Teacher Work Sample (T.W.S) by Luyzraul Torres

UPRH English Program – Practice Teaching Teacher Work Sample – Rufino Vigo Elementary School ________________________________________________________________________________

University of Puerto Rico – Humacao English Department

Teacher Work Sample (TWS) PART 1 - 7

Luis R. Torres Cotto EDPE 4018 Cooperating Director: Nilsa Lugo Date: December 5, 2014

UPRH English Program – Practice Teaching Teacher Work Sample – Rufino Vigo Elementary School ________________________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

Pages

I. Contextual Factors.......................................................................................................3-4

II. Learning Goals............................................................................................................4-5

III. Assessment Plan........................................................................................................5-9 Assessment Plan Overview Pre and Post Test Description Paragraph Evaluation Rubric IV. Design For Instruction.............................................................................................10-13 Results of Pre test Thematic Unit Overview Technology Core Standards

V. Instructional Decision Making..................................................................................13-16 Decision-making Sample #1 Decision-making Sample #2 VI. Analysis of Student Learning..................................................................................16-21 Whole Class Sub Groups Individuals VII. Reflection and Evaluation......................................................................................21-22

UPRH English Program â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Practice Teaching Teacher Work Sample â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Rufino Vigo Elementary School ________________________________________________________________________________

I. Contextual Factors The group I will be impacting are a group of fourth graders from the elementary school Rufino Vigo at Humacao. Needless to say the school is a small community of 298 students plus around 40 personnel members including teachers, director, custodians, social worker and lunch room cooks. Most o the students in the group 4-1 belong to neighboring projects surrounding the school. Not only, but most of the students know and see each other on a daily basis. This implies that situations from the outside might be carried over in the classroom, whether it is chit chatting or arguments. The classroom, on the other hand, is spacious and has air conditioning. Regardless of those positive factors, the classroom is bland and uninviting lacking resources a proper English classroom should have. It is understandable that the teacher is in a moving process so that explains the current status of the room. However, the school is a bit behind in materials and other sources like adaptation to new rules by the department in the system. Also the classroom room lacks the proper equipment for technology. All of these factors can negatively hinder and undermine the teaching process. Nonetheless, it all depends on the teacher to make it above those circumstances and efficiently give a class where the environment for learning is present. The students have similarities regarding likes and favorites, also noting the differences that remarks individuality. Sports like Basketball for the majority of the boys and Volleyball for the majority of the girls serve as great analogies in classes to create engaging scenarios among the students. The implications in the classroom, aside from extra teacher effort, involves utilizing all from what was learned from the group profile and the familiarity of the students itself to develop ground breaking activities that requires the interaction of the students with one another and the practice of the English Language as a vehicle of written 3

and verbal communication. Activities like standing up and going to the board, small read aloud et.al. II. Learning Goals Puerto Rico's Department of Education Standards The following standards that consist of the first levels of Listening, Speaking and Writing on the fourth grade goes in alignment with the unit overall and most expecifically the goals set by the teacher to be reached by the end of the unit. 4.L.1 Listen and interact with peers during social interactions, read-alouds, oral presentations, and class, group, and partner discussions. 4.S.1 Contribute to class, group, and partner discussions by following rules, asking and answering questions, and adding relevant information. 4.W.1 Offer and support ideas, attitudes, and opinions, providing concise reasoning about an event, experience or reading using text evidence or adding relevant background knowledge about the subject matter. Learning Goal List: 1. Recall the definition of Autobiography. 2. Improve in the rules of full sentence writing. 3. Improve paragraph writing. 4. Create an small Autobiography. The purpose of this small unit is to make students write full sentences in preparation for writing a paragraph. The goals are to be able to write a paragraph about themselves in five sentences. To reach that purpose, the students will learn what autobiography is. After that, the students will practice writing a sentences in preparation of the paragraph it is a concern that students are yet to learn how to develop a paragraph of even one sentence. So it is 4

