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Teacher Quality Standard Two Reflection:

Throughout this semester, I admittedly struggled to think of ways to implement mathematical practices into my English classes and I didn't have the chance to intentionally create interdisciplinary lessons. I believe with this in mind, I am on the developing level of this standard with room to grow as I gain experience in my future classroom. The other elements I skillfully met. The only other room for growth would be to provide instruction aligned with the Colorado State Standards, since I completed my Student Teaching in Valencia, Spain. I am confident that I possess the skills and the knowledge to implement this when I transition into teaching full-time.

ELEMENT A: Teachers provide instruction that is aligned with the Colorado Academic Standards, their District's organized plan of instruction, and the individual needs of their students.

Artifact 1

Artifact 1 illustrates my co-teacher, Grace, informing me that the unit she wanted me to teach would be discussing Values and would need students to learn, reflect, and showcase their learning in a project. Artifact 2 provides the slide deck of the lesson I created for them. In this lesson, students interacted and participated in a personality test that I made through Typeform, an online platform used to build online surveys for business development. I wanted students to have a more interactive experience, so I chose this over a typical Google Form or Jamboard. I used ChatGPT to create some fun and exciting responses based on which element the students decided on to help gear their thinking toward which values they feel they have. Students then used that information, a video, and the definitions of 40 values and characteristics to choose their top 5. For the final project, students interviewed each other on their choices and discussed the importance of being aware of each other's values.

These Artifacts meet this standard because I provided instruction based on the academic standard for the first unit. This also fulfilled the individualized needs of each student because it allowed them to reflect on their chosen values and how they helped them navigate through life.

Rationale:
Although this element addresses the Colorado Academic Standards, I was expected to follow their instruction plan since I completed my student teaching in Valencia, Spain. A few classes I taught accomplished this by following along with the book. However, the Oral English and Critical Thinking classes had a separate program for instruction.

Artifact 2

ELEMENT B: Teachers develop and implement lessons that connect to a variety of content areas/disciplines and emphasize literacy and mathematical practices.

Artifact 1

Rationale:
Throughout this semester, I struggled to think of ways to implement mathematical practices into my English classes intentionally. There is one particular class, Oral English, where students are given an extra class period outside of a standard English Language Arts class to practice their English. Students are required to speak only in English while present in the classroom. Although it is hard to keep them from speaking in their native tongues, I constantly encourage them not to resort to Spanish despite their English-speaking capabilities. I wanted to create fun and engaging assignments that would make them feel more comfortable practicing their English in a way that isn't as critical as reciting a speech but something that will allow them to be creative: making a song.

This assignment aligns with Element B as it bridges several disciplines: English, Music, and Mathematics. In the first artifact, English is demonstrated by students using their literacy skills to complete the warm-up activity of reading lyrics and listening to the melodies to guess what song is being presented. They also use writing and speaking while composing their songs and working as a group to prepare for their performance.

Mathematics is illustrated throughout the essence of music and is shown through rhythm and patterns. Music comprises a series of beats and rhythms, which can be represented mathematically through fractions and ratios. In our case, since students aren't creating original instrumentals, their mathematical skills are put to the test by aligning their lyrics with time signatures and tempo. Students also use specific songwriting formulas to create original pieces reflected in the second artifact. They must maintain a perfect rhyme scheme and melodic rations with their lyrics to execute their songs effectively.

Artifact 2

ELEMENT C: Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content, central concepts, disciplinary inquiry, appropriate evidence-based instructional practices, and specialized characteristics of the disciplines being taught.

Rationale:
Artifact 1 was created for the Baccalaureate 1 class, equivalent to 11th grade in the US. As in the US, the expectation is that most lessons are considered a review since they have had several years developing the knowledge and skill of using past and future tenses; however, I quickly discovered that this group of students wasn't exactly where they were expected to be during previous grammar lessons taught by myself and my co-teacher, Luis.

According to the curriculum, the lesson was only intended to be about future tenses; however, I decided to treat it as a review of all the tenses and ample examples to gauge their comprehension level.
During this lesson, in addition to the reading of the slides, I had them create their unique sentences for each tense in both the active and passive voices. Of course, if they struggled, I offered their classmates to help them or provided another example resembling their sentence.

Artifact 2 shows the results from the Quizziz I created as an assessment, which gave me a closer look into where each student struggled with this grammar concept. I asked Luis if we could revisit the lesson before the exam so students could feel confident about this skill. Most students missed the mark on the "would/used to" concept, so I aimed my focus here by providing the answers to the missed question and supplementing it with another exercise to help improve their understanding. I uploaded the slideshow to Google Classroom so they can use it as a study guide before the exam.

I believe these artifacts align with this element because, as educators, we are responsible for the outcome of our students' ability to understand concepts in our content area during our time with them. Although my students are expected to know certain concepts at their grade/age level, if they struggle (or even fail), I am responsible for guiding them toward mastery level of this skill, regardless of the inconvenience of taking an extra day (or a few) to get there. We must be gracious and intentional and prepared to plan accordingly.

Artifact 1

Artifact 2