Persuasive Writing Unit: This writing unit was done while I was working as a Reading Interventionist in Hanover Horton. This unit in particular was aimed at 5th grade students. When I began my work on this unit, my students were extremely unmotivated to write. They would drag their feet at writing a couple sentences on a worksheet, and oftentimes their answers were copied straight from the text. This unit gave my students an opportunity to see writing as communication; and see the worth of their own opinion.
Literature Case Study: For this unit I deeply looked at the data of a 5th Grade student I was working with, again, in Hanover Horton. I used the data that I gathered to determine instructional needs of that student. This data informed my thoughts regarding what next steps I would take. In a Literacy Interventionist role, this would be the first step that I would take once working with a new student.
ELL Professional Development: I created a professional development, intended to inform those new to working with ELL students what best practices could be in working with said students. The creation of this PD exemplifies my willingness not just to collaborate with my students, but also with my peers, to best meet the academic needs of my students.
Genre Project: For this project, we were asked to showcase some of our personal writing. Seeing as this class cumulated at the height of the pandemic for me, a number of my writings center around my feelings about the shift in the world during that time. I'm a writer (when I have the time), and was extremely motivated to complete these pieces. Though many of these works wouldn't work as a model for my current students, they did inspire joy in me during a time when I was struggling to find it. It's my belief as an educator that step one to teaching, is finding that inspiration amongst ourselves.
Personal Ancestry - A lot of how I teach relates to Culturally Relevant Education. For one of my classes, we were asked to explore our own cultural history; as an effort to deeper connect ourselves with our own roots. While my current students may be too young for a research project of this level, in the future this could be a worthwhile project to build bonds between my students.