Teacher Personal and Professional Goals

Personal:

Goal: Be more organized in the planning and implementing of lessons.

Measurable Steps
1. Create detailed lesson plans.
2. Turn in assignments to volunteers to be copied.
3. Get feedback from students about specific assignments.
4. Create a space to store assignments.
5. Find research based readings for students.
6. Meet with other middle school PFD teachers to plan.

Evaluation:
1. Plan out 6th six weeks lesson plans in detail using created forms.
2. Create feedback pages for current six weeks.
3. Use feedback pages and leave notes for project assignments.


Professional:

Goal: Utilize more technology in the classroom.

Measurable Steps
1. Take technology related classes in order to better learn how to teach technology to students.
2. Plan one technology lesson for the 6th six weeks.
3. Create feedback forms online using googledocs.

Evaluation:
1. Take classes.
2. Teach one technology lesson for the 6th six weeks.
3. Use online feedback forms.

Cooperative Learning

What?
We were learning the needs that housing fulfills: psychological, social, and physical. I split the students into groups and they each read about the need assigned to their group. After the students were finished reading, the students formed a group of three: one person who had read about the psychological needs, one who had read social about the social needs, and one who had read about the physical needs housing fulfills. The groups were given scenarios like "The house has a big kitchen," and they had to determine which need the scenario fulfilled and why.

So what?
The students were excited to work together. They were able to talk and work out the scenarios. The scores were better than the previous year.

Now what?
Next year I will have the students take notes over the needs and teach them to the other students in their group. Then I will give them a few scenarios to work out together and have them figure out which need is fulfilled and why. When finished, we will check their responses. Then when they have worked together on a few problems, I will have them race to see which team can place the scenarios with the correct need giving prizes at the end.

Nonlinguistic Representations

What?
This six weeks, we are learning about Housing. We are doing this through the eyes of an interior designer. In class, we discussed some of the things interior designers had to take into consideration when designing a house. I then had the students create a collage representing these concepts. On the back of the poster, the students used words to finish the statement "Interior design is..." Students then explained their posters to the class. I then taught the students the Elements and Principles of Design which include line, color, texture and emphasis, and had them put pictures representing these concepts on a folder for the interior design portfolio they will complete.

So what?
I was VERY impressed with the posters. Some of the students thought outside of the box! The folders did not turn out as well as I had hoped because the students felt like they had limitations placed on them due to the fact that they had specific things they had to place on their folders. They did not think outside the box as much.

Now what?
I think next year I am going to discuss with my students the job of an interior designer. I am then going to let them create the collage on their portfolio folders. Inside the folders, I am going to have them take notes and tell how they see these concepts represented in the pictures they chose.