PROFESSIONALISM & LEADERSHIP

There were many reasons that this artifact was created and aligned to Learning Outcome 3: Professionalism and Leadership. The learning outcome warrants the ability to demonstrate professionalism and growth by aligning activities to induce collaborative learning. With my personal experience as an elementary school teacher, we are often allowed opportunities to engage with peers regarding instructional and professional development. This artifact is an overview of the reciprocal teaching method and resources for future implementation techniques. With the creation of this artifact, I am able to host small professional learning sessions that equip teachers with another literacy tool that can be used in their weekly instructional techniques. Since this artifact is intended to be used as a learning opportunity for educators, it directly aligns with the learning outcome of demonstrating leadership and professionalism in the context of my experience.

The third learning outcome for this portfolio focuses on professionalism and leadership context. This artifact is not a live example of how I have displayed professionalism and leadership, but it does give an example of how I can leverage a variety of opportunities to develop learning with my peers by using technology as a platform of creation. The Reciprocal Teaching Educational Brochure is a unique example of research aligned to professional practices. Teachers are often finding themselves in professional development opportunities and given an abundance of resources that they are asked to use in their classrooms. Although opportunities may come often, it has been to my experience that some resources and information are so saturated with information that it can be difficult for teachers to maintain interest and actually emplore the strategies being explored. For this reason, I wanted to create a digital brochure that teachers could reference and not be overwhelmed with information. This brochure was intended to expose teachers to a valuable strategy to be used in literacy development, while focusing on the most important characteristics necessary for full comprehension and understanding.

The reciprocal teaching method as described by Lori Oczkus (2018) has proved to be a very valuable tool in the small, literacy groups that I hold in my classrooms weekly. The groups that I hold are scheduled out from Monday-Thursday and consist of two, thirty minute sessions daily. I first determine groups by varying school assessments and construct a weekly schedule that allows me to meet with all six of my groups at least once a week, and the lower performing groups twice per week. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to implement various reading strategies for students based on areas of growth. The reciprocal teaching strategy gives students an opportunity to function with a text holistically and engages them in an activity that allows teachers to provide support without compromising student lift and rigor. The process involves: pre-reading which asks students to predict what they will be reading and learning about, during reading where students identify unfamiliar vocabulary with intent for clarity and ask questions surrounding the text, and post-reading where students are asked to summarize what the text they read was about. This four skill strategy allows students to function as readers beyond regular comprehension. They are asked to develop background knowledge, exposed to new information, and asked to remember information from the book. All of these processes are important for students in gaining accurate, holistic, and comprehensive understandings of the texts they are exposed to. Being that these processes can be made into steps through a graphic organizer, it is very manageable to teach others how to implement this strategy in their own methods.

This artifact has theory and research at its base; however, the intention is for teachers to utilize the artifact to strengthen their small group learning sessions. To share this information with my colleagues, I intend to host a professional development session with all literacy teachers. Although all teachers are literacy advocates, it will be intended more for those who teach literacy techniques in their everyday experiences at school. Other teachers will be encouraged to attend, but will be more focused on aspects of literacy than any other subject. While hosting the session, I would create a powerpoint in conjunction with the brochure for presentation purposes, but the brochure would be the main source of information. It would then be an opportunity for teachers to understand the method and practice with peers. Having teachers actually practice the strategy would be a strong strategy in engagement and for their overall comfort using it. Providing an opportunity for teachers to engage in a hands-on, practitioner based development session would be the aim of implementing this brochure into my professional context.

This artifact is aligned to the learning outcome in many ways. For one, the learning outcome is essentially desiring a demonstration of professionalism and leadership in a learning context and this artifact is a research based example of a strategy that is and can be used for professional learning and development among educators. The creation of this brochure was intended to be an opportunity for educators to have a quick reference to the fundamentals of the reciprocal teaching method that is described by Oczkus (2018) and resources that would allow for smooth implementation. For the reasons described above, this artifact is aligned to Learning Outcome 3: Professionalism and Leadership. The artifact proves to be valuable in a learning context and can be used within content team meetings, staff development seminars, and other professional learning contexts. The flexibility of this artifact among contexts and its alignment to development lend it to be a true example of professionalism and leadership in a learning context.