2014-15+Portfolio

__** Section #1: Student Growth **__ Measured by Instructional Learning Cycles, Pre-test to Post-Test Questioning: 64.02% Growth Making Connections: 35.12% Growth Inferring: 133% Growth

__** Section #2: Goals **__

Students are better able to provide evidence of their learning through the use of technology.

 * Part One: ** Specific indicators/artifacts of goal accomplishment:
 * 1) See specific student samples below.
 * 2) Mr. Gill walk-through feedback form
 * Part Two **
 * 1) ** What worked particularly well as you worked on this goal in your Professional Growth Plan? ** I learned a lot from attending special workshops, as well as regular sessions at the MiWLA and MACUL Conferences. I have helped the Chinese, French and Spanish teachers in the district learn Wikispaces and they have begun collaborating online. I have shared some Web 2.0 tools with Lansing School District World Language staff at our Steering Committee meetings. I think that all of my students have increased their media literacy skiils and have been able to demonstrate their proficiency in a way that it is available to others, including parents.
 * 2) ** What did not go as you had expected? ** I am surprised by the number of students who are not confident using the computer. The students whom we teach now are often described as "Digital Natives" and providing opportunities for them to use technology to demonstrate their knowledge is often described as a logical conclusion of their experience and in the world in which they are growing up. However, I am finding that they need as much support using digital media to demonstrate their understanding of a concept as they need in learning any new skill.
 * 3) ** If you had a chance to begin again, is there anything you would do differently? ** No, I would do everything just as I did. I attended two excellent conferences, took lots of notes, and also shared notes with some other Lansing School District attendees. I used my newly acquired knowledge to both aid student growth in acquiring content area competency and in communication with parents. The things that I learned this year will help to inform my teaching for the rest of my career.
 * 4) ** How do you plan to apply this new learning? ** I am applying this new learning in my lesson planning and in creating opportunities for students on a regular basis. So far, students have become proficient in their ability to demonstrate their acquisition of skills and their higher-order thinking. Their portfolios serve as part of their summative and formative assessments. Students are given choices in their projects so that they can all succeed, and they can all be challenged.
 * 5) ** What significance has this Professional Growth Plan made in your work and/or in your students’ learning and/or families’ progress? ** By pursuing this goal, I have been able to motivate some students who were not especially interested in Japanese, but who love to do work with computers. I believe that all of my students have grown academically because they have been able to use the Japanese they are learning to create very personal projects using technology. Students are being exposed to 21st Century tools for communication, while creating a visual representation of what they know and can do. Parents are also able to share in what their student is learning.
 * 6) ** How has working on this goal helped you form future Framework goals? ** Working on this goal has helped me see the value of using technology to make learning more personal and motivating. I would like to pursue this same goal even further in the future, so that students can create a project using technology for each unit, utilizing authentic materials when appropriate.
 * 7) ** What other insights have you gained as a result of this professional growth experience? ** As a result of this professional growth experience, I realized that best practices as they apply to educational technology are changing rapidly. Education technology is a very dynamic field and it is important to keep up with it in order to offer our students the most up-to-date information. I need to keep up on current trends in technology, and should keep attending both the MACUL and MIWLA Conferences.

Select samples can be found below.
 * Student Samples:**
 * All student work can be found at our Digital Portfolio website:** http://ninjasensei.wikispaces.com/

In the following assignment, 1st year students of Japanese were documenting their ability to //__say__// a full date (year, month, date & day of the week) in Japanese. The task was to find 5 historical events and record themselves speaking the date of the event in Japanese. Speaking tends to be a difficult task for students. An attempt was made for students to access their prior knowledge of historical dates and to connect to the Social Studies discipline. As a follow up to this activity, the students practiced listening to the dates (to increase their ability to hear and understand Japanese) and trying to guess what event happened on the given date. The full assignment can be found at the follow web page: http://ninjasensei.wikispaces.com/Maliah+R.+2014-15
 * Example 1**