imperative to promote writing. Also, the self esteem is an extracurricular goal aimed in the unit. If students have better self esteem, they will engage in learning better. Following the new adaptations and content standards from the Department of Education in Puerto Rico, the work sample and unit goes strictly aligned with them. The curriculum maps are the source of the ideas for the materials provided in the (TWS). The goals also look beyond since it prepares the students for later stages of the academic semester AugDec 2014. The level of my goals are focused on polishing the basic skills of writing into further mastery. Although higher levels of depth of knowledge are not touched due to its difficulty on these early stages, the students are set to think often and solve their own thoughts. As mentioned before, these skills that the students are learning now will help to the tougher tasks later on the semester. The students are not only limited to that but the practice on writing proper sentences and paragraph will help the greatly on their future challenges such as essay writing on higher grades. The skills also work in par with Spanish. This is due to motor skill refinement and the rules being almost the same for both classes. Finally, the writing skill will help the student on the rest of their lives allowing them write clearer and proficiently in any other scenario of their lives. III. Assessment Plan In the Department of Education, Knowing Myself Unit, the plans touch various topics, such as autobiography and paragraph writing. The Plan for assessment is the following: Introductory Class and sentence writing which they will later be evaluated with an activity as a pretest to gauge (assess) their ability to write a sentence. The Pre test or assessment 5

tool is an exercise that requires students to write six sentence about them. The goal aside from engaging in the knowing myself unit, is for the teacher to see where are the students standing in terms of writing overall and sentence writing. Assessment Plan Overview Learning Goal Meaning of Autobiography

Assessments Oral Questions

Format of Assessments What is Autobiography? Activation of Definition prior knowledge.

Adaptations of Assessments In the case of come students that are frequently quiet and have difficulty are sent to participate. In the case they are struggling a classmate can help them out.

Proper Sentence Writing

Graphic Organizer

Paragraph Wring and Paragraph Rubric format

Handout with a human figure inside with empty slots for writing or placing things in.

In some cases the majority of the students are part of special education and need to explained more than once in how to answer.

The students will be assessed by a rubric which later on will serve as the post test and evaluation of the students. The rubric total points in twenty-five (25) points. The rubric is divided in the five

The three students that are within special education will receive extra aid clarifying doubts and extra time to complete the task. Other students with doubts will be guided but not eve 6

questions separately time promoting them and they will be to work on their ranged from one to own. three points. Also the paragraph as a whole is evaluated one to five points and finally creativity for one to two points.

Pre-and post Test Description Pre Test The Graphic Organizer from the appendixes of the fourth grade curricular maps served as the students pre test, assessment of the students. The Graphic Organizer consists of a human shaped figure in that students pasted things on the slot provided in the handout. In my case, I used as a vehicle to assess the students in sentence writing, while hitting also the goal of working about themselves, autobiographies. The exercise served as a fun way for them to be introduced to the unit while the teacher caught a glance at their writing skills. The work was not graded, the sole fact of the students being able to work on them gave them the pass on to the next level, coming from the premise that assessments are not supposed to be graded. Post Test In the case of the post-test, it hasn't been given yet. Regardless the Paragraph Rubric is tailored to evaluate what students learned during the activities in the unit. The rubric 7

evaluate the sentence format and the paragraph format the students are going to develop. With the rubric the teacher will be able to discern which students understood and which ones have difficulty and need re teaching. The rubric as a value of twenty-five (25) points. Paragraph Evaluation Rubric The purpose of this rubric is to serve as tool for evaluation of the students on the comprehension of the sentence and paragraph writing including the topic of autobiography as a vehicle for the students to create tangible expressions of their history and Autobiography. The group in question to be evaluated are the practice group 4-1 from the Rufino Vigo Elementary School at Humacao.

Name:________________________________ Date:______________________________

Observation Area Sentence # 1

Sentence # 2

Not Met

Partially Met

Met

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was

Sentence # 3

Sentence # 4

Sentence # 5

Paragraph Fluidity

across.

properly

build correctly.

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed nor well developed, regardless the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

____ 1

_____ 2

____ 3

Card Creativity

Oral Report

The student was not able to construct a paragraph but the overall concept is present.

The student was able to grasp the concept of a paragraph but still had format errors.

The student had completely grasp the paragraph format and had minimal to no errors.

N/A

____ 1

_____ 2

The student performed the instructions properly but it wasn't able to personalize it to its own style.

The student followed instruction correctly while creating his card and successfully added their own touch into their card.

____ 1

____ 3

____ 5

The students had the courage to stand in front and did his best to present, the tone was too low and had a lot of struggle speaking in English.

The student stood up in front and presented with few struggles and thought the tone and posture need a bit more work.

