Professional Documents
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Table of Contents
STEP Standard 1 - Contextual Factors: Knowing Your School and Community .............................. 3
STEP Standard 2 - Writing Standards-Based Objectives and the Learning Goal ............................ 5
STEP Standard 3 - Assessment and Data Literacy ........................................................................... 7
STEP Standard 4 - Unit and Lesson Planning ................................................................................ 10
STEP Standard 5 - Implementation of Instructional Unit ............................................................. 14
STEP Standard 6 - Analysis of Student Learning ........................................................................... 16
STEP Standard 7 – Reflecting on Instruction to Improve Student Progress ................................. 19
B. District Demographics
Sunnyslope School is a part of the Washington Elementary School District (WESD). WESD
serves the north central Phoenix area and parts of east Glendale. The district has 32 schools and
is the largest elementary school district in Arizona.
C. School Demographics
Sunnyslope School is a K-8 school that serves a diverse community of north central Phoenix.
Sunnyslope is a Title I school that serves over 800 students pre-kindergarten through eighth
grade students in the neighborhood.
B. Environmental Factors
Some environmental factors that I will face when planning to teach is parent involvement and
that there are no consequences for homework. The reason I mention parent involvement is that
when I plan for fun activities that need parent permission, or parent/teacher conferences, or have
no communication with parents about concerning behavior or academic performance, it worries
me. It worries me because I see my cooperating teacher deal with no parent contact for the
students who need the most help in and outside of school. As for the homework policy, I think by
not having students be accountable worries me because there is no way to hold a child
accountable to do their homework.
The possible affect these characteristics could have on the planning, delivery, and
assessment of my unit is that I will make sure to get feedback from the specialist that pulls out
the student that has an IEP and better see what we can do for that students once we have an
another IEP meeting to make any other accommodations for that student in reading. However,
that student performs on level on every other subject area. As for the student that is considered
gifted, I can modify my instructional unit plan by making the rigor be there and asking more
D.O.K. based questions such as the why’s. As for the rest of the class the third-grade team does
as much as they can in collecting data from exit tickets to make specific groupings for math
intervention time to better help them/review before moving onto the next lesson.
Learning Goal
The overall learning goal for this unit is to strengthen students writing skills and having the
freedom to write independently about a topic. By this time of the year students have already
worked on writing paragraphs on their own and go through the writing process. The students will
respond to a prompt and go through the writing process with the guidance of the teacher.
will respond to a prompt after listening to a read aloud of a book called All the Places to Love.
They will be able to write to describe the place they love. The
Pre-Assessment - Copy and paste the pre-assessment you plan to use to assess the students’
knowledge of the topic prior to implementing the unit lessons. Include the scoring criteria used
to determine whether the student Exceeds, Meets, Approaches, or Falls Far Below the learning
goal and measurable objectives.
The pre-assessment of student’s writing is their knowledge of how to complete the writing
process for writing about their special place. The students are completing a final draft on an
expository writing task after listening to a read aloud of All the Places to Love. The students
were assessed on how they completed a graphic organizer, a writing plan, and their draft,
revised/edited using CUPS, and their written final drafts. The students were graded on their
portions of completion of all
these tasks.
Picture #1: Below pictured is a graphic organizer I modeled with the class using a class stuffed
monkey named Johnny Bananas as an example for the students.
Picture #2: Below is an outline for students. They know how to fill out this plan as this is what
they usually do for any writing task.
Picture #3: This is the final draft students will write on for this pre-assessment.
Number of Students
Exceeds 5
Meets 15
Approaches 7
Based on the data above, I saw that for every student their production of writing may take longer for
some students. I know that for every student the writing process maybe quicker for some than others. I
think the objective for this unit are measurable as they are simple straight to the point. However, I have
learned that in reality for my students that going through the writing process can take a while for some.
So, I have learned to be flexible and allow students who need extra time that chance.
Based on the data above, there was about seven students who approached the learning goal, which was to
finish a complete final draft of a writing on an expository writing task after listening to a read aloud of
All the Places to Love. While there were about 20 students who did complete this task in the week plan,
there was 7 students who did not complete the task. The one thing I learned after doing writing for a unit
plan was that writing for some students will take longer for some than others. With that being said that
allowing yourself to be flexible as a teacher allows me to find ways throughout the day to give student
extra time for writing when they finish tasks during other lessons.
Note: When implementing the unit of study, you will be choosing one of these activities to video record, review, and reflect on your teaching later
in the STEP process,
Formative Thinking map as Completed graphic Completed rough Completed final Presentation of
Assessments whole-class with organizer/paragraph draft. draft. students work and
How are you going some of student map. class discussion
to measure the examples. after presentation.
learning of your Annotated article
students throughout with ideas on
the lesson? margins.
