives, data summary,
reflection and future research.
Before I began my summary on my action research, I want to inform the reader that at no point in
this paper will I be using student names. I sought and obtained approval by my mentor teacher on
the way that I was going to record my data. I created codes for types of behaviors so that if I
accidently misplaced a sheet, a person would not be able to read it with out the key. Each student
was treated fairly, and I tried to conduct the research from an unbiased point of view.
Academic Research
During the second week of my action research I paused and began looking at the data collected.
It is important to note that during this week of pause I decided to form a questionnaire to gage the
students’ feelings on the subjects that they were learning throughout the day (the method of how
this was conducted will be explained later in this paper). As I noticed that some of my students
were off task, I decided to do some online research on my topic.
The first article that I decided to look at was titled “Classroom Strategies for Maintaining Student
Focus” by Jared James Gershler. In the article the author talked about how the attention span of
adults and students is much shorter than what it used to be. He described how the factors of a
student’s attention span fell into three groups: distractions, student interest and understanding,
and learning preferences. I was most interested in the distractions factor. The author divided
distractions into two categories manageable factors and unmanageable factors. I found it
important that student behavior fell under the manageable factors list. With the quote “The duty of
an instructor is to first identify which classroom disturbances are manageable” I decided to figure
out how to manage with my students’ off task behavior (Gershler, 2012, 5).
The next article I decided to use in my action research was titled “How to Keep Kids Engaged in
Class” by Tristan de Frondeville. In this article the author described many techniques a new
teacher could use to keep students engaged in the classroom. These strategies ranged from
starting the class with a mind warm-up to using signaling to allow everyone to answer the
proposed question. The most important information came from when the author coined the term
“dead time”. The author defined dead time as a time when there is a lack of engagement by
students. “Dead time interferes with students’ learning and is contagious. It lures those who are
on task into wondering, ‘Why should I pay attention if others aren’t?” with this quote I knew my
choice of keeping students on task was validated (Frondeville, 2009).
I decided to research one more article about keeping students engaged. The last article was titled
“Engaging students Creating Classrooms that Improve Learning” by Peter Goss. This article is a
wonderful piece of work that looks into the science of engaging students. The article relates
student’s behavior and participation to how productive they are on standardized test. Though it
may seem obscure, one of the most important things that I took away from the article was how
teachers should conduct themselves. The quote “teachers should model and reinforce good
behavior. Teaching and reinforcing new skills can increase appropriate behavior and enhance a
positive classroom climate” suggest this (Goss, 2017, 26)
The last thing that I wanted to research on was providing proper incentives to achieve on task
behavior. As a perused the internet I landed on one site that lists many unique incentives. These
incentives ranged from building an escape room to coupons for food franchises. The incentive I
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liked the best was choose how your teacher would dress for a day. I decided that I would use this
incentive for students that did not have any marks against them. The a list of incentives can be
found with this link:https://thatafterschoollife.com/classroom-incentive-ideas.html. My professor
was also helpful in providing me with a list of 50 free incentives that I could use for my class.
Before starting the next round of data collection, I reflected on the online research that was
conducted. I knew I wanted to limit the amount of manageable distractions for my students; mainly
I wanted to manage student behavior. I knew that if I could manage student behavior to a point
where they were creating less distraction, I would be able to negate the amount of “dead time”. To
my friends I am known for being a goof ball. More than a few times a day I would have my
students engaged with appropriate humor up to the point were some people would consider the
class being riled up. I knew that in order to promote on task behavior I would have to limit the
amount of goofiness that I would present to the class. I would also have to understand that it was
not fair to expect the class to be silent, when just two seconds ago I created chaos with my
goofiness. Lastly, I knew I wanted to give students incentives to stay on task. I also wanted to
reward students who did not have any checks against them. My plan was to continue with
recordings and see how incentives would affect student behavior.
Recording Data and Incentives
Certain behaviors and actions were noted as I completed my action research. The method that I
used to record these behaviors and actions was a tally sheet. I decided to break up the day into
two portions. The first portion that would be recorded would start after breakfast and end as
students went outside for lunch recess. The second portion that would be recorded would begin
as students returned to the classroom from lunch and would end as students left the school to
return home. I decided that I would complete my initial weeklong recording without describing to
the students what I was doing. If a student asked what I was doing I replied with the simple
statement of “I am doing research”.
After the weeklong initial recording I paused the “in class” research to find scholarly articles that
gave insight into keeping students engaged. During this weeklong pause I wanted to know how
my students felt about each subject that we did throughout the day. I created a questionnaire that
asked students 5 questions. I asked how the students felt about math, science, reading, writing
workshop, and phonics. Students could choose one of the three possible responses. The first
possible choice was a frowny face and would indicate that the students did not enjoy the subject.
The second possible response was a neutral face and would indicate that the students had no
