Contextual Factors

12

Teaching Work Sample Factors 1-3

Angel Winslow

Mississippi Valley State University

Course:

Date Due: November 10, 2021

Contextual Factors

Community, District, and School Factors

Greenville, Mississippi is located in the Mississippi Delta area. It is well-known for its blues musicians and agriculture. Here in the city it hosts its annual MS Delta Blues Festival every year in September. The city of Greenville spans to serve the Washington County which serves the community of schools through the Greenville Public School District. The population of the Greenville Public School District consist of 4, 244 students with a student-teacher ratio of 16-1 serving grades Pre-K-12th as of May 2020. The racial demographic of the district make up 95.30% African American, 3.44% White, 1.14% Hispanic, and 0.11% Asian. Additionally, at Matty Akin Elementary School it serves grades 1st -5th grade. It also is a school the work with children of special needs according and per grade level with specialized teachers.

The community of Greenville, MS along with students, parents work together each year for students to pass state tests, offer youth programs for college scholarships, etc. prior to graduation. Community members, parents and educators collaborate in ensuring that the quality of education in schools remains high. However, the atmosphere within the community is leadership based and family oriented. Local leaders of the community along with educators and parents all work hand in hand in highly committing to promote a basic education for students in the city of Greenville, MS. Differentiated instructional strategies are utilized to appeal to student’s learning speed and cultural affiliations.

Classroom Factors

The classroom is a student’s most important learning environment. However, the buildings within the district has changed tremendously. Some classrooms have been restored from paint detail and expanded for larger room space. There are many resources and materials available, including a vast library, 2 computers that students can access, a Smart Board, overhead projector, posters with key vocabulary and concepts, and a wide variety of manipulatives and center activities. Parent/Teacher conferences are held regularly, and a folder is sent home to parents with student work and notes. The extent to which a classroom’s setting is friendly to each student affects the degree to which they can acquire and retain knowledge. My class environment is effective to increase students’ success by creating an orderly learning condition that enhanced my learners’ academic skills and competencies. It also improved their social and emotional development. Indeed, the environment is also efficacious when it comes to adherence to three basic principles: emphasis on student expectations for behavior and learning, promoting active learning and student involvement, and determining important student behaviors for success.

One of the ways in which I customized my classroom environment to improve the teaching process is by establishing a collaborative learning model. Indeed, I embarked on an instructional program that was geared towards showing adequate love, care, and compassion for all student groups, both slow, and fast learners. In return, they showed it towards others, thereby translating to the positive learning outcomes. Most significantly, it serves as the core expected value of education in the contemporary world. In that connection, classrooms must be kept appealing, inviting, and luring enough to establish a collaborative learning exchange. These conditions promote total participation; learner focused approaches, and shared commitment in promoting learning.

In view of the above, there are various steps that I took to ensure that students use the learning environment to meet their educational needs. First, I organized the classroom materials effectively, made a choice over the rules and procedures, and managed strategically and efficaciously the work of the learners. These included utilizing collaborative and cooperative tools to enhance knowledge retention. I also ensured that the schooling environment was friendly by commencing with a good start. Further, I ensured that I empowered the entire teaching and learning community with efficacious communication skills, in so doing, I was able to manage efficaciously and in a timely fashion the challenging behaviors as and when they appeared to have occurred or even before. This included managing with priority the special learner groups, who would have otherwise not learned efficaciously. Part of my role in utilizing the classroom environment to the students’ favor was to set small group instructions. Essentially, approximately 15 percent of the learners required a more behavioral support. This process included conducting check-ins and check-out procedures to allow for the efficacious monitoring of students’ behaviors as well as providing feedback for improvements. More specifically, I instituted a classroom program that promoted consultation with colleagues and students in assessing the potential interventions that are most appropriate and efficacious for meeting specific learning needs.

Student Characteristics

The students have a variety of learning styles. The classroom has a predominantly American culture. The process of designing and implementing lesson plans took into consideration the students’ characteristics, learning capabilities, and their competency areas. Many studies that examine the student characteristics that shape their learning capabilities and competence often identify numerous perspectives, which include their cultural backgrounds, demographic characteristics, such as personal academic, social, or cognitive self that may shape how and what they learn.

The learner characteristics are also important for instructional developers as they allow them to establish and sustain tailored instructions for a target group. It is often anticipated that by taking into account all the characteristics of each learner, more efficient, effective, and motivating resources can be utilized to generate successful outcomes .The personal characteristics that are related to learners often relate to demographic information such as age, gender, maturation, language, socioeconomic factors, and cultural backgrounds. These include the specific needs of a learner group such as particular skills and disabilities for and or impairment to learning.

To meet the diverse learning needs of each distinct student group, I will employ both deep and surface approaches to delivering instructions. These ideas are particularly related to the specific experiences of learning but can be extended to a broadly consistent approach that is commensurate with the learning tasks that a student is assigned. These approaches are also effective in heightening student achievement since it focuses on their understanding as necessary ingredient in optimizing learning outcomes. When delivering differentiated instructions, or instance, I focused on different characteristics, such as their capacity and readiness to focus their attention on a particular skill, their level of interest in specific pursuits, and their learning profiles, such as gender, cultural race, and intelligence levels.

The students were also categorized on the basis of their prior knowledge or skills, to this end, future learning is a phenomenon that largely depends on students developing prior knowledge or ability to complete tasks at certain recommended levels. Thus, teachers seek to bridge the difference between what the earners can do without help and the areas that they desire assistance. It is what Vygotsky regards as the zone of proximal development. If the level of difficulty of the teaching is aimed too far beyond the capability or prior knowledge and skills of a learner, then the process of gathering knowledge may fail to take place. Nonetheless the more diverse the students in a learning institution or program, the broader the knowledge and skill levels that they are likely to bring with them. Indeed, the lifelong learners or new immigrants who repeat subjects due to their foreign language qualifications may never be recognized. As such, they bring specialist or advanced knowledge that can be drawn on to enrich the learning experience for all student groups. Similarly, some students may lack the same basic knowledge as others in a program and will need more help. In such situations, it is important to design the learning experience to make it flexible enough to accommodate the students with a broad range of prior knowledge and skills while ensuring that the unexposed ones are part of the learning process.

Instructional Implications

Examining the teaching learning factors is pivotal in improving students’’ academic success in various ways. This effort will be impactful in facilitating student progress at district, state, and national levels. To optimize learning outcomes, I will fine-tune my approach to teaching individualized learning in the specified subjects. Most specifically, the process takes into account the educational needs of both slow and quick-learning students by implementing a differentiated learning approach. The students are also mentored by ensuring that they work in a supportive and collaborative condition with their instructor.