Summative, Post- Childhoods Afloat writing independently. This writing will be used as the post-assessment to monitor how students
Assessment refer to text and how do you cite text evidence from plan to rough draft. This is where we will focus on how
What post- they structure the sentences for this writing prompt. Me and my mentor thought this would be a great practice
assessment will right before AZ Merit as they showed they struggled on citing text-evidence in their writing. We think that by
Implement the unit you have designed including the pre-assessment, all lesson activities,
correlating formative assessments, and summative post-assessment. Choose one of the activities
to video record, review, and reflect on your teaching. Have your cooperating teacher/mentor
review the recording and provide feedback, if possible.
Post-Test Data: Whole Class - Once you have assessed your students’ learning on the topic, collect and
analyze the post-test data to determine the effectiveness of your instruction and assessment.
Number of Students Number of Students
Pre-Test Post-Test
Exceeds 5 11
Meets 15 7
Approaches 7 4
Based on the post assessment as a class my students did a great job, most of my students were
able to meet and exceed in their writing. This was due to them being able to peer review one
another’s work and ensure they had all the criteria for their writing; their topic sentence, key
details, with text evidence, and their conclusion. I feel that allowing that day the students were
editing and finishing up the day before presentations, really made it reality to them that they need
to get their writing wrapped up that day asking for help from me and students that already had
finished.
The reason I think most of all of my students were able to meet and exceed the goal of their
writing was due to the fact of me having students that have finished their writing and be “teacher
helpers”. These helpers went around the classroom to help and of their classmates that needed
help really was smart idea. I also think that by going over how to cite text evidence to include in
your writing really benefited the students with the overall flow of their writing. This was the
“Where’s my Proof?” anchor chart I created and did a mini-lesson where students did 50/50 to
ensure they understood these sentence starters.
I selected these students specifically for a subgroup population or my unit because two students
were ELL’s last year, and this is their first-year monitoring not being ELL’s anymore due upon
parent request. However, I have noticed these two students continuously struggle in reading and
writing. These two students were a part of this subgroup due to them scoring far below basic on
interim district testing. All these students made up a great intervention group for me to work with
because I noticed they need and extra help because most of them struggled with moving along
Post-Assessment Data: Subgroup (Gender, ELL population, Gifted, students on IEPs or 504s, etc.)
Exceeds 0 0
Meets 2 3
Approaches 3 1
Based on the post-test analysis I could see that almost all of my intervention group students were able to
make sure they included all of the main criteria needed in their writing. This was fairly easy because
pulling these students aside and working one on one with them really helped them make sure they were on
the right way to having a complete writing piece. However, I did not review their work completely
thoroughly using CUPS, I wanted them to have the experience to do that part with their peers. Which is
why some were marked down. For example, the student that was considered falling far below was due to
the fact that he went directly to his final draft without having anyone check his work because he was
behind from being absent most of the week. Overall, working with my intervention students in a small
group really benefited my students work and appreciation of the writing process.
Based on the post-assessment data, I wanted to see how the kids really did on their writing by grading their
final drafts. The post-test data showed me that most of almost all of my students in my small intervention
groups meet what they need in their writing. However, some showed a lack in their spelling and
punctuation. I noticed my students really needed help from their peers, dictionaries and myself when it
came to this portion. However, I did not offer the help to students I referred them to using their classroom
resources. I was glad most of my students performed well in their writing. In the future I will continue to
do mini-lessons in between to help the students refresh their memories on how to refer to a text, citing text
evidence and using classroom resources for spelling to help them learn to help themselves in their writing
and for them to take charge in their learning.
Meets 13 14
Approaches 5 1
Taking the subgroup to work with them one-on-one really benefited them. But also having students who
exceeded in their writing to be helpers around the classroom benefited all the students. I think that when I
was working with my small group the remainder of the class was able to stay focused on their writing and
meanwhile get support from their peers. I also think that by pulling my students as a whole and do a small
mini-lesson really benefited the entire class to stay focused and include in their writing exactly what they
need when citing text evidence. Overall, I think it was effective to work with the class as a whole but also
break off to allow students to work independently which allowed me to pull aside my small group to work
with them on their writing.
Based on their writing so far, I think that I can progress this and make their sentence starters a bit more
detailed to help them be more precise for students writing, I have learned the importance of keeping it
structured for students when it comes to learning that way they understand their expected goals. How each
day in my unit built on top of one another really helped students understand the writing process and
appreciate all the time given to them.