STANDARD 1

The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.

This standard highlights various theorists within the field of education and discussing how these different theories and practices can be utilized to engage individual students at their own level.

The evidence below shows how I have seen and used educational theories to inspire and direct my lesson planning and use of instructional materials.

This is Sasha Alligator. I used her to help my visual and hands-on learners about greater and lesser amounts.Just like the visual cue of an alligator with its mouth facing he greater number, Sasha eats whatever amount is greater.
After a lesson in which we created 'sugar skulls' to learn about Halloween celebrations around the world, this is what our classroom sink looked like. It was a good day if I do say so myself!
This picture shows part of a kindergarten field trip to Waimanalu farms, where students were able to see, hear, and feel what it's like to be on a farm (and they got to take home pumpkins!)
Here we used marshmallows and toothpicks to help pre-schoolers in St. Norbert's Childcare Center experience building objects and making shapes.
With this worksheets pre-schoolers were able to practice addition concepts by stamping the first number shown and then adding the second number shown after wards to make caterpillars.
I created this visual organizer to help one of the kindergartners I was working with a Aldo Leopold Elementary School in De Pere, Wisconsin. She was a very visual learner and the idea of 'exploding' a topic in order to expand the details really helped her understand the concept.

Reflection

The cognitive development of students is something that Elementary level teachers need to focus on as a child's brain is rapidly making new connections between synapses, creating newer and newer schema as the days, months, and years pass on. The linguistic development of a child is much the same, as early exposure and instruction with the different aspects of language (reading, writing, and speaking) make a notable impact on the linguistic development of a child.

The social and emotional development of a student, as well as the emotional growth, are such an integral part of an elementary students life within the classroom. At this point in their life students are learning how to interact with others in respectful and positive ways, and are figuring out how to interpret and regulate their own emotions, as well as those of their peers. Physically, the span of time in which a students spends in elementary school is full of physical development, as well. From fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination to growth spurts and the beginnings of puberty, teachers must be able to encourage positive growth in the areas they can affect and guide their students to view themselves and their developments positively.

Learning about the theorists has opened the door to the exploration and decision making behind my own teaching philosophy. I have discovered theorists that guide my thinking daily and which I include their theories within my own lesson planning. I often use and see Howard Garder's Theory of Intelligence in my own classroom and use it to help me differentiate instruction for the various learning styles in my class. I also follow Pestalozzi's theories regarding nature and exploration, believing that students should be able to experience and investigate the world around them.

Additional Artifacts

Pestalozzi Lesson Plan

Field Applications

Emotional Development LP

Above is an example of how one can apply cognitive development theories and apply them within the field. If you click the link above it will take you to a website that I created during my undergraduate studies in Wisconsin at St. Norbert College. Through my Psychology in Education class, I and several others worked with the Big Brothers & Big Sisters organization at a local school. During this time, we worked with an observed students during after-school care. I then identified several 'learning events' in which I describe when and how I observed the students learning or practicing either academically or behaviorally. I then applied cognitive theories to explain either why certain behaviors were occurring or why different teaching strategies worked. This was a semester long project, and I can honestly say that I grew quite a bit through this experience! Discovering the ability to observe behaviors, gather information, and to discover possible reasons for student actions or reactions along with the ability to use cognitive theory to discover how best to approach the student instruction-wise was very empowering.

Above are also two lesson plans I created that focus on the social and the emotional development of students. The first lesson plan was designed to build off of Pestalozzi's philosophy on the integration of the natural world into learning as well as his philosophy that a students' education can shape who they become and how they contribute to society. In this lesson, students are going on a 'nature walk' to look for different parts of the plant life cycle and recording this information in their science journals. In this way, there is a direct line drawn between what the student are doing now, and how they as potential future scientists observe natural occurrences in the field. The second lesson plan is design to address the topic of identifying anger and discussing positive ways to express that feeling. Many students may have trouble understanding and expressing feelings such as anger because it is such a volatile emotion and students may not yet understand how their actions affect others. By having an open discussion in a safe environment, students may gain a better understanding of positive ways to act on their emotions when they are given stark, easy to identify contrasting evidence. These two lessons fit so well with my teaching philosophy because of their focus on the whole child in comparison to only teaching a child when it comes to set curriculum. In addition these activities allow students to take ownership over their own learning in a way that teacher-focused instruction can not even hope to achieve. As with the nature walk, allowing students a certain amount of activity can help their physical development by allowing them a time to expend extra energy, stretch their legs, and learn to focus their actions to meet a specific goal.

Home

Genevieve Tosatto

Elementary Teacher

Standard 1

This is Sasha Alligator. I used her to help my visual and hands-on learners about greater and lesser amounts.Just like the visual cue of an alligator with its mouth facing he greater number, Sasha eats whatever amount is greater.

After a lesson in which we created 'sugar skulls' to learn about Halloween celebrations around the world, this is what our classroom sink looked like. It was a good day if I do say so myself!

This picture shows part of a kindergarten field trip to Waimanalu farms, where students were able to see, hear, and feel what it's like to be on a farm (and they got to take home pumpkins!)

Here we used marshmallows and toothpicks to help pre-schoolers in St. Norbert's Childcare Center experience building objects and making shapes.

With this worksheets pre-schoolers were able to practice addition concepts by stamping the first number shown and then adding the second number shown after wards to make caterpillars.

I created this visual organizer to help one of the kindergartners I was working with a Aldo Leopold Elementary School in De Pere, Wisconsin. She was a very visual learner and the idea of 'exploding' a topic in order to expand the details really helped her understand the concept.

Reflection

Additional Artifacts