Jessalyn Rowlee

ENGED 465
Teaching Reflection 3
Your third Teaching Reflection (related to the edTPA) is due next week. By now you should be quite familiar with the Anchor Standards for Literacy in All Subjects - particularly as they relate to your need to assist your students in becoming
aurally, orally, visually, and textually literate in your content area. You have also browsed through several resources,
gained strategies for engaging your students in developing and practicing their content area literacy, and identified tasks
that allow your students to authentically express their content area literacy. While your first Teaching Reflection focused
on your instructional planning and your second Teaching Reflection emphasized practices for effectively guiding student
learning, this third Teaching Reflection is directed at explaining your collection and analysis of evidence of student learning and how that affects your future planning for content area literacy.
Throughout your education program you have learned about gathering evidence of student learning, both formatively and
summatively, and using that to make valid decisions about effective teaching to promote strong learning. In this course,
we are focusing that strong learning on content area literacy. To clearly reveal your data-based reflective decision-making, explain each of the following, with examples; you may wish to focus on one particular lesson scenario for clarity:

1. Describe one assessment task you will use to evaluate your students developing content area
literacy.
What is/are your content area literacy learning goal/s or objective/s related to this task?
What does the task require students to do? Consider laying out a step-by-step description.
What makes this task appropriate for your content area literacy learning goal/s/objective/s?
How does this task reveal students literacy with academic language unique to the content area?
One assessment task that I will often use as a future teacher to evaluate students developing math literacy is homework assignments. I strongly believe in homework and have a hard time picturing a math classroom without it, although I know there are some that dont really have any. This homework assignment
would help to show that students understand the material. Specifically, lets talk about a math assignment,
say a review worksheet, that reviews using given point(s) and/or the slope to find the slope-intercept form
of a line. This worksheet would be sure that students are able to read, comprehend, and write the material
they have learned.
Possible student objectives: Students will be able to determine slope-intercept form of a line given two
points. Students will be able to determine slope-intercept form of a line given the slope of the line and one
point. Students will be able to determine slope-intercept form of a line that is parallel (or perpendicular) to
a given line through a given point.
This task requires students to show their understanding of using slope-intercept form, y=mx+b. Each
question will require students to first determine the slope of the line they are looking for. After the slope is
found, the next step would be to find b by plugging in the slope and one point to the formula and solving
for b. Finally students would have to plug in the slope and y-intercept into the form y=mx+b to show their
answer. Students will be required to read, comprehend, and write in order to show that they are understanding this assessment task, therefore showing they are content area literate.
This task is appropriate for math because students learn math though practice and repetition. Homework
helps students to get that practice and repetition they need to better understand the content. This task is
appropriate for the learning objectives because the problems are aligned exactly to the objectives. If a
student is able to solve all the problems on an assignment like this one, they would meet those standards.
This task would reveal students literacy with academic language unique to the content area because
words such as slope, y-intercept, slope-intercept form, would be used in explanation of this topic. Students would need to know that slope is equal to the m in the equation and y-intercept is equal to the b
in the equation. This is not something that would be common knowledge, but specific to math.

2. Define the evaluation criteria you will use to analyze students content area literacy as revealed
by their performance on this task.

What are the criteria you will use?

What makes these criteria appropriate for your content area literacy learning goal/s/objective/s?
What procedure/s will you use to objectively determine and record each students progress towards each of the criteria?
In order to evaluate the students content are literacy through this homework assignment, it seems to
make most sense to grade the assignment. In each of the problems, I would look to see that the student
found the slope, the y-intercept, and they were able to put it into slope-intercept form.
This criteria is appropriate to the learning goals because in order to reach those goals, all three of the criteria must be met and in order for the criteria to be met, students will need to be content area literate with
reading, comprehension, and writing. It would be out of pure luck that the equation was answered without
using the correct way of solving to find slope, y-intercept, and putting it into the correct form without using
reading, comprehension, and writing. Therefore, having met each of the criteria will prove that the student
has met the learning objectives.
To objectively determine and record the students progress, I would grade each of their assignments and
be sure that the students are able to find the slope, y-intercept, and slope-intercept form of the line. I
would give students three points (for each of the criteria) per problem. Students would be given an assignment of about 10 problems to show that they understand the concepts. Grades would be recorded,
but I would be sure to make a mental note of the classes general understanding of the material, that way
anything that needs review could be done in class.

3. Determine the patterns of content area literacy that you expect to be revealed by students
completion of this task. (You may, but do not need to, provide these patterns in the form of a
chart.)
What strength/s in content area literacy do you expect to be revealed? Provide examples to illustrate how strength/s would be evident in student performance. Consider aural, oral, visual, textbased, and written content area literacy.
What weaknesses in content area literacy do you expect to be revealed? Provide examples to illustrate how weakness/es would be evident in student performance. Consider aural, oral, visual,
text-based, and written content area literacy.
Students who are excelling in content area literacy, would be able to easily show their understanding of
the material. For the students that are not excelling in content area literacy, this topic would be more difficult, and I would make the assumption that they arent really understanding the topic either. In my opinion,
if students are able to read, comprehend, and write in math, they probably have a good understanding of
the concepts and ideas required to solve problems.
A student who has strengths of visual content area literacy may sketch graphs to show what they are picturing when they solve the problem. Those who have strengths in text-based and written math literacy
would likely be able to solve the problems without trouble, and it would be evident that they using their
math literacy skills to complete their work.
Students with content area literacy weaknesses in text-based or written would likely have difficulty completing the assignment. They may be able to get by with graphing some in order to make guesses, but
graphing is hard to get the exact answers and points with every time.

4. Identify appropriate next steps for students content area literacy as a result of your analysis
of the assessment evidence.
What feedback will you give to your students, and how, regarding the anticipated strength/s revealed by this assessment task?
What feedback will you give to your students, and how, regarding the anticipated weakness/es
revealed by this assessment task?

What specific decision/s do you make about your future instruction on the basis of your analysis?
Address student application of feedback as well as future instructional plans.
Feedback given to individuals would be given in the form of the grades given on the assignments and
possible comments I may make on the assignments. If there is a concept or idea that was clearly misunderstood, I may talk to the student to see where they are unclear about the topic and what I could do to
help. For those who have a great understanding, it may be a good idea to ask them if they have a way
that they like to think about the concept or idea. Sometimes, getting the students point of view will help to
create a lesson that better fits their needs.
I also think its important that the homework is reviewed as a class, giving the students to ask questions if
necessary. If the class did a generally not-so-good job on the assignment, I may ask for the classes input
on ways to review the material to give students a better understanding. I would also consider asking the
class if there was a specific point that caused confusion. Maybe, they just needed more time to work on
the material, and if thats the case they would be able to tell you that and you would be able to adjust future plans to give a longer amount of time for that section. If the class did an exceptionally well job it might
be appropriate to use a similar approach the next year (depending on the class, theyre all different).