As an education candidate at West Virginia State University, I understand the significance of creating a culture consisting of high expectations that requires students to maintain hard work and effort, cooperate with peers, and welcome feedback for learning. This statement falls under my beliefs with Dr. Carol S. Dweck and her psychology of success through her published work, Mindset. "When given students a set of ten problems from a nonverbal I.Q. test, then praised some students based on ability and some on effort, research has shown that 90% of the ones praised from effort wanted the challenging new task they could learn from! The Effort kids thought the difficulty meant 'Apply more effort or try new strategies.' They didn't see it as a failure and didn't think it reflected on their intellect" (Dweck, 2008, pg. 71 - 72).​

 

An excellent example of the evidence of the hard work ethics that are demonstrated in my classroom this semester is shown in this video of me congratulating the students I was working with during their GoNoodle break; these students gave up their free time to spend time getting additional help from me, I modeled additional math problems for them as they were able to try and finish their assignments in Math which they were having difficulties with. Not many students would take an extra ten minutes to work on math, but these students did to help better themselves, and in the process of rewarding hard work, I gave them the stick that says, "Mr. Goodwin says well done! Keep up the hard work!"

 

My residency class utilizes a sound wall, a research-based program used in every class in our school. "Unlike a word wall, which organizes words in alphabetical order so that students can find and copy them, sound walls are organized by sounds alongside the letter patterns that represent them." This is Secret Stories, a Science of Reading-based program that is phenomenal for any classroom; the pictures indicate the stories behind the decoding. During the whole group ELA lessons or during word study, my cooperating teacher or I will incorporate the sound wall into the lesson with the story linked to the sounds associated with the lesson correlated to the curriculum. We learn about diphthongs and diagraphs; for example, we then use examples from the sound wall and ask students to recall from our wall and to find examples from the wall to match the sounds in the words we are learning about. This is wonderful because it has similar sounds; you can match them and identify the correct sound and decoding for the spelling.  

 

Role of learners: many of our students need a structure; though they can work independently, it is not time-effective to allow them to work and ask, "What do we do next?" So my cooperating teacher and I have begun using technology to display the "Ketch-Up, Must-Do, and Pick-One" prompt and the remaining time during interventions and small groups, so when you are not in a small group, you know exactly what you are supposed to be doing and are not wasting your time. As well, we have support with our anchor charts not only around the classroom on the walls with the lessons that we have learned through the previous weeks with new strategies, but also students have an Interactive Math and Interactive Reading Notebook, along with a Math "Show-Me" book that they are required now to show their work so we can help them with their strategies.

 

To create the welcoming classroom that we have, we are one of the few to have and celebrate our room with a bulletin board outside the class, which has a theme dedicated in my example from the beginning of the school year of an "All About Me" theme. This goes with the lockers that are ours following this board, and these have their work from an "All About Me" student survey that I passed out to the families on Open House Night before school started when I introduced myself to the parents and students.

 

Finally, regarding the environment, students can work with partners in related subject games when their work is complete; for example, reading would be reading games, and math time would be math games. The options are available in the games section; the students can get them if they can work quietly. This is a favorite of the students because they are now choosing the way they are learning and becoming a part of the decision of their education. This keeps them busy, and they know what they can do with structure and choice! I love this because Peers offer feedback in these educational games, and students quickly provide help and correct mistakes for each other. This idea is from the UDL, which "offers the students the choice to display their ways to demonstrate their pathways for learning" (CAST, 2024).