feelings of joy or dislike for the subject. The last possible response was a smiley face and would
indicate that students enjoyed the subject. These instructions were given to the students along
with a brief “do your best” speech.
As I began the second week of recording student behavior, I described to my students what my
action research was and how I was going to be recording the information. After describing the
action research to the students, I then proposed an incentive to achieve model behavior. I told
students that if every student had five or less marks of disruptive behavior or off task behavior then
I would come up with something fun to do as a reward. I also told the students that if a student did
not have a single check against them then I would plan something extra special with them (due to
the coronavirus shutdown and other in school events, I was not able to reward the students that
had no marks against them). This incentive was going to be, “Pick What the Teacher Wears For a
Day.” I was going to give the students the option of a ninja turtle, superhero, foot pajamas, or
wearing a princess tiara with my normal outfit. I feel that the kids would love this because it went
against what I normal would wear (tie, nice pant, and a long sleeve shirt).
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Data Summary
As described earlier in this essay when I began recording students, I did not give them a full
explanation to what I was doing. I wanted to get a week worth of control data to see how my
incentives worked. I created 5 codes (later six) that would indicate what the student was doing
when they were off task. The five initial categories are as follows: talking out of turn, not
participating, not paying attention, no eye contact, and distracted. The sixth category was listed as
defiant behavior. I added this because I did not first expect any of my students to act defiant. I
only recorded this for only a few students. These situations that occurred were important enough
that I decided to write critical incidents report on them.
The first day was rough. I felt that I was constantly writing codes down on the clipboard. I knew
going in that I had a few students that I would have to frequently remind to get back on task. It
really surprised me how much of the data these few students accounted for. In that first day
roughly 73% of marks that I made for off task behavior came from only 4 students. I decided to
keep trudging on because I did not want to pollute my control data. At the end of the first week I
had recorded 175 marks of students doing off task behavior; with 62 marks being recorded on the
first day. The only thing that I can speculate with the amount of marks on the first day is that the
kids had just gotten back from a long weekend.
With the first week in the books I looked back and noted any commonalities that seemed to appear
in the data. I devised a plan on what I would do next and began the academic research that was
described early on in this essay.
During the second week of my action research I paused and began my online research. During
this time, I gave the students a questionnaire to complete. I have formatted this section so that it
is easier to read. Here are the findings:
For math 65% of students said that they enjoyed math, 10% felt so so and 25% of students said
they did not enjoy math.
For science 75% of students said that they enjoyed the subject, 10% felt so so and 15% of
students said they did not enjoy the subject.
For reading 70% of students said that they enjoyed the subject, 15% felt so so and 15% of
For phonics 65% of students said that they enjoyed the subject, 25% felt so so and 10% of
For writing workshop 65% of students said that they enjoyed the subject, 30% felt so so and 5% of
I was not too surprised with the results that I got back from my students. Most of my students
listed that they liked most subjects. There were only a handful of students that did not enjoy some
subjects, yet still I wondered if this enjoyment level of the subject was affecting on task behavior.
The surprises that came were students that marked that they did not enjoy a subject and that
subject was a strength of theirs. It is important to note that one student finished the questionnaire
before I had time to explain what they needed to do. In each question the student selected that
they did not like a given subject. I pulled the student aside and asked if that was really how they
felt knowing that they did not listen to instructions. They replied, “it is my choice to have these
answers down” and I left it at that.
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Once I informed students on what I was doing with the clip chart, I told them about the incentives
that they could earn. The first day of week three went very smoothly. I only recorded 15 marks,
with that being said, I did have one student that had over 5 marks, thus the class did not earn the
class incentive. At the end of week three I had only recorded 94 marks of off task behavior. I was
happy that with the incentives in place I nearly cut in half the off-task behavior. The students had
earned the class incentive two out of the five days.
It is important to note that I had 8 students that did not have any marks for off task behavior.
When time allowed for it, I was going to make a big deal about how these 8 students did not have
any marks against them. They would be able to choose what I would wear for a day out of the
choices I gave earlier in this essay. I felt that this wasn’t going to be enough so I decided that I
would plan a pizza party with the 8 students. Sadly, I did not get to do any of this because of the
mandatory shutdown.
Reflection and Research to Come
As this action research comes to a close, I have learned a few helpful tips. The first helpful tip is
that you must model on task non-disruptive behavior. As discussed earlier I am known for being
loud and silly. This research has made me realize that I cannot expect students to do what I say if
I had created chaos a few moments early. I have also learned the importance of an incentive. It
was amazing how quick my students changed their action when they knew their incentive was
extra time for recess. I was also amazed at the level in which other students made their peers
accountable. There were many times when I over heard whispers to students like “hey, you need
to pay attention so we can get extra recess time”, or “stop talking to me because I want to earn the
Super-Secret Surprise.”
When I selected the topic of “on task behavior” for my action research I did not know how
