Template 3.

Annual Professional Growth Plan Incorporating Reflection

Annual Professional Growth Plan for 2018 Name: Kyle Masson

Goal #1: Differentiation & Questioning: Professional Reading – Meeting the needs of our
highest achievers. Math Specific
Rationale: I aim to focus my unit and lesson planning on meeting the needs of my highest
achievers. Furthermore, I am well aware that some of my students are visibly stronger learners
then others. Therefore, I will aim to do some professional reading (i.e., one piece of literature a
month), around how we meet the unique and specific learning needs of our highest-level
achievers. After exploring these professional sources in depth, I will attempt to implement one
strategy a month into my math class here at St. Patrick’s Fine Arts Elementary. Overall, I
firmly believe that differentiation is an essential component in the development of any unit or
lesson plan. That is why I will ask myself every day; “how can I address the needs of my
highest-level achievers, that serve an applicable enrichment for these types of students”.

Teaching Quality Standard or School Leader Competency Reference:

Teachers’ application of pedagogical knowledge, skills and attributes is based on their
ongoing analysis of contextual variables.
By analyzing the contextual variables that ultimately determine and underlie a teacher
reasoned judgements, I will be able to effectively differentiate my highest-level achievers.
More specifically, I will be able to make and apply my decisions in order to properly
differentiate my highest learners and the questions I ask them, so they can achieve optimal
learning.

Teachers’ understand the subject disciplines they teach.

In order to effectively challenge the thinking of our highest-level learners, the instructor must
become well-rounded and competent in any subject area they are teaching. By knowing the
curriculum objectives, the strategies, and the complex structure of any subject, the teacher will
be able to effectively create and implement both differentiation and questioning strategies that
benefit the needs of our highest-level learners.

Teachers know there are many approaches to teaching and learning.

Instructors will be able to describe the individual differences in learning styles of not only our
highest-level achievers, but students with special learning needs as well. I will seek to research
many different approaches to teaching and learning in order to properly differentiate the
learning styles of each of my students.

Teachers engage in a range of planning activities

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 As a teacher, I will aim to record, demonstrate, and modify any of my plans throughout the
differentiation process. It is of absolute importance that this be done continuously because
differentiation and questioning occur in every single lesson.
Teachers create and maintain environments that are conductive to student learning
It can be argued that environments are the root to the entire differentiation process. By
creating, altering, and maintaining classroom environments, my highest-level achievers will be
accustomed to a space or an area that is essential to not only improving but rather, challenging
their modes of thinking.

Teachers gather and use information about students’ learning needs and progress
I believe that this is the most important standard in regard to differentiating our highest-level
learners. Through getting to know each of your students learning styles and needs,
differentiation will become that much easier to implement within my daily plans. Furthermore,
building relationships with children will help instructors use information they research, about
students learning needs and progress. I will attempt to differentiate higher-level questioning
with my higher-level learners and for my lower-level learners, I will continue to take my
feedback and

Teachers are career long learners

After this practicum is all said and done, I will continue to perform research in regard to how
we meet the needs of our highest-level achievers. I believe this goal of mine will be a never-
ending process and will continue long-past this final practicum of mine. Therefore, I believe it
is very important for myself to continue my research in this field. The same goes for
questioning, I feel I can use the feedback I have gotten and continue to develop stronger
questioning techniques.
Strategies Timeline Resources
Creating challenging work: Ongoing  Alberta Education
 Differentiate the work for higher-level Competencies
learners by providing challenging topics,  Making A
questions and opportunities for students to Difference: Meeting
step out of their comfort zone. Diverse Learning
Needs with
Read Professional Sources: Ongoing Differentiated
 Try reading at least 1 professional sources Instruction
a month regarding the importance of
differentiating the needs for high-level
achievers
o Find strategies that work for you
and implement these into your
plans

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 Implementing Differentiation Strategies Ongoing
 Attempt to implement one strategy a month
and see how well it works with these
higher-level students

Using Specific or Cue’ing Words Ongoing

 When questioning students, either as a
class or one-on-one, using specific wording
to make students cue in order to remember
and recall facts

Use Open-Ended Questions Ongoing

 This strategy comes in handy, especially at
the beginning of the units. Use lots of
open-ended questions that offer lots of
opportunity for students to brainstorm.
There is no one answer in Math, there are
multiple strategies we can use to seek our
answer.

