Teaching E-portfolio
H00249406
Best Practices
I have chosen a collection of artifacts that I believe they were supportive for my essential skills and my teaching professional growth. In addition, I have linked and reflected on each competency area.
Professionalism Competency
Involving in voluntary activities was one of the best experiences I have ever had in order to serve the community. Cleaning Al Faseel beach with the students in Fujairah city was certainly effective (see PDP, professionalism). As a teacher with the students cleaning the beach taught me and the students the importance of team work which is one of the essential values of hidden curriculum that should be taught and highlighted in every school. The value of cleaning the beach reflected positively on students’ beliefs and attitudes. For example, students were collecting all the trashes that are on the beach including glass bottles, plastic bottles, tissues and juices. Students believed that they should clean everything on the beach to “save the fish” as they said. As a result, they were asking for my help to remove the heavy care tyre from the beach. This great experience is considered as best practice because it helped me to extend my knowledge on the importance of cleaning the beach which reduces the environmental problems such as sea pollution. This indicates my belief in involving in voluntary activities, which I already discussed in my teaching philosophy (see teaching philosophy, professionalism).​
Planning for learning Competency
I have created differentiated activities to meet students’ needs through being aware of different students’ level. I have created activities that are suitable for both high and low achievers students (see PDP, professionalism). For example, I did worksheets for a vocabulary lesson, the questions for high achievers were different than low achievers. For high achievers students, I have asked them to write the definition of each word. Whereas, for low achievers, I have asked them to match each word with its definition. Creating differentiated activities was helpful in terms of supporting students’ achievements because I was aware of student’s level and gave them what they needed. This is one of the best practices because it helped me to support students’ performance and boost their confidence and performance in the classroom as each of them was able to complete the activities that were assigned to them.
Managing learning Competency
Using motivation chart was effective to increase students’ enthusiasm towards learning and affected students’ behaviors positively. I have created a motivation chart, so when students answer hard questions or win in a competition, they get a tick to get in the economy class. If they collected 3 economy class, these tickets will be replaced by business ticket. If they collected 3 business tickets, they will be replaced with first class and they will get a gift (see PDP, managing learning). Students were excited to get these tickets and were trying their best to answer hard question or win in any competition. Based on my belief that I discussed in my teaching philosophy (see teaching philosophy, managing learning), rewarding students by using motivation charts are helpful to get the students excited and participate more which increase their performance in the classroom. It was supportive because it showed me a clear improvement in low achievers performance when they are being rewarded.
Implementing learning Competency
Implementing strategies for managing students’ behaviors such as classroom rules helped me to maintain a supportive classroom. I have created and set a classroom rules to maintain students discipline especially when giving lessons such as raise your hand to speak (see PDP, implementing learning). It was helpful because it taught students self-discipline which is essential to each student’ success and confidence. Classroom rules were efficient in helping me to deliver the lesson smoothly because students knew the rules and how to behave properly in the classroom. I believe it is one of the best practices because It affected on students’ behavior positively as they learnt how to be tactic and disciplined.
Monitoring and Assessment Competency
I have applied formative assessment to support the continuous development of the students through monitoring them (see PDP,assessment competency). I was giving students assessments including homework, creating posters and doing presentation as formative assessments. These assessments were given to provide ongoing feedback to improve their learning. I realized how much it is supportive in terms of improving students’ performance especially low achievers because giving those students feedback helped them to improve their academic performance. It helped me to develop my assessment skills when implementing the formative assessment. This links to my teaching philosophy as it shows the impact of assessment skills on the students (see teaching philosophy, monitoring and assessment).
Reflection Competency
During the period of four years on the B.ED program, I was receiving feedback from both my MST and MCT (see PDP, reflection competency). Receiving feedback from them was effective as it improved many teaching skills and strategies. There was a clear improvement from the beginning of the B.ED program to the end. I have gained many teaching strategies such as students centered. Coming from a strictly teacher centered background, was a little bit harder to try to implement students centered for both students and I. I coped with this by learning strategies on students centered online and applying MCT recommendations. This belief was disused in my teaching philosophy (see teaching philosophy, reflection competency).