Self-Reflection of Teacher Work Sample

Learning goals one and two were the most successful. Labeling the parts of the globe
was the easiest goal for them. All but one student was able to do it 100% correctly. That
particular student has special needs that are not being addressed by the school. We looked at
water and land both on a globe that we had in the classroom which the students got some
hands-on experience with, and a variety of different types of maps. Learning goal two was being
able to use a key to identify objects. This was also easy for the students because we read many
books about map skills that focused on the key, we talked explicitly about what is on a map key
and how to use it. It was also a very simple math integration which the students were confident
in the prerequisite math skills it required. I felt like both of these formative assessments were
very easy. A challenge I could add in the future would be to have the students use a map
key/directions to find something in the classroom or playground. This way they could take the
skills that they have learned and been tested on and put them to use.

The learning goal that was the least “successful” was the students making their own
maps. I decided to grade it by how many objects they had from the key on their actual maps. I
could have done a better job emphasizing each of the key items while we were doing the maps.
That being said, each child’s map was a unique representation of their own world. I enjoyed the
authentic work that they did even though it didn’t necessarily score the best. I feel like they
learned more from this experience than they did from the other assessments that they scored
really well on. This was their first time trying to make spatial sense of their environment and I
think they did really well. It really showed me where the students were in terms of how they see
things. Something I would have done differently during this lesson was the way I handed out the
student’s materials. I had the students take things and pass them down but there were too many
materials for this to go smoothly. Since we were outside, I should have planned better for
getting all of the materials out to the playground while also being in charge of all of the students.
I am used to my mentor being in control while I prep materials, but this wasn’t the case during
my full week; she let me do it on my own. I should have set the materials out in a line (board,
paper, and pencil) and had the students each grab one on their way to their seat. I also could
have prepared the boards by securing the papers on them with a binder clip. This was
something I thought of after the fact but it would’ve prevented some issues as the students had
to fight a little bit of wind to keep their papers down as they drew.

One area of professional development for me that I have pulled from my teacher work
sample is planning and asking more higher-order thinking questions. I would like to plan more
how’s and why’s when I am teaching rather than just asking about the basic information the
students are learning. I realized this because I had one student who knew all of the answers
and needed a little bit of a challenge. But after coming up with these specific questions to
challenge the one student, I realized I needed to add some of these types of questions for all of
the students. Students perform better when they are given higher expectations. I want to
expand their learning as much as I can. This is something I will consider in the future when
planning each lesson.
 Another area of professional growth I would particularly like to work on is integrating
curriculum, especially for math. I favor English so I am really good about modeling language
and vocabulary and integrating ELA skills. I need to work on doing that in every lesson with
math skills as well. While we were making the maps, my mentor teacher asked the students to
count some of the things they were putting on their maps. She asked them to count how many
trees they needed to draw. Then she asked them to count the number of swings, but since the
swings were in pairs she had them count the swings by twos. This was a natural integration that
I didn’t even think about that the students could be learning from. The teacher modeled the skill
and had the students count with her the second time. Counting is an important skill in early
grades and counting by twos is something the students don’t practice as often so this was an
excellent opportunity for them to develop these skills.