Competency 001
The teacher understands human developmental processes and applies this knowledge to plan instruction and ongoing assessment that motivate students and are responsive to their developmental characteristics and needs.
I feel that session 5 best reflects this competency. While the cognitive domain is the domain that is most stressed in schools today, the psychomotor and affective domains also need to be incorporated into classrooms, since they also play important roles in student development and learning. Psychomotor skills, such as properly using a pencil to form letters and words, are very basic skills learned at the elementary level. Yet without achievement of these skills, students would have a difficult time succeeding in more advanced classes at higher levels of education, such as composition, as well as in real life experiences.
The affective domain is the domain students, especially adolescents, tend to think in. That is, students tend to focus on their attitudes and values about school, rather than the academic importance of learning while in school (the cognitive domain.) For example, a student might hold a negative attitude towards school if his or her friends view school as �uncool� or if that student is the target of bullying. Teachers should remember that students tend to stay in the affective domain and try to plan lessons that incorporate this factor. One way this can be done is through the use of class surveys to learn about students
Based on interviews with teachers and previous classes, I think it will be important for me to include the affective domain in my classroom. Getting to know your students lets them know you care and helps to earn their respect. At their stage in life, adolescents need to know that there are caring adults out there that they can turn to for help or advice.
Competency 003
The teacher understands procedures for designing effective and coherent instruction and assessment based on appropriate learning goals and objectives.
In session 3, I learned the difference between goals and objectives. Before, I viewed them as almost the same thing. However, now I know that goals are more broad, where as objectives are more specific. Objectives should be written so that they specify an observable behavior and the conditions under which the behavior will occur, and provide criteria that can be used to determine a student�s achievement of the objective. I found the Ad Prima exercises to be extremely beneficial in explaining every aspect of the well-written objective. Additionally, my session 3 interviews with Ms. Beavers, Ms. Baranowski, and Ms. Iredale provided me with �real world� insight on the roles local, state, and national objectives play in today�s classrooms. It was very apparent that state objectives are taken into consideration when planning lessons.
This class, along with my other education classes, has helped me become very familiar with my content area standards as well as the pedagogy and professional responsibility standards. I feel that this will benefit me in the classroom once I start teaching and writing my own objectives. It seems that standards should be like second nature to a teacher. That is, they are always taken into consideration, whether consciously or subconsciously, when goals and objectives are created or modified for a course. Mrs. Wiethorn, an English teacher of 20 years, was an excellent example of this because for almost every response she gave me when I interviewed her (numerous times), she almost always referred back to standards or local and state school goals.