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Erin Kovach

Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota

Schools of Graduate and Professional Programs

Portfolio Entry for Wisconsin Teacher Standard Ten

EDUW 696 Documents of Accomplishment

Instructor: Catherine Anderson

July 22, 2019

Spring/19 page 1 of 17

Selected Wisconsin Teacher Standard Descriptors

Wisconsin Teaching Standard #10: Teachers are connected with other teachers and the community. The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students’ learning and well-being, and acts with integrity fairness, and in an ethical manner.

Knowledge

The teacher understands schools as organizations within the larger community context and understands the operations of the relevant aspects of the system(s) within which s/he works.

Dispositions

The teacher values and appreciates the importance of all aspects of a child's experience.

Performances

The teacher acts as an advocate for students.


Danielson Framework for Teaching

Domain 4:

Professional Responsibilities: Accomplished teachers have high ethical standards and a deep sense of professionalism, focused on improving their own teaching and supporting the ongoing learning of colleagues. Their record-keeping systems are efficient and effective, and they communicate with families clearly, frequently, and with cultural sensitivity. Accomplished teachers assume leadership roles in both school and LEA projects, and they engage in a wide range of professional development activities to strengthen their practice. Reflection on their own teaching results in ideas for improvement that are shared across professional learning communities and contribute to improving the practice of all.

Component 4d:

Participating in the Professional Community: Schools are, first of all, environments to promote the learning of students. But in promoting student learning, teachers must work with their colleagues to share strategies, plan joint efforts, and plan for the success of individual students. Schools are, in other words, professional organizations for teachers, with their full potential realized only when teachers regard themselves as members of a professional community. This community is characterized by mutual support and respect, as well as by recognition of the responsibility of all teachers to be constantly seeking ways to improve their practice and to contribute to the life of the school. Inevitably, teachers’ duties extend beyond the doors of their classrooms and include activities related to the entire school or larger district, or both. These activities include such things as school and district curriculum committees or engagement with the parent-teacher organization. With experience, teachers assume leadership roles in these activities.

Element:

Relationships with colleagues: Teachers maintain professional collegial relationships that encourage sharing, planning, and working together toward improved instructional skill and student success.

National Board Core Proposition # 5: Teachers are members of learning communities.


Professionalism Introduction:To be a teacher is to be a caregiver, facilitator, learner, risk-taker, volunteer, puzzle-solver,

and so much more. In other words, teachers, myself included, take on whatever role necessary to

support kids. It means I learn who my students are – their struggles and aspirations, set high goals

for them, and then make sure that I give every support I can to make sure they reach those goals.

Being a teacher means constantly striving to be better for students – learning a new strategy,

technique, or weakness to work on. Yet those roles are constantly in flux – what a student needs

one day, isn’t what they need the next. It means changing plans on a dime because today, right

now, someone needs a listener with an open heart, instead of a coach. Being a teacher means

opening students’ eyes towards all the possibilities and having your heart broken when they don’t

see those same options. It’s the toughest, yet most rewarding, job there is and I’m proud to be a

part of the profession that does more than any other profession for the future.

Involvement with families and the community helps support all aspects of a students’ well-

being. Communicating with families supports students’ emotional well-being by extending their

support network. Often in middle school, parents are unaware about situations at school while

teachers are unaware of home situations. In both cases, kids are often too stubborn or embarrassed

to bring them up. By communicating regularly with those at home, I give families a springboard for

discussion. Community partnerships are just as important and have benefits both ways. First, it

helps debunk the negative stereotype teens tend to get in middle school. By showcasing the

positive contributions and accomplishments of adolescents it paints a more positive picture for the

community to hold. On the other hand, involving students in community events helps them think

beyond themselves and recognize the positive influence they can have in their community as well

as provide learning that impossible to get within the walls of the classroom.


As a teacher, I learn more daily than I ever did as a student. I learn new things about my

students and their lives, I learn strategies from my colleagues, and I learn about myself – my

strengths, challenges, and limits. While all these things are happening, being a teacher also means

consciously learning for the betterment of students. I am constantly reflecting upon my practice and

looking for ways to improve my lessons, engage more students, be more effective and much more.

