Aubree Clark's Portfilio

Standard 10 for Seattle Pacific University's Standards For Teacher Leadership states that teacher leaders "understand effective use of research based instructional practices."  The course "survey of instructional strategies was perfect for deepening my skills and understanding in this area.  When reflecting during this course, I often would say that while I was using many of these strategies regularly, I now had the skills to help support others with them because I had the foundation of common language and research based reasons about why they are effective.   This course looked into various instructional strategies, many of which we demonstrated through planning or teaching lessons using these skills.  I have chosen some of the instructional strategies that were learned to demonstrate my understanding in this standard:  The first instructional strategy that we demonstrated was involving students in the lesson's learning target and connecting it to previ...

Over the course of this quarter, my confidence in using and naming instructional strategies has drastically increased.   While I already had knowledge of many of these strategies under my belt prior to taking this course and used them frequently, I was not in a position to effectively teach them to others or even collect data on them within my own teaching.   One of the most powerful pieces to my learning in this course was being able to put a name to the strategies that I’ve previously found successful within my own teaching.   With now having the increased knowledge of names of instructional strategies, areas in lessons and units that they are most effective, and an ability to take data of them, I am able to have meaningful conversations with other educators.   I also have more tools for my teacher leader “toolkit” as far as guiding teachers to effective, research based strategies that help further student learning.   In addition to the deep dive in...