"Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." - Pat Riley
E X C E L L E N C E
EXCELLENCE IN CONTENT KNOWLEDGE
As a first-year teacher licensed through the alternate Master's of Arts in Teaching route, I rely heavily on my content knowledge of the subject of English Language Arts from my bachelor's degree in English. While recognizing that this is just a base to work from, I am currently working to deepen my knowledge of professional development opportunities and associations I will benefit from participating within. I have only been in the classroom since July 2025, and I am still gaining knowledge as to what resources are available to me via my mentor teacher and administration. My school district also requires professional development every Wednesday afternoon, where we dismiss students on a modified schedule and instructors stay for training.
A recent training from the Mississippi Department of Education reiterated the importance of continuing to teach literacy skills within the secondary classroom, regardless of subject. The speakers discussed the importance of vocabulary exposure in classrooms, as well as how to truly gauge whether a student comprehends texts and how to incorporate simple decoding activities within instructional time. I found this training insightful, especially for the inclusion block students, who I know struggle to understand complete text passages like those they see on state tests.
EXCELLENCE IN PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
One of the greatest attributes of English Language Arts as a subject is its ability to connect to a variety of subjects and topics, offering many opportunities for cross-curricular connections. Our classes this year have already used the concept of de-extinction, tying into a subject from the sciences, to host class discussions, create argumentative responses, and analyze the concept of central idea. Using this development in culture, technology, and education, the students were engaged in their discussions about the process of de-extinction and whether they believed de-extinction should be pursued or not.
i.
These discussions were facilitated with Scholastic's SCOPE Literature Magazine based off the bite-sized non-fiction article, "Bringing Back the Dire Wolf" by Mackenzie Carro. Students engaged in discussion with each other as to whether they thought de-extinction was a process that should be promoted, and applied their thoughts to SCOPE's graphic organizer for constructing an argumentative response. Students also utilized the Central Idea Anchor Chart and Graphic Organizer, also from SCOPE, to organize the text's information and determine a central idea from the article.
To assist students further understand the concept of Central Idea, remediation efforts were made via a class-wide walkthrough of the SCOPE Central Idea Organizer, with students forming their central idea individually after reviewing the text.
Introducing any concept can be uninteresting and lacking in engagement if the teacher does not consider the audience. UbD dictates thinking of the end result and working a lesson plan backwards, and for students to understand the concept of theme in literature, my end goal was for students to master this concept. To achieve this, I aimed to utilize a variety of engaging materials to maintain student interest throughout the instructional time.
ii.
Students transitioning from fifth grade are overwhelmed with the changes that are bombarding them, and Don Daily's illustrated picture book of Aesop's Fables is a welcome material for students who enjoyed read-alouds during elementary school. These intricately illustrated one-page fables were instrumental in teaching theme in literature, and kept students engaged based on the silly animal illustrations depicted throughout the book.
A handful of fables were introduced throughout the unit, with a document camera projecting the pages on the classroom's Promethean board. Students were asked to indicate text evidence to support their claim of what a possible theme was for the fable using the Promethean board's interactive annotation app by underlining the text on the screen.
Another method of engaging students in understanding the concept of theme in literature was an activity that had students view an animated short film. The short film did not include any dialogue, and relied on students' ability to make inferences and observations to determine the theme of the short film.
Students were provided with an informational sheet regarding theme in literature to help them answer comprehension and analysis questions
about the short film. The short film
was screened twice in class for
students to first watch without
trying to answer any questions,
and a second time while they
answered the questions regarding
the theme of the story.
iii.
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The first unit of our Amplify curriculum focuses on interpreting how to focus on a moment in narrative writing, as well as how an
author shows action in a text instead of just telling.
Students practiced their abilities to "focus" and "show" in their narrative writing by beginning to detail a moment they remembered from lunch time at school. Student journal entries that demonstrated an understanding of how to "focus" on a moment in their writing were shared with the class, sparking discussions about what the writings did that piqued readers' interests and how the details written engaged them as readers.
iv.
While honing their skills of "Focus" and "Showing," students also analyzed Roald Dahl's writing in his memoir, Boy, to understand how the author showed his focus on a single moment. These examples were pulled from the memoir that had been read aloud during class, so students had some prior knowledge of the story, and the analysis built upon that basis.
This activity was highly engaging for students, who were excitedly making inferences and discoveries aloud in their analysis. Students successfully identified how Dahl used sentences within the smaller passages to show what was happening without explicitly telling readers. This exercise boosted students' confidence in their comprehension and analysis skills, as they were audibly and visibly excited to note what was happening in the passages despite the texts not saying so word-for-word.
Students were asked to annotate these text passages on the classroom Promethean board using the annotation app to demonstrate their understanding of the Amplify skills of "Focus" and "Showing" in writing.
Through annotating the texts, students demonstrated that they could use text evidence to explain their understanding of how the author showed the actions taking place in the story without telling readers outright.
Students were also asked to critically analyze what sentences such as "My turn came at last" and "None of us dared to sit up in bed" meant and what inferences they could draw from it.
v.
Students have been focusing on narrative and argumentative writing for the first nine weeks of their sixth grade year, and this has emphasized how language can be used in a variety of communications. During their time spent analyzing SCOPE's "Bringing Back the Dire Wolf" short non-fiction article, students were asked to follow a SCOPE Short-Write Kit graphic organizer to form their thoughts about
whether they believed de-extinction as a scientific process was something they think should be explored or not. This was one of their first introductions to argumentative writing, and students utilized the graphic organizer to gather text evidence to support their claims.
More recently, students were challenged to answer an argumentative or informative writing prompt in their Amplify CKLA activities, reintroducing them to informative writing similar to that of the "Bringing Back the Dire Wolf" article.
The activity specifically asked students to compare and analyze two text passages to determine how the characterization of two separate characters appeared in the two stories. Specifically, students were comparing Colin from The Secret Garden and Mrs. Pratchett from Dahl's Boy.
Student Response
vi.
In preparation for standardized testing, students engage with sample test questions for bell work as a way to expose them to the long, tedious passages of the standardized testing style. Along with answering the multiple-choice question based on their comprehension of the passage, students are asked to make meaning of the text by analyzing their own connections to the reading.
A sample passage from ELS Pathways was provided as a question for students to answer and the text was taken from The Wind in the Willows where two characters meet. The question asked students to cite text evidence to explain what passage informed them that the characters were apprehensive about each other.
Making a further connection, students were asked to think about how they act when they when meeting someone new for the first time. The student response to the left demonstrates a student thinking through how they respond to someone they're apprehensive about and how they would possibly react. Through this exercise, students were able to put themselves in the characters' perspective and relate further to the story.
vii.
Students continued working on their understanding of identifying a central idea through analyzing news stories
that interested them. They were instructed to source articles from reputable media outlets and to identify any subheadings, captions, or separating information that provided naturally occuring sections within their article. They then analyzed the articles for a central idea within each subheading or naturally occuring section, and submitted the article link via a Google Doc.
Students demonstrated their ability to select the appropriate type of article for their central idea analysis,
and illustrated their ability to utilize the text features throughout the articles as reading strategies for identifying the article's overall central idea.