Title of Experience/Artifact: Date Experience Completed:

School of Education Portfolio University of Wisconsin Platteville Artifact Reflection Pre-Student Teaching Journal Adapted Aquatics Reflection Spring 2014 Spring 2013

Describe your educational experience/artifact:

For my pre-student teaching I am keeping a journal to reflect and record some observations within the classroom, activities performed, and what I learned about myself and teaching. This is recorded every two weeks. This helps me reflect not only as a learning student, but as a future educator as well. After every adapted aquatics lesson we reflected on what we did with our student. This helped me realize what strategies worked best with my student.
Wisconsin Teacher Standard Alignment

I believe these artifacts best align with Standard Nine: Reflection; Teachers are able to Evaluate Themselves. The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his or her choices and actions on pupils, parents, professionals in the learning community and others and who actively seek out opportunities to grow professionally. These artifacts align with this standard simply because they are reflections. Through reflections I am able to better see what strategies worked better or worse when written in front of me. I can write down changes that I would like to make and use those changes for my next class to better benefit my students. These artifacts demonstrate competency in this standard because my reflections not only show what methods were successful or unsuccessful, they showed how I grew as an educator. For example, the first time I taught a lesson, I explained a new skill to my students and asked them to perform the skill. After reflecting upon my first lesson, I realized that demonstrating this skill would have been much more beneficial. The second lesson I taught, I made sure demonstration was used frequently and it made my lesson much more effective. Being able to grow professionally is crucial for student success.
UW-Platteville School of Education Knowledge, Skills, Dispositions Alignment

I believe these artifacts best align with KSD4.a.: Reflects on Teaching; The candidate makes an accurate and thoughtful reflection on his/her teaching effectiveness, is aware of specific elements of his/her teaching that contributed to successful instruction, and can offer alternative teacher action to predict the future successes of alternate approaches. These artifacts align with this KSD because while reflecting I take into account that my students walked away from each lesson with something they didnt have or know before the lesson. If this does not happen, I write down changes that I would make for any future lessons. The reflections demonstrate that I am able to grow as an educator. Secondary KSD alignment includes KSD4.e.: Grows and Develops Professionally; The candidate is aware of opportunities for professional development to improve content knowledge and pedagogical skill and can take an active role in assisting other educators.
Explain what you learned about teaching/learning from this experience:

From these experiences I have learned that without reflecting, changes cannot be made to any future lessons. To ensure that my students are actively engaged in a positive environment I must

evaluate each day I teach. Not only does the educator benefit from reflection, the students benefit as well.
Explain what you learned about yourself as a prospective educator as a result of this experience/artifact:

As a future educator I have learned that the more reflections I write, the easier they get to write. It makes for an easier planning method when I have the past reflection in front of me. When writing lessons, I am better able to find what worked and what did not work while using reflections.