The student masterfully was able to present with a proper voice tone and minimal to no struggles with the English language. Total:

/25

________________________

___________________________

Teacher Candidate

Cooperating Teacher

IV. Design For Instruction 10

Results of Pre-Assessment The goal of the pre assessment, as previously established, was not to grade nor tabulate the student work. However the process was done so the teacher can do a group comparative and visualize in what the students need help at. During the analysis, it was seen how students needed to be explained often in order to get them to do what they must, nonetheless a lot still have difficulty following instructions. The instructions were to formulate six (6) sentences, the students often wrote single words or listed things. On the other hand, a lot o the students are still writing in Spanish if alone this bring the conclusion that parents must help them at home and when in class they can't work on their own. Another important fact of the evaluation is that those who did great jobs and followed instruction still struggle with the language having words misspelled or integrated with Spanish. This conclusion helped the teacher into better planning to enhance sentence writing in English.

Thematic Unit Overview: Day 1 Activities

Pretest

Day 2 Sentence Writing

Diversity

Dispositions Creativity

Creativity

Core

Materials

Board

Puppets

Day 3

Day 4

Paragraph Writing

Paragraph Writing (Cont'd)

Oral Report

Leadership

Diversity

Creativity

Board

Pencil

Social Transformation

Board

Day 5

Paragraph Rubric

Board

Pencil

Contruction Paper

Pencil

Notebook

Picture of themselves

Crayons

Notebook

Crayons Notebook

Description

The students were introduced to the autobiography definition. Afterwards the students were given instructions and worked on their pre assessment.

The teacher brought a puppet and together with the students worked on sentence and paragraph writing examples. Students participated and read the sentences and were asked about the rules of paragraph and sentence writing.

The students were given instructions and they worked on their own paragraph.

The students continued last class activity and prepared to present.

The student will present and be evaluated for their work.

Technology: As previously mentioned in the conceptual factors, the classroom does not count with any source of technological advancements, for this reason the teacher employed traditional and rudimentary technology such as posters, puppets, and Flash cards to make the class more engaging for the students. Part of this rudimentary technology was crafted by the teacher himself such as the wheel of the weather o weather roulette. Part of this limitations made the teacher rely more on objects that required internet in any way or downloading content. In the end the students were impressed and encouraged to use something thy can actually use in class every day.

Core Disposition Integrations: Although this aspect was heavily questioned by the cooperating teacher as deemed to elevated for the students, I was able to introduced them. Leadership: This core value was and is implemented every day by choosing courageous volunteers that want to go in front. Another aspect of leadership used is the teamwork when one student was having difficulty and the teacher allowed a person to help voluntarily. Creativity: The aspect of creativity was mostly used on the pre test. In this part the students were allowed to be creative and color and draw in their figures to personalize them. Later on, creativity will be done when the students start working on their cards and custom them to their likes. Diversity: The biggest role of diversity in this Unit is the fact that the student share their differences with one another showcasing the class diversity. Another aspect of diversity lies on the fact that all the students participated, from those of special education and autism, to the shy ones and the outspoken one. Finally in their paragraph the sentence three curiosity is meant for them to let loose and put something that makes them diverse. Social Transformation: Although not emphasize on the (TWS) during classes the teacher talked to the students encouraging them to better people. A good example is the conversation about the 9-11 incident in which they weren't even born but they know about and offered some solutions to stop crimes. V. Instructional Decision Making

Decision-making Sample #1 My first turnover during the whole unit was the need of re-teaching paragraph format because of students expectations, on my part, being too high. I encountered that my students had difficulty in writing. Even though I gave an class to refresh what sentence and paragraph writing entailed and even thought the cooperating teacher told me that I was emphasizing in things they already knew, found this huge gap in which my students lacked the skills. Finding this out trough the results of me correcting their notebooks was a shock. Another indicator was how slow they were progressing with the activity throughout the unit. What I did was that I gave another class reviewing all the topics with my students in order for them to understand things better. This eventually paid off since most of the class picked up the face and understood better the concepts of paragraph writing. This taught me that even thought students may have supposed to have acquire a skill you should always make sure, even thought you take more time and classes. This turnover, although it moved the rest of the planned courses to a day later, help students to got cleared out and to work better. Decision-making Sample #2 The second and biggest consideration and decision making I had during this process was the final work rubric and its re-construction. I remembered clearly how I got scolded by my cooperating teacher for having such high standards for my students. In my eyes, thing were good and accordingly with the new demands of the Department of Education of Puerto Rico. The only rookie mistake I really feel bad was the fact that I did not included a cero 14