Questioning Rubric 1-3 Times

 This rubric will measure the types of
question I am asking and what areas it is
specifically targeting. See rubric for
details.

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Indicators of Success: (Higher-Level Learners)
1. Observation of Student Learning:
a. Creating Challenging work
i. Differentiate the work so it becomes more challenging:
1. Raise the bar for these students by making topics, questions, and
concepts more difficult when attempting to achieve the final goal.
2. If students can complete the challenging work, then higher-level
thinking is exhibited.
a. Quality of work vs. Quantity of work
2. Reflections:
a. Continuous check-ins and personal student reflections on the effectiveness of the
strategies I attempt to implement during my internship.
i. Final Reflection Template (Students)
1. Record Them and keep log in a binder
3. Based around children’s success
a. If students are able to understand the key concepts in the lesson, along with their
personal, academic needs being met, this will help me indicate if differentiating to
each learner’s needs proves to be successful
b. Quality of student performance of Summative Tasks

Indicators of Success: (Questioning)

1. Observation of Student Learning:
a. If students are understanding, they may:
i. Not ask as many questions or constantly ask questions for reassurance
ii. Jump ahead and start to learn new materials autonomously:
1. Students may ask what they can do next if they finish their
assigned work
2. Questioning Rubric:
a. Feedback of the certain types of questions I ask during Math Class
i. Have observer fill out rubric
1. Record Them and keep log in a binder

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Reflection on Indicator of Success:

a) How successful have I been in meeting my goal?

Differentiation for Higher Level Learners:

In regard to this goal, I felt that I haven’t been as successful as I would have liked. This is
because I felt that part of my Growth Plan was very Unit-specific. What I mean by that is I found
my higher-level learners in Math really understood certain units but didn’t understand other units
as strongly. Therefore, I felt I became limited din terms of attempting to differentiate higher level
learners in Math and instead, focused more on the delivery of the content so not only did these
higher-level learners understand, but the entire class did as well. Therefore, this part of my
growth plan became unit-specific for myself. When I taught multiplication earlier in the
internship, lots of students caught onto the material quickly and effectively. Therefore, this
immediately allowed me to start challenging my students by providing them with higher quality
work. That being said, it’s important to note that whenever I did this, I always focused on the
quality of the work opposed to the quantity of the work. These students didn’t need more work to
do simply because they’re thinking process was being limited due to the easy accomplishment of
their work. In turn, this would cause these students to ultimately get bored simply because
they’re brains weren’t being pushed to the test anymore. From there, I would differentiate some
of my questions and have specific questions directed to these high-level learners. Now, I also ran
into a bit of a barrier along the way as well. One of my higher-level learner’s parents requested
to me that they don’t want their child doing continuous challenging work and instead, do the
same level of work that everyone else is doing. Therefore, for this student in particular (I felt she
may have been my strongest learner too), I stopped to differentiate her work and instead gave her
more work (quantity), instead of more challenging work. Ultimately, this part of my goal didn’t
prove to be as successful as I hoped. However, the question becomes; “What Comes Next?”
Going forward, in no way shape or form do I believe that this goal of mine is over, I want to
continue to build on this goal by continuing to explore as many professional sources as I can.
Whether it’d be attending more observations around schools or locating professional pieces of
literature, I want to continue how to effectively differentiate higher level learners after the
content has been delivered effectively and efficiently, so they are able to actually complete
challenging work and any other strategies that may be implemented.

