Jennifer Clark

11 May 2014
EDPR 250
Integrated Reflection

Throughout this semester I have grown tremendously both professionally
and academically. I completed two instructional programs, a Managing Learning
Environments assignment, Longitudinal Curriculum Development Plan, Inventory
assignment, Skill Sequence assignment, Family Mentor project, and a plethora of
other assignments- all of which have helped me in my journey to becoming a
teacher.
One of the instructional programs I developed and implemented at my
practicum this assignment targeted categorizing data. I taught daily science lessons,
which required me to find my own materials, make lesson plans, and carry them out
in the classroom. We completed two different units: Solids, Liquids, and Gases, and
one on habitats (Grassland, Rainforest, Arctic, and Ocean.) Throughout instruction, I
integrated projects, hands-on experiments, and technology-based lessons. While
these lessons were taught on a whole-class basis, for the purposes of my assignment
I targeted one student. She ended up meeting my intended objective by the end of
the program.
The Longitudinal Curriculum Development Plan (Yellow Book assignment)
was an extensive, detailed project that I completed this semester. It entailed taking
an in-depth look into a students life to determine which skills and goals should be
targeted on his/her IEP. Two other classmates and I interviewed our students
parents as well as her future teacher. We then transferred data learned from these
interviews into an excel document, which was pre-programed to add weights to the
skills that show up most and therefore should be targeted. For the individual
portion of this assignment, I was given the task of creating objectives that fell under
the three categories of domestic, leisure, and community skills. Based on the ones
that the excel document suggested for instruction. I then had to provide a rationale
for my selection of objectives.
Another project I completed was the family mentor assignment for SPED 438.
For this, we had to choose a student at our practicum site to spend time with them
and their family outside of school. I found this experience to be particularly
insightful as the student I chose had a stark contrast in behavior in the classroom
and at home. We were to complete 8 hours of time with the family and submit 3
reflections during the process. I valued this project because it gave me the
opportunity to see how what goes on at home can provide teachers with more
information about the student and their familys priorities, values, etc.
Additionally, I completed an Instructional Strategies assignment for SPED
447. For this assignment, I was given the task of finding an academic learning
strategy to teach to one of my students in practicum. I chose to teach the COPS
strategy (Capitalization, Overall Appearance, Punctuation, Spelling) to a fourth
grader in my classroom who has a learning disability. This strategy targets editing
writing and serves as a reminder for the different areas of writing to check for
errors. When looking at baseline data vs. post-assessment data, the student
mastered the strategy and showed tremendous improvements in his ability to
detect errors in sentences. I will definitely be using this strategy as a future
educator.
Last semester, I received feedback from my supervisor to work on improving
my teacher presence. Throughout this semester, I have been fortunate to be able to
teach daily science lessons, as well as other areas of instruction (Read Well, calendar
time, and one-on-one math lessons.) I feel as if through these instructional
experiences, Ive grown significantly in the areas of managing classroom behaviors
and delivering instruction. My supervisor for this semester shared with me that she
feels as if shes watching a whole different person now than who I was at the start of
the semester. My confidence and overall teaching abilities have refined and
improved, and Im excited to see what future semesters have in store.