Sometimes these are short learning opportunities and sometimes they are more prolonged

professional development. Either way, the important thing is that I take the time to take-risks and

try something new to help my students.

As a teacher, I recognize that all individuals come with a different set of skills. A strong

community comes from all the members sharing their individual strengths. I naturally tend into

leadership roles, but also pride myself in compromising between people. Therefore, I think those

two skillsets are mine to share in the school community to strengthen it for students.


Portfolio Pages: Family and Community Communication:

As a community event, I coordinate a district wide science night which brings together

students of all ages in various roles. At the time I took the event over, it was hosted mainly by staff

members and was inconsistent in the time it was held – meaning that some years, very few

community members could attend due to other scheduling conflicts (such as sports events or the

school play). I advocated to hold the event during the small window between basketball season and

the start of spring sports practices. This way, more students, and thus families, could attend. I also

advocated to have students running the booths as opposed to teachers. Now, high school students in

Science club showcase a variety of science experiments, middle school students show off

demonstrations related to a unit of study from the year, and various middle school clubs host

demonstrations (such as Bot Fighting). Students in grades K-5 are welcomed to participate in the

evening.

Science Night is significant for two reasons – student exposure to science and student

involvement. In the elementary school, students receive very little science instruction – about 50

hours total from kindergarten to 5th grade. All students are naturally curious about the world, but

this is especially true in elementary school. However, our district is not engaging students during

that critical curiosity stage in regard to science. The Science Night gives elementary students a

chance to see science in action, piquing their interest and hopefully instilling a sense of wonder that

they can build upon. I know this is occurring because of the comments from family members I

receive and because elementary teachers form relationships with other science teachers in the

district borrowing supplies to incorporate into their lessons.


The other significance of Science Night is student involvement – specifically of the shift

from teachers to students hosting the booths. In middle school, we recruit all types of students

including those that don’t stand out as leaders in the classroom – students that are shy or at-risk for

example. This is done to give them an opportunity to showcase their learning in an environment

outside the classroom where expectations about how they normally act are minimized. It can be a

very freeing environment when these students are placed into a role in which they must be a leader

both as a host and as an expert in the material at their booth. As a teacher, I also sometimes use

these experiences to assess student knowledge if they’re demonstrating understanding in this

environment which I didn’t see come through in the academic environment.

This is one of my favorite events of the year because I can see so many students involved

and enjoying science – from those that normally flourish with science to those that generally show

little interest or those that have little opportunity. Everyone gets a chance to be a scientist on this

night and all the while our community is watching and gaining an understanding for what we as

teachers do as well as the capabilities of our students.

Myself as a learner:

During my EDU 693 Curriculum and Instruction class, I completed a project determining

the importance of conceptual vocabulary instruction within the curriculum – not simple

memorization. I learned that vocabulary can be a new concept (and thus requires much more

instruction) or a new label (which simply requires students to replace an already known word with

a more exact one). To teach conceptually, I tried two strategies which I previously wasn’t using in

my instruction; 1) concept/word maps in which students connected many ideas to one central idea,

and 2) word groupings in which students sorted a student-generated list of words relating to a given

concept into categories both before and after instruction. Then for my National Boards, I expanded


upon this learning by implementing word walls for units of my science instruction. I chose the

words and provided definitions and students drew representations of those words which were then

displayed throughout the unit and used for assessments.

I originally decided to build my knowledge about vocabulary instruction for two reasons –

1) the students in my district had low informational text scores of which vocabulary is a key

component in science, and 2) the test result trends in my previous year’s classes showed little

growth in informational text or vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, I knew vocabulary and its place

within informational text comprehension was an instructional area I needed to grow in order to best

serve my students. Therefore, I read professional articles, brainstormed with colleagues, and started

experimenting with the best methods for my students in my context. As I learned about ways to

better incorporate vocabulary, my instruction changed – it began to include vocabulary strategies

regularly whether through playing games with the word wall, creating word maps, etc. At the end, I

had positive results that convinced me that my instruction was having an impact.

