Recent Changes

INTASC principle eight deals with assessing students in the classroom. This principle means that I assess my students formally and informally all the time and that if the students do not do well on these assessments that I modify my plans to help promote student achievement. Informal assessments can range anywhere from orally asking a check for understanding question to a group project that is given during class. A formal assessment is more along the lines of a unit test or a standardized test that is given from the county or state. For example, during my high school internship while my students were learning about nationalism in tenth grade world history I had them take the knowledge they had learned from previous lessons and design their own country. This project tied in a lot different aspects the students had been learning throughout the unit. I would apply this principle in the classroom by asking questions during a discussion and giving activities that I feel would help the student achieve in understanding the material for that day. If the students did not understand the material for that day, then as the teacher I would go back and modify my lesson plan to try it differently the next time around. I would also change my lesson plan for the next day so that I could try a different approach to the material and hope that the students understood it with the new approach. INTASC eight is very important because if the teacher does not assess the students’ knowledge then how do they really know if the students are learning what they are supposed to or not.
{VPP Chart.xlsx} {narrative.docx}{narrative.docx}
Artifact A This artifact will ultimately havehas had a positive the information. The assessments and activities throughout this project were successful which is proven by the excel chart attached above which shows that the average score from the pre to post test increased twenty two percent. This artifact This artifact will ultimately havehas had a positive a different approach.approach.I know that the information got to the students and that they understood it based off of their post assessment scores which can be seen on the excel chart attached above. This artifact

I believe that teaching is one of the best jobs out there, not only because it is what I have chosen to do with my life, but because a teacher has the opportunity to enhance a student's life with learning opportunities he/she may not have had before. Teaching opens a student's eyes to new information every day. I believe that teaching is sharing the wealth of knowledge with students. Learning not only as an individual, but as a group. Teaching is giving new information to students in a way that each and every student can understand it. Teachers have to differentiate learning to tailor each student's needs. A teacher cannot be successful without completely meeting the needs of all of his/her students. When I student taught at Bel Air High School and Magnolia Middle, the greatest feeling I had was when I taught a lesson and the students fully understood it. It was only then that I felt as though I had met my goal. I want to teach so that I can see the spark, or light that goes on when the teacher teaches information to a student and the students fully understand it. I also want to teach because I want to be able to make learning enjoyable for students just as my learning experiences were enjoyable. As an educator I feel as though my strength is using technology in the classroom. Technology such as power points and the interactive whiteboards are a few ways I have integrated technology into the classroom. Something I feel like I need to improve upon is the ability to reach every student academically such as differentiating better to reach everyone and not just a majority. I plan on bettering myself in this area by asking colleagues and by taking professional development classes on this subject. I have many goals for my career as a teacher, and I hope to one day meet those goals.
{resume 1.docx}{portfolio resume.docx}
Test Name
Required Passing Score

157
170
awards commendations certificates letters of rec

{Jessica Todd_MT1..docx} {Mesopotamian Civilizations.docx} {Age of exploration day 3.docx}
Artifact A is an evaluation from my middle school mentor from my first rotation of student teaching. This artifact is accompanied by two lesson plans; one that was planned prior to my evaluation and the second from my high school rotation which occurred after my evaluation. An area that I could improve on is taking more risks while planning my lessons. The evaluation talks about how my mentor hopes that I take more risks when planning my own lessons and is more creative in the future. The first lesson plan is a plan from my middle school rotation. There is not much group work occurring, and it is more teacher directed. The second lesson plan is from my high school rotation. While planning this lesson I took into account what my evaluation from the middle school said and I attempted to be more creative and risky. This artifact shows my proficiency in this principle because I have taken into consideration suggestions from my mentor and attempt to plan more creatively when possible. While planning I began to plan more student centered activities and less direct teaching. This involved more group work with my students. It also involved the students finding the information more on their own as oppose to me giving them the information through notes. There are still short notes in the lesson plans; however the students are now doing more to find the information on their own. This artifact has had a positive impact on student achievement because the creativeness and fun that I have while planning the lesson, I saw in my students while the lesson was being implemented. The students seem to enjoy the lessons more because they are out of their seats and working together to achieve the goals. This was evident while observing my students complete the tasks that were given to them. This artifact demonstrates the “planning” aspect of the Planning-Teaching-Learning cycle because in order to be risky and creative I first need to prepare a good lesson that is controlled, but still gets the information across to them. The students should enjoy the learning process and I have noticed a change between the middle school the and high school since I have started to take more risks in my lesson plans.
lesson plan.docx} {Professional Development.docx}
Artifact B is an agenda from the first professional development day of the school year. This was my first day of student teaching in Harford County. The agenda shows the different sessions that various teachers would attend throughout the day. One session that was extremely beneficial to me was a session called “Going for the Gold: Using Interactive Technology”. At this session, a person from the Promethean Company gave different tips and tricks to using the interactive whiteboards. He discussed a website called www.prometheanplanet.com which is a free website for teachers to go and find ideas and tech support for their interactive whiteboards. I have not used this website yet due to my lack of knowledge with the whiteboards; however I plan to use the resource later on when I can learn more about the whiteboard itself. Although while looking at the website it makes me believe that it will be a useful tool when I have my own classroom and whiteboard. The other beneficial part was the introduction of acti-votes. I had never seen this piece of technology before although I had seen something similar on Towson’s campus. The instructor of the course showed us how to use the acti-votes and how to analyze the information that was gathered from the students. This artifact is accompanied by a lesson plan that shows how I was able to incorporate the acti-votes into the classroom. This artifact shows my proficiency in this principle because I was able to learn about a new piece of technology and incorporate them into my lessons when possible. I could not always use the acti-votes because there were not enough in the middle school for each classroom to have a set, therefore when planning if I wanted to use them I had to check the availability of the class sets. This artifact will have a positive impact on student achievement because with this technology students can receive immediate feedback on their answers. This artifact demonstrates the “planning” and “teaching” aspect of the Planning-Teaching-Learning cycle because in order to use the technology I must plan in advance when I want to use it and how I want to incorporate into the classroom. Also when teaching I must be able to explain the technology to my students and then make sure that while teaching this is beneficial to the students or not.