Questioning:
In regard to this part of my goal, I felt I was a lot more successful on this part of my growth plan
opposed to the other. Much like the last part of my growth plan, this aspect of my growth
focused on using questioning techniques that exposed higher-level thinking in my students. I felt
I was especially successful in this avenue simply because I differentiated my questions for both
my lower and higher-level learners. I could quickly recognize which students were struggling
and which students were exceeding. Therefore, I could accurately scaffold my questioning and
build my lower level learners up while asking lots more open ended-questions to my higher-level
learners to enhance critical thinking. The use of the rubric proved to be very beneficial as it
accurately showed me the types of questions I was asking. Using that rubric for feedback, I am

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able to look at those types of questions and distinguish how I am going to differentiate them for
the next time I teach that lesson. Overall, the rubric provided me with a great reflection tool in
order to constantly improve my learning. Regarding asking open-ended questions, especially at
the beginning of the units, I found this be highly successful as it got my students to recall facts
from Grade 4 and apply those strategies into grade 5. Hearing other answers or strategies from
other students would have helped other students who weren’t aware of those strategies before-
hand. More specifically, having more than one answer in these brainstorm sessions really
enhanced the thinking of my students as some of them even used so new strategies that they may
not have known about before-hand. Going forward, I want to continue to use that rubric my
university consultant provided me with and continue to develop not only my question techniques
in Math, but my overall understanding of the curriculum as well.

b) How has my professional practice improved?

Regarding both parts of my goal, I felt that my professional practice as improved in a variety of
ways. First, I feel that even though I may not have implemented as many differentiation
strategies as I liked, I still that I differentiated both my high-level and lower-level learners, more
so through the use of my questioning techniques as I stated above in my overall success. At times
throughout the internship, I even used my higher-level learners as ‘coaches’ in the room. I made
a rule in Math (Ask 3, then ask me), lots of students require help. Therefore, when I am helping
some of students and others ask questions, I used a select of students as coaches; I had my
students go and ask one of my higher-level learners for help and lots of the time, it proved to be
successful! After I was done helping that select student, I would go check-in with my other
students who asked a question and asked them if my higher-level learners answered their
question for them and often times, they did! Regarding the curriculum itself, I felt I grew a lot as
a Math instructor during this internship. Going in, I felt confident teaching Math as I had lots of
experience teaching junior high math in my PSI. However, as I began and taught Math at St.
Pat’s, I did feel that I struggled at times grasping the content and definitely underestimated at
times, how difficult some of these outcomes are to teach. Therefore, I felt that by first focusing
on the curriculum itself, both my differentiation and my questioning techniques developed after I
effectively understood the content itself.

c) How has student learning improved?

All of my higher-level learners have improved over the course of the internship in Math.
Breaking it up into units of study; Multiplication, Division, & Fractions. I found in both the
multiplication and division unit areas of study, student learning improved tremendously. This
was because I provided my students with multiple methods in order to solve both 2-digt by 2-
digit multiplication equations and 1-digit by 3-digit long division equations. By providing these
students with different strategies to choose from, they could first find and pick a strategy that
worked for them in order to understand how to solve the equations. Furthermore, after those
students had mastered those methods and/or strategies, I had them pick another strategy that they
weren’t most comfortable with using so they were able to perform multiple methods with ease;
therefore, enforcing higher-level thinking. When focusing on our fractions unit, I would

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differentiate some of questions for my high-level learners. For example, we had a couple lessons
that focused on multiplying and dividing equivalent fractions. Since these students know their
multiplication and division tables up to 9x9 so well, I created some harder, problem-solving
questions for them to solve, after they grasped the concept. An example of a differentiated
questions for these students would be: “An unknown fraction is equivalent to ½. The sum of its
numerator and denominator is 48. What is the fraction?” Another example I provided my
students is: “An unknown fraction is equivalent to 1/9. The difference between its numerator and
denominator is 32. What is the fraction?” Therefore, these question exemplars not only
reinforced the basic skills of multiplying and dividing equivalent fractions but rather, added more
components of measure such as addition and subtraction. Overall, judging from both my
summative assessments and my final student reflections, most of my higher-level learners felt
challenged throughout each unit and felt they improved as a whole.

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