Reflection on Assignment 1

Since I’m brand new to the subject area for this upcoming year, I started by reading over the curriculum map, choosing a standard that I wanted to focus on, and then going back to the seventh grade curriculum map, which is where that subject was last taught in depth. I looked at what students should have learned then, and how the standard grew more complex at current grade level.

Next, I created a planning document that included the sample assessment question from my curriculum map, the standard and common misconceptions , essential questions, relevant text and graphics, and a “to do” list of activities and assessments.

Considering that question and the essential question, I made a list of all pertinent vocabulary that the students would need to know to be able to answer the essential question and to get the assessment question correct. That was time consuming.

After that, I looked over, available online resources, looking into pHet, sciseek.com, khan academy, and linked resources on my curriculum map. This was also fairly time consuming, because as I was looking at these resources, I was considering what would be best to use to provide students with increasingly complex text and content (at the right level), practice questions, and  exposure to visuals. Since this is not something I’ve taught before, I thought a lot about what order things should go in. 

Last, I worked from my “to do” list on my planning document to create a series of learning tasks that would address language acquisition, multiple modalities, opportunities for gradual release, parter work time, and independent writing that I could use to measure each student’s progress. My goal was to create a series of steps that led to deeper and deeper understanding.