EDU6136 Content Methods Reflection

Reflecting on EDU6136, Content Methods, my biggest take away is development of the lesson sequence for the edTPA.  Everything in this course extremely helpful in the development of these lessons.  From my development on the learning targets and edTPA prep, I would say I grew the most on program standard 2 Instruction: The teacher uses research-based instructional practices to meet the needs of all students.

Figure 1

At the beginning of this quarter, I can only say I felt confident in maybe 2 or 3 of the 9 learning targets.  Providing feedback to students, having students reflect on their learning and academic language were at the bottom of my confidence list (and the top of the edTPA importance).  Throughout this course, I was able to apply class discussions and readings to my internship and development of the edTPA lessons to gain confidence in these areas. For example, the very first discussion post I was able to apply and write about the 50 CATS by Angelo and Cross (Shown in Figure 1 & 2) Through the application of reading, applying it to the classroom and sharing with my peers it helped me develop new skills.  

Figure 2

Although I feel confident in the classroom using research based instructional practices to meet the needs of my students (standard 2), I feel I still need to deepen my understanding of how to translate a few of the learning targets onto paper for the edTPA lesson plans and commentary. I feel confident incorporating students assets and deepening knowledge into my classroom and would actually say it is what I feel most confident in, however I struggle to translate that into the written lesson plans.  In addition, I also still struggle with translating academic language onto paper.

Overall, I have appreciated the real life application of this course.  I can now say I feel confident in 7 or 8 of the 9 learning targets and look forward to building on my new knowledge in both the classroom and edTPA!