For the competency “Communicate effectively in oral and written formats,” I have chosen my “Educational Improvement Project” from EDCI 52004 as an artifact. This artifact was a group project, together we researched the benefits of extracurricular activities. Most schools have extracurriculars, but with decreasing finances and tight budgets, extracurriculars are one area that schools tend to cut back on. We researched why extracurriculars are cut (finances, staffing, and transportation) and how to combat those with fundraisers, grants, and employment contracts. I enjoyed this project because I participated in band, choir, and other clubs during high school. Lots of students also participate in sports. Extracurriculars teach more than just content; they also teach life skills such as communication, teamwork, and time management which are so important. We learned about some grants from others in our class that will even pay staff to run the extracurriculars and drive a bus for the students to get home at the later time. When researching this grant, we found others on the state webpage and even some private grants and scholarships that could be accessed by schools which would allow schools to grow their extracurricular departments. My group enjoyed this project because we felt that we found some resources that could really help our individual schools.

 

For the competency “Effectively communicate content from discipline through the design and delivery of effective teaching/learning activities that integrate content and pedagogy,” I have chosen my “CYOA” from EDCI 560 as an artifact. In this artifact, “Create Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) I got to choose a project that would align with either a personal or professional goal of mine. Several students have said that I can explain math so they can understand it, but then I had to take a year off from teaching and my students struggled. I started a YouTube channel to help my students while I was gone. In my channel, I take math concepts from algebra, trigonometry, or geometry and explain it. Then I work through an example problem or two to demonstrate the step-by-step solution. I hope to add more to the channel when my master’s program is finished. I will have more time to dedicate to this project and it will benefit not only my students but other students with internet access. Although the content was easy, I had to learn how to work with a movie and video editing program to splice videos together and add graphics and music which took longer to do than I thought. I did get to design a theme, logo, and banner for my page which I really enjoyed and can I say that Canva is amazing! I had so much fun with this project, and I am excited about putting together more videos for my classes.

 

For the competencies “Demonstrate the ability to adapt instruction and support services to the needs of diverse learners,” and “Demonstrate the ability to appropriately assess learning outcomes,” I have chosen my project on “Design Document” from EDCI 572 as an artifact. In this artifact, I designed a lesson that could be used to help students whether in a help class or a workshop. This lesson is to help students with word problems. Several students struggle with the application of setting up a math equation from a real-life scenario. Most students know how to solve a problem once an equation is set up for them, but pulling out the information that they need and how to set up a way to solve the problem causes confusion and intimidation. As the workshop progresses, the instructor can assess how students are doing on the word problems and see if they need to work on all the problems or just a selected few, for those who struggle and need more help, I created an acronym with an infographic to reference while they work on the problems. As a math teacher, word problems are always a struggle. The more gifted students may struggle at the beginning but then catch on and do great. Some students really struggle and need lots of practice and help. Some students just refuse to try, and I believe this workshop would allow teachers to give concentrated help and practice to those students. The acronym “MERDER”, might also provide a little humor to encourage students to try. I used this workshop with some former students who decided to homeschool for a year. They were all good students in class, and they give good feedback. They gave me feedback to the order that I presented the material, but they really liked the acronym to go along with the word problems.