Designing a Professional Development Plan
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Design your own Professional Development Plan. You will need to create a step-by-step timeline that shows your commitment to personal and professional growth in creating academically and culturally diverse classrooms.
Using the exercises for personal and professional growth from Chapters Two through Eight of the course text, (Differentiation and The Brain: How neuroscience supports the Learner Friendly Classroom by: David A. Sousa & Carol Anne Tomlinson year 2011) create 2-8 page document that includes at least two goals from each of the following areas:
Mindset, learning environment and differentiation
Curriculum and differentiation
Assessment and differentiation
Student readiness and differentiation
Student interest and differentiation
Student learning profile and differentiation
Managing a differentiated classroom
Include the timetable for meeting the goals and a thorough explanation of how the goals will be met. Address any obstacles that may keep you from reaching your goals and what you will do to overcome them.
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Solution Summary
Designing a professional development plan including differentiation throughout all instructional and educational areas. Provides a 1867 word response for this topic, in-depth information and explanations. Categorized by sections, useful for both regular education and special education. Detailed information on choosing, using and implementing differentiated instruction.
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Create two goals from the following areas:
Mindset/Learning Environment - what is your personal mindset (opinion, belief, theory) regarding how YOU want your classroom to reflect academic and cultural diversity? Give an example of what you envision for your classroom. How will you get there or make it happen? How will your classroom be set up? What kind of classroom management plan will you use? Will you have a classroom behavioral plan? How will daily experience alter or redirect your personal mindset? Has experience already changed how you plan your classroom and lessons? What kind of learning environment do you naturally create? How can you alter that for differentiation? There are many questions you can toss in here that will help you think about this and create two goals.
Differentiation - how would YOU define differentiation? Use your own worded definition in your paper, and then explain how you would ensure that differentiation could be accomplished in YOUR classroom. Provide an example or two. Differentiation doesn't have to be big, it could be as simple as placing a child closer to the board, facing the students when speaking instead of facing the white board, using more visuals while teaching, asking students to narrate back what they have heard, etc. Differentiation simply means "how will you modify the lessons or classroom to accommodate a student who needs a little extra help?"
Curriculum and Differentiation - regardless of whether you are in a special education classroom or not, there will always be students who need differentiated instruction or they will not grasp the concepts and be able to keep up with peers. When you are teaching using curriculum in your classroom, how can you maintain the concepts being taught yet provide more "differentiation" for students who need it? You can't always preplan for differentiation, although you can often tell by looking ahead in the lesson plans or guidebook what is coming up, and what your students may need help with. YOU know your students (or will when you are teaching) and you will know what will help the concepts click and help connect prior information with new knowledge. For this portion of your assignment, you need to decide how you can make this happen and provide two examples of this. I would also include something on how your experiences over time will help you make better and quicker decisions on differentiation in the curriculum. No teacher is ever perfect, but the more experience we have the better we are able to integrate curriculum and differentiation without missing a beat. Look to the paragraph above for more information on differentiation.
Assessment and Differentiation - this is a fun and exciting area if you think about it. Creating assessments either to gain data ...
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