One of those results was that I began hosting reteaching sessions focused on vocabulary

which allowed me to diagnose misunderstandings or gaps in knowledge and support the most at-

risk students. Also, there was a 43% increase of students using concept maps and 80% of students

identified themselves as very familiar with vocabulary words 85% of the time. Another result was

that in a focus group of students that self-identified as unconfident with vocabulary, 50% had an

increase in confidence after one trimester. Perhaps the most telling impact was from the student

voices themselves. Students praised the vocabulary strategies, especially the word wall. My

favorite quote was, “the word wall is life.” Other positive quotes were, “I used the word wall ten

times more than i [sic] referred to my notes. it [sic] was helpful to see the connections and how we

have progressed through the unit.” And “they [mind maps] helped immensely, because i [sic] could


see the connections between concepts in real time.” The increase in student performance and

student confidence tells me I was right to focus my energy on improving my practice in this area

and that I was positively impacting student learning.

I am really proud of my students for making such improvements and proud of my own

efforts in changing my instruction. It wasn’t an easy change; some strategies took a lot of time to

implement and some lessons flopped. In the end, it was worth it and I will definitely keep making

improvements to my vocabulary instruction.

Leadership and collaboration:

My district has been very slowly making the transition to standards-based grading. This

year, I dove in and piloted full-blown standards-based grading in which only summative

assessments were formally scored and reports were generated based on student mastery of

individually learning objectives rather than on an overall grade. I updated the middle school staff of

my journey as the year progressed and eventually had a few teams join me in this grading style.

By being the first to take this leap, I discovered the challenges, identified flaws in our

learning management system (LMS), developed an alternative to the LMS, began the conversation

with stakeholders, and helped students change their mindset. I truly believe this system is best for

kids, so I was happy to start working on a system to implement it for all students in all subjects.

The system I developed kept track of each learning objective for each assignment and then

calculated how many total learning objectives had been met for the term (accounting for learning

objectives met on the second attempt). This allowed students to monitor their success, know

exactly what skills needed to be developed, and gave me the ability to give a progress report to any

stakeholder at any time. I also used it to do target reteaching focused on a specific skill rather than

a specific assignment.


Changing mindsets is by far the biggest challenge in switching to this new grading system.

Students (especially those that had easy success in school) had to be taught to think about learning

differently while parents and school staff had to understand progress reporting in a different light. I

developed a “cheat sheet” to show stakeholders which highlighted how the old system of grading

penalized students for mistakes and negated progress made. This simple sheet clarified the new

system for many parents and eventually swayed some staff members to adopt the new system as

well.

I worked extremely hard at developing the logistics for a new grading system. I overcame a

lot of obstacles both from stakeholders and in developing an easy to use recording system.

However, my team members saw the benefits and there are now more teachers touting the benefits

of standards-based grading. Students, especially those that take longer to learn material than their

peers, had many positive things to say as they were finally rewarded for their continued efforts. If

no other positives come of this new system, reaching those students was worth it.

Reflective Summary:

After reflecting upon the examples from my practice, I realized that all the examples

centered around student-ownership. For Science Night, I redirected the hosting roles to be for

students, not teachers. The changes to my vocabulary instruction gave students the tools to learn

new vocabulary in any setting, not just those that they memorized from notecards. Finally, the

standards-based grading change put the ownership of learning into student hands because they

knew their objectives and their progress towards those goals. In short, I am a teacher that fosters

skills in students to make them independent learners and citizens. It’s my job to make myself

obsolete by challenging students to see themselves as the driver in their own learning.


One of those challenges to students was changing how they studied vocabulary. This

journey began with changing my own vocabulary instruction and how I introduced words to

students. The vocabulary instruction improvements I’ve done have had the most obvious impact on

student learning. Student scores increased as well as self-reported student confidence. However, in

the long term I would argue that my leadership with standards-based grading will have a larger

impact on student learning. For the most effective learning to occur, students need a roadmap of

their final destination as well as their progress towards it. Creating a system that communicates that

status of mastery on learning objectives creates that road map. Once the whole middle school is on

board, the entire student body will be impacted, not just those in my classroom in one specific area

of instruction.