In the following assignment, 1st year students of Japanese were working on providing evidence that they could __//write//__ a date in Japanese (specifically in kanji). In this unit, they learned about how Japanese people express the year in terms of the reign of an emperor. They also researched important things that happened during the reign of the last four emperors and compared them to things that were happening in the United States at the time. The full assignment can be found at the follow web page: http://ninjasensei.wikispaces.com/LeAnte+T.+2014-15
 * Example 2**

In the following assignment, as a culminating activity, 2nd year Japanese students put together a PowerPoint which described the results of their research in Japanese. They chose a country and researched typical meals that are eaten in the country. This part of the assignment was primarily a writing assessment. They used their knowledge of how to say meals and what food is eaten at a particular meal and applied this to their research. The full assignment can be found at the follow web page: http://ninjasensei.wikispaces.com/Norina+Y.+2014-15
 * Example 3**

The following is a 4th year student's assignment. In this activity, students were asked to write physical descriptions of people with 2 truths and a lie. They presented their projects to the class. The audience was asked to listen to the presenter and distinguish whether or not the statement was a truth or a lie. The listeners held up cards which enabled the speaker (and myself) to assess whether or not a statement was understood by the listeners.
 * Example 4**


 * Mr. Gill's Walk-through Feedback**



PDF of Mr. Gill's Walk Through

From pre-test to post-test students will demonstrate an increase in the average score in each of our four literacy strategies (questioning, making connections, inferring and summarizing). This will measure my students increased ability to read and write.
 * Goal #2 ** **Incorporate Everett High School’s Literacy Goals into Curriculum**


 * __ Part One __**** : ** Specific indicators/artifacts of goal accomplishment:
 * 1) Improvement records specific to me provided by School Improvement Chair
 * 2) Student samples which demonstrate skill progress toward achievement


 * __ Part Two __**
 * 1) ** What worked particularly well as you worked on this goal in your Professional Growth Plan? ** I believe that the students gained academic independence as a result of my teaching the specific reading strategies identified by the SIT team as literacy strategies for this school year. The students made gains in each area tested.
 * 2) ** What did not go as you had expected? ** I think that the students grew weary of hearing “Talk to the Text”, and other vocabulary that teachers in the building have used to teach RA skills; however, skill development was notable.
 * 3) ** If you had a chance to begin again, is there anything you would do differently? ** No, I would do everything just as I did. I am definitely excited about utilizing these strategies in future years as well. To have a way to guide students though text and observe them gain confidence in dealing with text is very rewarding.
 * 4) ** How do you plan to apply this new learning? ** I am applying this new learning in my lesson planning on a regular basis and intend to use it throughout the rest of my career. I am excited by the students' increased independence and abilities with reading.
 * 5) ** What significance has this Professional Growth Plan made in your work and/or in your students’ learning and/or families’ progress? ** By pursuing this goal, I have been able to reach some students who did not know how strategies could be used to help them become better and more independent readers.
 * 6) ** How has working on this goal helped you form future Framework goals? ** Working on this goal has helped me see the value of the reading strategies that Everett has pursued to help students become more independent learners. It makes me excited to participate in future professional development opportunities with a Reading Apprentice focus. I hope to learn more ways that I can help students through Reading Apprentice strategies and protocols.
 * 7) ** What other insights have you gained as a result of this professional growth experience? ** As a result of this professional growth experience, I realized that students can and will rise to the occasion and perform when supported and given specific ideas of what can be done to help them with academic achievement.

** Goal #3 **** Increase Student Ability to Achieve Daily Objectives by Posting/Communicating them Daily **
==== Students will have a greater understanding of the daily goals and how to achieve them. I will communicate this information to them by writing the daily goals on the board, reviewing them at the beginning of class and checking the goal(s) at the end of class to see if we were able to accomplish our goal. ====


 * Part One: ** Specific indicators/artifacts of goal accomplishment:
 * 1) Boards in the front of the room with daily goals written
 * 2) Daily goals written in student notebooks.