(0) mark on the rubric, which is needed if the students didn't met the requirements. Nonetheless I understand the teacher's perspective of not having the bar raised high and that sometimes we as teachers that know our students should know when our students although not perfectly they deserve a good grade for their hard work. Paragraph Evaluation Rubric The purpose of this rubric is to serve as tool for evaluation of the students on the comprehension of the sentence and paragraph writing including the topic of autobiography as a vehicle for the students to create tangible expressions of their history and Autobiography. The group in question to be evaluated are the practice group 4-1 from the Rufino Vigo Elementary School at Humacao. Name:________________

Observation Area Sentence # 1

Sentence # 2

Not Met

Date:_________________

Work in Progress

Partially Met

Met

___0

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student was not able to do what it was required. It missed creating a proper sentence, had grammatical errors or even do not finish or did the sentence.

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly.

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

___0

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student was not able to do what it was required. It

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched

The student had minimal to no grammatical 15

Sentence # 3

Sentence # 4

Sentence # 5

missed creating a proper sentence, had grammatical errors or even do not finish the sentence.

not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly.

errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

___0

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student was not able to do what it was required. It missed creating a proper sentence, had grammatical errors or even do not finish the sentence.

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed nor well developed, regardless the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly.

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

___0

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student was not able to do what it was required. It missed creating a proper sentence, had grammatical errors or even do not finish the sentence.

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly.

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly.

___0

____ 1

____ 2

____ 3

The student was not able to do what it was required. It missed creating a proper sentence, had grammatical errors or even do not finish the

The student had grammatical errors and the sentence was not properly constructed but the message was gotten across.

The Student had some grammatical errors, switched between English and Spanish but the sentence was build properly.

The student had minimal to no grammatical errors, wrote in English and the sentence was build correctly. 16

sentence. Paragraph Fluidity

Card Creativity

___0

____ 1

_____ 3

____ 5

The student was not able to do paragraph or did not do his/her work.

The student was not able to construct a a good paragraph but the overall concept is present.

The student was able to grasp the concept of a paragraph but still had format errors.

The student had completely grasp the paragraph format and had minimal to no errors.

___0

___1

____ 3

_____ 5

The student did not color or decorated his/her autobiography card and did not followed instructions.

The student performed the instructions properly but it wasn't able to personalize it to its own style or it missed various key points of the card

The student performed the instructions properly and was able to add few decorations and decorated his/her card.

The student followed instruction correctly while creating his card and successfully added their own touch into their card. Total:

______________________ Teacher Candidate

/25

_________________________ Cooperating Teacher

This change improved significantly the students grades, and make the rubric fair in that sense. This new product or measurement tool hit on the nail, not only it felt better but it worked to help the students. Students whom did an outstanding work alone where praised

and the flexibility aided them. We commit many mistakes as teacher especially rookies but we can think things over and do better for our students. VI. Analysis of Students Learning (Note: Students names has been omitted to protect their information. Also, the pretest and post of the autobiography creation points are linked with two of the objective hence why they share the same scoring since it was evaluated together.)

Whole Class Students

Autobiography Definition

Improve the skill of complete sentence writing

Improve skill of paragraph writing

Create a small autobiography.

