Reflection When writing my reflection I decided to go back to the beginning of this process and look at the Goal Statement

that I wrote when applying for admittance into the UNE Masters program. I wanted to see if the goals that I had in the summer of 2011 had been achieved in the summer of 2013. When writing the Goal Statement I had been teaching for 4 years after a career change. Being a relatively new teacher without a formal teacher training, I saw areas that needed strengthening and chose this program to help me in those areas. Among the reasons that I had for applying to the program included increasing my proficiency with differentiation, inclusion, and motivation. Motivation Anderman & Anderman (2010) discuss the impact a teacher has on student motivation. They state that a teachers daily interaction with students can influence the students belief in their abilities, their attitude toward a subject, their short and long -term goals, their belief about the cause of their success or failure, and their reasons for choosing whether or not to do their academic tasks. Given this information, it is essential that teachers are mindful of the role they play beyond delivering the subject matter content to their students and something that I am more mindful of after reading this information. Differentiation Tomlinson (2001), in her explanation of differentiation emphasizes that differentiated instruction is more qualitative than quantitative. The practice of giving more or less work depending upon perceived ability is considered differentiated instruction by some but Tomlinson argues that this is an ineffective strategy. She states that more is not necessarily better when it comes to challenging advanced students. Another thing that she states that resonated with me was that advanced learners had the propensity to become mentally lazy and failed to develop study and coping skills due to lack of challenge. I had hoped to learn

how to help struggling learners through differentiation but also learned how advanced learners could benefit from it as well. Inclusion Since my classroom includes all students in the 8th grade, inclusion is something that I was hoping to gain a better working knowledge of. One of the things that I took note of was the use of cooperative learning in the inclusion setting. Research on cooperative learning activities indicates many benefits for students, both with and without disabilities. Cooperative rather than competitive and individual learning can lead to increased achievement, high levels of productivity, supportive relationships among learners, and increased self-esteem (Cohen & Spenciner, 2009). Although cooperative learning presents challenges in the 8th grade classroom, its benefits make it a worthwhile teaching strategy.

Looking back I feel that I have achieved the goals that I set in 2011. I have a deeper understanding of the concepts that I was having some challenges with and I learned many things beyond those as well. I have been able to implement strategies on the fly and look forward to implementing more going forward. Beyond the goals that I had coming into the program, I also found action research to be a useful tool in focusing in on a topic when trying to advance instructional strategy. Another benefit was the introduction of tools such as Prezi and Glogster which I have used since being introduced to them through this program. Overall, the UNE Masters program was everything that I had hoped for when I enrolled and I believe that my students have and will contibue to benefit from the strategies that I have obtained through the coursework.

References Anderman, E. & Anderman, L. (2010). Classroom motivation. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Cohen, L. G. & Spenciner, L. J. (2009). Teaching students with mild and moderate disabilities. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Tomlinson, C. (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms. (2nd ed.). Alexandria, Va: ASCD.