extensive the topic would be. With “on task behavior” I could have researched more on how to
keep students engaged throughout the day. This could have been broken down into each subject
and every hour of the day. In my classroom there is a lot of whole group teaching. I might be able
to next observe the difference between on task behavior levels with whole group teaching verses
leveled group teaching. I would also like to research why some students liked or disliked any of
the core subjects (was it because of the way I presented the material, was the content too hard or
too easy, or did they need more or less time with the material).
As I talked to Matt on how his research was going, I really liked how he implemented his research.
He decided to record on a select group of students instead of the whole class. I like this better
because It can lead to specialization of incentives presented to the students. Conducting the
research this way could also improve the relationships that I have with each student, for the simple
fact that I am spending more time with the students.
To conclude I am glad that I chose this topic for my action research. Given time I would like to
expand on the topic and look at other ideas that were listed above. The one regret that I do have
is not being able to implement my incentive. I think the kids would have thought this hilarious.
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Work Cited
Attachments Action_Research_final_corrected.docx
The artifact that I have chosen for this standard is my action research paper (5). For brevity the
research was on strategies to limit off task behavior. I discussed with my mentor teacher if she
wanted to continue the strategy. She stated that she would take the bulk of my strategy and
implement it in a way the best fitted her. Before a topic to research was found, I collaborated with
my mentor teacher and had gotten suggestions from my professor on what I should research.
Once a topic was found I collaborated with a colleague, who shared a similar research plan, on
what academic resources should be used. I collaborated with my mentor teacher and professor
again in finding ways that I could record data. For the reasons stated above, I feel that I have
shown my willingness to collaborate with others to advance my profession.
Overall Reflection
Overall Reflection
Reflection on the College of Education
Before entering the College of Education, I knew that I wanted to teach Elementary aged
students. I had built a love for mathematics while completing my undergraduate degree, and I
needed a way to become certified in Elementary education. I chose GVSU because they offered a
one-year program to get certified. I was not pleased that I had to complete another year of
undergraduate course to get accepted into the program. However, I do feel that I have better
abstract understanding about mathematics from the courses.
When I found out that I was to be placed in a first-grade classroom I was upset. I thought that I
would be wiping noses and tying shoes all day thing. I was completely wrong. I was thoroughly
surprised at how much growth is expected from an average first grade student. I felt that during
the school year I had built a good rapport with all my students and I genuinely cared about each
and everyone of them.
I am greatly appreciative of the mentor teacher that I was placed with. I feel that we co-taught well
and that our personalities complimented each other’s. Holly’s eagerness to help was wonderful.
She constantly provided constructive feedback which I am grateful for. She would willingly point
me in the right direction when I was lost; and reveal effective first-grade strategies to me. Words
truly cannot express how lucky I feel to have been placed with Holly Lanenga.
Professor Goericke was also a wonderful resource during my time at the College of Education.
Though new to the GTC team, professor Goericke constantly went out of her way to help each of
us students. When I felt that an observed lesson did not go as intended professor Goericke was
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there to highlight the great things that came from the lesson, and present viable adaptations that
could strengthen student development even further. Even though I have reserved comments for
how the 685 course was designed and implemented, this is not the fault of Professor Goericke.
She would eagerly make sure that instructions to assignments were clear and even created a
calendar that had every due date. I am happy that I had Julie Goericke as a professor.
My time at the College of Education I felt almost every course had at least a kernel of useful
information. As I study for the General Education MTTC test I find myself wishing that the College
of Education would have prepared us better on the content. I was happy to learn some techniques
to make Science and Mathematics more engaging. It was helpful to learn about online resources
in the Social Studies class. It was great to be taught how to integrate Art into the core subjects. I
just wished that more strategies were demonstrated in these subjects. While the information found
in the Child Development class was vast; I found that the content was a rehashing of what you
would find in a required undergraduate course. I also felt the required readings of this course were
geared more towards the diversity of people instead of child development. I found the courses of
Content Literacy, Foundations of Special Education, Elementary Ed, and the Language Arts
course to be extremely helpful.
As I conclude, I am truly happy that I decided to get teaching certification. I am delighted that most
of my college education is complete and eager to have my own classroom. I feel that my time at
the College of Education has prepared me for a few things. The rest I feel confident I will figure
out on my own.
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4/21/2020 Folio C

Standard 9, Folder 2: The teacher candidate uses evidence to continually

Standard 9, Folder 3: The teacher candidate adapts practice to meet the

Standard 10, Folder 1: The teacher candidate seeks appropriate leadership

Standard 10, Folder 2: The teacher candidate collaborates with learners,

Standard 10, Folder 3: The teacher candidate collaborates with learners,

advance the profession.

Limiting Off Task Behavior with Incentives

Grand Valley State University

EDI 685 3/19/2020

Recording Data and Incentives

Reflection and Research to Come

Reflection on the College of Education

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