Pre

Post

Pre

Post

Pre

Post

Pre

Post

Student #1

5/5

5/25

25/25

5/25

25/25

5/25

25/25

Student #2

5/5

0/25

7/25

0/25

7/25

0/25

7/25

Student #3

5/5

23/25

25/25

23/25

25/25

23/25

25/25

Student #4

5/5

20/25

23/25

20/25

23/25

20/25

23/25

Student #5

5/5

4/25

Student #6

5/5

0/25

23/25

0/25

23/25

0/25

23/25

Student #7

5/5

0/25

9/25

0/25

9/25

0/25

9/25

Student #8

5/5

13/25

25/25

13/25

25/25

13/25

25/25

Student #9

5/5

17/25

25/25

17/25

25/25

17/25

25/25

Student #10

5/5

12/25

21/25

12/25

21/25

12/25

21/25

Student #11

5/5

15/25

18/25

15/25

18/25

15/25

18/25 18

Student #12

5/5

10/25

20/25

10/25

20/25

10/25

20/25

Student #13

5/5

20/25

22/25

20/25

22/25

20/25

22/25

Student #14

5/5

4/25

18/25

4/25

18/25

4/25

18/25

Student #15

5/5

3/25

0/25

3/25

0/25

3/25

0/25

Student #16

5/5

4/25

22/25

4/25

22/25

4/25

22/25

Student #17

5/5

0/25

21/25

0/25

21/25

0/25

21/25

Student #18

5/5

0/25

7/25

0/25

7/25

0/25

7/25

Student #19

5/5

7/25

21/25

7/25

21/25

7/25

21/25

Leyend Blue: Pre Test Orange: Post Test

Whole Class Summary Graph

Watching this whole group makes see clearly in a panoramic way how my students have show a lot of progress in the skill of paragraph writing. The difference from the pre test where almost all the papers were in blank or with scattered phrases became good and understandable paragraphs. There is a pleasant joy to see positive results from the students. Although, nothing is perfect and some students for various reasons did not manage to improve, this only suggest that they should be taken into consideration and be helped out and even re-teach to enhance their learning. Subgroups: Gender 19

Learning Goal: Improve skill of paragraph writing

This chart portrays the improvement the boys made in between the pre and post test and so as the girls. First of all both genders significantly improved their final totals at the post test in red color. The numbers doubled demonstrating their improvement. The girls overall did better at the tasks given than the boys. Although there are a bit of more girls than boys in class still by looking at their work you can see a clear difference. Possible reasons for this phenomena could be related to the culture. Nowadays women are taking more seriously studies than the men and this can be seen in the projects. While I have seen ho some boys are prompt to grow faster and to learn how to move on the streets, the girls have this sense of studying more. Individuals (Note: An evidence of the students final (post test) is not present due to not being in contact with the group, nonetheless a model will be presented so the reader can visualize of how the final project consisted and also their pre test will be available.)

The students in question, to be analyzed, will be student #3 and student #11 both female students. The reason behind choosing this two students is the fact of them both being on equal ground and yet there are very interesting differences in between. From looking to their scores you can see how student #3 had higher scores at both pre test with 23/25 and on the post test with 25/25. On the other hand, student #11 had 15/25 on the pre test and 18/25 on the post test. Both students had pretty good scores and when improved it may seem they did not improve a lot. The students, as a matter of fact did improve on their writing and

followed instructions. The post test model was an autobiography card in which students pasted a picture of them and then wrote a five sentence paragraph as an autobiography.

Pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp ppppppppppppppppppppppp.Ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp pppppppppp.

The students demonstrated improvement on their own, followed instructions and gave the extra mile in their work making them on the most successful students on the particular skill of paragraph writing accomplishing the goals set. VII. Reflection and Self- Evaluation The goal I consider most important of them all and that I saw outstanding progress was the improvement on the skill of paragraph writing. The students demonstrated they have learned the structure of a paragraph in their autobiography card. The classes that were given towards that goal included from teacher modeling the rules to puppets to encourage the students learning. The different dynamics helped the students feel engaged and wanting to work. The students also had a head start by writing their sentences during the pre test. I, as a teacher, used to my advantage of the group profile and contextual factors to relate the class towards the students interests. Also, they were encouraged to write their

autobiography about their surroundings and where they come from. This also promoted diversity from the students and sharing with others. On the other hand, the goal that students struggled the most with was on writing full sentences. The students often wrote in phrases or incomplete sentences and others could only write in Spanish. This was very difficult towards the correction phase because their point came across and the paragraph structure was there but the sentences needed more work. I as a teacher guided them into how a sentence should start and how it should end, nonetheless I didn't focus on a proper sentence writing with them. Through that mistake I have learned that I should go slower and explain everything to my students and do not assume they already know things. In the end the main goal was achieved and this one two but definitely in the future it needs to reinforced with sentence construction games and activities.

This was my first whole unit as a teacher. For the first time ever I gave a whole skill from beginning to the end. There were many mistakes I committed along the way, but thankfully my cooperating teacher helped out. Also, I noticed when things were falling apart and immediately fixed everything for the next classes. I consider that I did well and I exhausted many resources and creativity in order to help the students grasp he concept. I remember the hot potato games and even the day I brought a puppet and the students helped me construct a paragraph. During my pre test, I felt underwhelm to see the necessities of my students. The students were not where the Department of Education expected them to be and so a lot of thought was given for the classes. During the post test, I felt happy to see 22

the students working on the autobiographies and I had the pleasure to see improvement. I did struggle a lot, with my cooperating teacher with making changes to the point I felt frustrated and even attacked but everything came out great in the end. For the future, I will definitely guide myself by my own style and not be driven by others and also now that I had this breakthrough experience I feel more confident and prepared as a teacher.