Focus Point ONE - Writing Instructional Objectives, Lesson Plans and Instructional Units

Interpretation - The teacher understands the state requirements and objectives necessary in order to create complementary and correlating lessons plans for her appropriate grade level and diverse students’ needs.

Interpretation - The teacher uses her knowledge of students’ learning capabilities and the knowledge they bring with them to plan lessons and assessments which motivate and engage the students in concrete hands-on learning experiences.

Process -Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills For Grade 3   [see binder]                                               (Online: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/grade/grade_3)

Summary - The Texas Essential Knowledge Skills are the guiding state guidelines for curriculum teaching in the state of Texas.  They guide each teacher in her thematic units, lesson planning, and classroom instruction in order to insure each student learns according to each subjects requirements and their developmental levels.  There are TEKS for the Early Childhood teacher beginning with pre-kindergarten through fourth grade.

Rationale/Reflection - I chose the Texas Essential Knowledge Skills due to their being the guiding direction for curriculum planning for all teachers.  I decided to use the third grade TEKS due to the fact I have been using them for lesson planning this semester and will also be using them during my student-teaching semester as well.  I feel this piece of evidence best demonstrates the procedures for creating productive lesson plans and effective evaluations for teaching in the early childhood classroom.

Product - “The Bear Family Facts” First Grade - Objectives and Curriculum Web  (Thematic Unit-Dr. Goodman)

Summary - These objectives and the corresponding curriculum web state a thematic unit which I would like to teach in my future first grade classroom.  I feel the students would enjoy learning about bears of the world, and through correlating lesson plans for these objectives and activities would learn about them through many different curriculum formats.

Rationale/Reflection - I decided to use these objectives and the curriculum web due to the amount of work I put into creating this thematic unit.  These two products definitely were a learning experience as I went through the process of revising and perfecting them in order to create the best set of guidelines for the entire unit.  I became much more knowledgeable about different bears of the world while creating this unit as well.  I feel ongoing knowledge is one of the important tasks for teachers to do while creating enjoyable and effective lessons for the students.  It is in this way that a teacher remains a life-long learning model for her students.

Performance - “All About Me” Language Arts/Technology lesson (Mrs. Frenchwood’s Kindergarten class)

Summary - This lesson was completed and taught for Dr. Tyson’s Language Arts methods class.  We were to find a way to integrate technology into the Language Arts curriculum in the kindergarten classroom.  The students were told to think about things they felt they were good at, liked, and disliked; they were then told we would be using computer (graphics) pictures to create an activity which would present these things about them.