I would like to continue improving my practice to turn over ownership of learning to

students by changing systems and procedures in my classroom. To start, this would take the form

of student recording of their mastery of learning objectives instead of just receiving reports from

me. I think this will increase ownership and thus student motivation to master objectives. In

general though, I see my future as one centered around reflection and striving to better myself for

my students. We all have strengths and weakness, as a teacher my job is to use strengths (mine and

my students’) to keep improving the weakness. I would like my legacy to be that I worked hard to

help my students find their own paths to success.


Evidence:

Evidence for Family and Community Relationships

Figure 1: 3D modeling at Science Night

Figure 2: Chemical Reactions at Science Night

Figure 3: Robotics at Science Night


Evidence of Learning

Evidence: A list of some of the professional articles I read and some key take aways from each.

Bintz, W.P. (2011). Teaching vocabulary across the curriculum. Middle School Journal, 42(4), 44-53. Retrieved from: Link Key Take Aways “Word meanings make up as much as 70–80% of comprehension” (Pressley, 2002). Students with poor vocabulary acquisition and acquisition skills will struggle with reading

comprehension (Harmon, 2002). Concept maps create connections between distinct vocabulary words around one key concept

and are useful in vocabulary acquisition skills.

Larson, L., Dixon, T., Townsend, D. (2013). How Can Teachers Increase Classroom Use of Academic Vocabulary? Voices from the Middle, Volume 20 (4). Retrieved from: Link Key Take Aways

There’s no need to take out other curriculum components to focus on vocabulary. They could embed “a strategic, focused vocabulary curriculum, centered on meaningful words and word parts from our texts, into our lessons” and be effective.

Word walls are useful because “words are only fully learned when they are available for active use” (Corson, 1997, p. 699).

Gonzalez, V. (2018). Interactive Word Walls Enliven Vocab Learning. Middle Web: All about the middle grades. Retrieved from: LinkKey Take Aways

Interactive word walls that include pictures and relevant connections between words make vocabulary more meaningful.

I modeled my word wall after this teacher’s examples.

Cronsberry, J. (2004). Word Walls: A Support for Literacy in Secondary School Classrooms. Retrieved from: LinkKey Take Aways

Many strategies to use word walls to practice vocabulary. I used concept maps and the mystery word game (gave clues about the mystery word, sort of like 20 questions).


http://www.readingrockets.org/content/pdfs/World_Walls_-_A_Support_for_Literacy_in_Secondary_School_Classrooms.pdf

https://www.middleweb.com/37209/interactive-word-walls-enliven-vocab-learning/

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0204-may2013/VM0204How.pdf

https://education.illinoisstate.edu/downloads/casei/AV-4-2a%20%20article%20%20teaching%20vocabulary%20across%20the%20curric.pdf

Question asked: What is your confidence with new vocab? 1- being low and 4 being high.Green indicates growth from pre- to post-surveys.

Figure 4: Survey on confidence to determine if there was any growth


Student Pre-survey Post- survey

A 2 3B 2 2C 2 2D 2 2E 2 3F 2 3G 1 1H 2 2I 2 1J 1 2K 2 2L 2 3M 2 3N 2 2O 2 3P 2 2Q 2 3R 1 1S 2 1T 2 3U 1 2V 2 2W 2 2X 2 3

Figure 5: Close up of word wall for Earth Science with student generated drawing representations

Figure 6: Word wall

Figure 7: Student example of a concept map


Evidence of Leadership

Figure 8: Snippet of recording system developed for recording learning objectives for each assignment. This snippet shows three assignments (listed along the top) with the learning objects immediately under them. Each student (labeled A-AC) has a score for each learning objective – 0 for incomplete, 1 for emerging in skills, 2 for proficient in skills. The total number of learning targets mastered is along the righthand side.


Figure 9: Cheat Sheet for stakeholders representing the old and new system of grading.
