Standard 4: Student Learning
Teacher leaders facilitate student learning through evidence-based practice informed by research. They understand and apply research in child and adolescent development, cognitive development, and general and specialized pedagogy. They encourage critical reading, writing and thinking in the learning process. They foster instructional and evaluation methods that embrace variety and authenticity. They promote student reflection and self-assessment. They encourage colleagues and students to take on leadership roles and work in teams. Indicators are:
- Seek out and use existing research to inform school practices.
- Design action research to investigate and improve student learning and school policies and practices.
- Model technology integration that supports student learning.
- Critically analyze student and school performance data to determine needs and plan instruction that is rigorous, coherent, and substantiated within a theoretical and philosophical base.
Context
This blog, required by Dr. Frye for Seminar in Reading and Language Arts Research course (RE 5710) explores a variety of issues related to best practice in the language arts classroom.
Rational
These posts were written after reading research about classroom practices such as independent reading, student interest inventories, digital literacies, deep reading and reading aloud to students. As part of my weekly assignment, I was required to put the research into practice in my classroom and reflect on that experience. During this course, I posted a research question on the blog about the effects of my classroom library and its impact on my students and explored. After examining my students interest inventories, I examined my classroom library to see if it met the needs of my students. Finally, I looked at my students number of books read this year to see if there was a correlation between my classroom library and student's interest and performance. As a result of the positive correlation found, I wrote a grant in order to put more books in my classroom library. I explored and discussed the implementation of digital and interactive books which are found on the Internet and learned how using these books can promote deep reading in my classroom.
RE 5120 Research Reports
Context
Dr. Omer Ari required this blog to post research reports written about my assigned readings, lectures and class discussions in Psychological Bases of Reading (RE 5120).
Rational
Within these reports, I examine the research behind our theories and knowledge of how our kids learn to read. I read Long, D & Chong, J. L. (2001) research study about reading comprehension and acquisition, Daneman and Carpenter (1980) research about short term memory differences in poor and good readers, Perfetti, C. and Hogaboam, T. (1975) research about decoding, Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. (1979) research about the orthographic structure of words. All of these research studies are the foundations for instruction and best practices in the classroom. One of the biggest implications this research has had on me is the need for providing my students with reading material at their instructional and independent reading levels.