 * Part Two **
 * 1) ** What worked particularly well as you worked on this goal in your Professional Growth Plan? ** Students had an idea of what they were learning or practicing each day in class. The incidence of students asking me "What are we doing today?" was significantly reduced compared to other years. Students were able to see the goal and, therefore, able to focus on what I wanted them to learn in class on a given day. I believe that this aided their growth.
 * 2) ** What did not go as you had expected? ** There were days in which the students did not want to write the day's objective. It seems a little too repetitive. In order to manage the situation, I ended up asking them to write the daily goals every few days, but still reviewed the goals at the beginning of class and checked our progress at the end of each class.
 * 3) ** If you had a chance to begin again, is there anything you would do differently? ** I would likely do the same thing again. Even though having students write down the daily goal everyday became repetitive, it was good to have them do it at the beginning of the year. This enabled them to focus on the goal (and know where to find the information) early in the school year and then, later, when some of the support was removed, they had a strong foundation to move forward in their learning.
 * 4) ** How do you plan to apply this new learning? ** I am applying this new learning in my daily activities in class.
 * 5) ** What significance has this Professional Growth Plan made in your work and/or in your students’ learning and/or families’ progress? ** By pursuing this goal, I have been able to provide students with information that enables them to focus on the work at hand.
 * 6) ** How has working on this goal helped you form future Framework goals? ** Working on this goal has helped me see the value of keeping students informed about my academic expectations.
 * 7) ** What other insights have you gained as a result of this professional growth experience? ** As a result of this professional growth experience, I realize the value of having the daily goals directly observable to students.

__** Section #3: Planning & Preparation **__
 * As determined by Principal Susan Cheadle-Holt's classroom observations

November 22, 2014 March 12, 2015
 * Observation Lesson Plans**

__** Section #4: Classroom Instruction **__
 * As determined by Principal Susan Cheadle-Holt's classroom observations

__** Section #5: Classroom Environment **__
 * As determined by Principal Susan Cheadle-Holt's classroom observations

__** Section #6: Attendance **__
 * 96-100%, as determined by attendance sheets, AESOP & KALPA

__** Section #7: Significant Accomplishments and Contributions **__ >>
 * World Language Steering Committee Co-Chair, Lansing School District
 * Shared my knowledge of technology tools in education at various Lansing School District World Language Steering Committee Meetings throughout the school year. Taught LSD teachers how to use Wikispaces. Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and French teachers are creating content that will be used with parents and students regarding the District’s World Language curriculum an are collaborating using these Wikis that I created. Lansing School District teachers have begun to post "I Can" statements by topic on their pages.
 * Chinese: http://lansingschooldistrictchinese.wikispaces.com/
 * French: http://lansingschooldistrictfrench.wikispaces.com/
 * Japanese: http://lansingschooldistrictjapanese.wikispaces.com/
 * Spanish: http://lansingschooldistrictspanish.wikispaces.com/
 * Leading the effort for creation of Pacing Guides for the Lansing School District World Languages. Organized professional development and working sessions toward this goal.
 * Department Chair, Everett World Languages Department
 * School Improvement Team, Everett High School
 * Everett Asian Club Advisor
 * Presenter at Michigan World Language Association Conference, October 2014
 * Unpaid tutoring of students after school
 * Supervision of Michigan State University seniors
 * Brought in Native-Japanese Speaker for special sessions with students: calligraphy & kimono
 * Contribution of materials to Japanese Teaching Resources, Online Resource for Japanese Teachers
 * Contribution of items to the Lansing School District Japanese Wiki, which I created.
 * Japanese Language Class Field Trips April 20, 2015 and May 14, 2015
 * Represented Everett High School and the Lansing School District at the Lansing Regional Sister Cities 20th Anniversary Celebration in October 2014. Aided in organization of the Japanese portion of the event.
 * Aided in preparing Lansing School District students for student exchange program to Japan through helping with fundraising and in evening preparation meetings.