Artifact Two

REFLECTION/RATIONALE FRAMEWORK: Program Value #2 Integration of Knowledge and Practice

Artifact: Classroom Posters

Context	This artifact is important because it represents the visual aids that help all learners. Having a diverse class with 12 ELL students, one student designated with an intensive behaviour category, two students were on IEPs, and two were of Aboriginal status.  Since there were so many different levels and abilities in my classroom it was important to have strategies in place to help support all of these diverse learners. After attending a Pro-D Day session on Visual Supports for Learners I decided to take this seriously in my own classroom to target students of all abilities.
Detailed Observations	Right of the bat you can tell that my classroom is diverse. After teaching the students you begin to realize just how diverse the students really are. Some students can work individually and focus directly on the task at hand after having only verbal instructions. Many students needed the instructions written out and demonstrated as well. It was hard for many of the students to understand a task if there was no visual piece. Students often worked better when they had a visual point of reference to help them work. This freed me up, as the teacher, to give more direct instruction to the students that were really struggling, even after having oral and visual support.
Linking Theory with Practice	From both my ELL and Specials Needs courses at UFV I learned that visuals are very helpful to many different learners. This idea was also highlighted during the Visual Supports Pro-D day. Students that have the visual support are often able to understand and remember things better. Also, for ELL students it is really important for them to get the correct vocabulary for the different content areas. By having posters available around the room for students to access they could look at the posters while they were working to check their spelling and to remind themselves of the main ideas and key points of the units that we were working on. Students did not have to feel pressure to memorize everything but had freedom to access the posters as a support when it was needed.
Interpreting Causes and Effects	There were many useful outcomes to this classroom activity. First of all students were able to access the posters all the time, so when students were sitting on the carpet waiting for the next activity, they could read the posters. The posters also helped the students that had difficulty formulating their own ideas to participate in class discussions. I would ask the students a question and hands would go up. Some students would glance at the poster to double check their answers after their hand went up, while others would look at the poster first to help them find an answer. This led to more classroom participation from the students that did not normally feel comfortable participating. Slowly students would feel more confident in the material and would not even need the support at all anymore.
Self Assessment and Professional Planning	This artifact represents a solid understanding of the knowledge, dispositions and performances of the Teacher Education Program Value #2. It shows how something as simple as creating a poster can help, not only the struggling students, but all students. The posters were something that my TM did and it took me a little while to implement them into my own teaching during immersion. Once I did take the time to put the posters up I realized just how valuable they really were for the students. In the future I would not delay on putting up content focused posters so that students could get used to seeing vocabulary and ideas right away. Just seeing how useful they were to the students was something that convinced me that this will be something used in my classrooms to come.