Throughout my school years, I’ve had many teachers and professors that have had a great influence in my decision of me becoming a teacher. I look up to them and hope that one day I will be in the position that they’re in. My 5^th and 6^th grade teacher has made the biggest impact on me with becoming a teacher because the way he managed the classroom was amazing. He built a good relationships with the students and with the parents, he earned their respect. He made this impact, by making his lessons interesting and fun. Also, he showed interest in each one of us, it was clear the he was interested in our education, so I wanted to become like him and make my students feel the way I felt with him.

            Some of the fundamental concepts I want my students to learn is the importance of having values, I would like my students to be respectful because it will make it easier to teach them and to control them. Being respectful to other will also help them create new friends who they can collaborate with during classroom discussions. I believe that having a good relationship with my students is the key to a successful school year, but this can only be obtained by having respect and other values. I would know that I have built a good relationship with my students when they aren’t afraid of asking for help or participating in class because as a student that’s one of the biggest fears that we have. I want to achieve this by respecting my students, sharing experiences with them and by promoting the universal values like discipline, responsibility, tolerance etc. I can achieve this by encouraging moral principles like friendship, generosity, and kindness. Also by helping my students develop their self-esteem by making them feel that they’re important people in my classroom.

Being patient with students is also an important factor, putting myself in their shoes will help me understand them more and it will make it easier for me to help them because I’m a student and I know how it feels like to have a teacher explain something several times and still not be able to understand, but not just academically, being patient with their discipline is also important, reasoning and talking to a student is better than yelling at him.

Some of the things I will be teaching are the fundamental concepts of science. I will be teaching in upper elementary in a 4^th grade classroom. In my classroom I will have a variety of activities that will meet the common core standards, and will prepare my students to meet the required scores for standardized tests that NCLB requires. The activities that I will use in my classroom will either be done as a whole class, in large groups, small groups, or independently. These activities will consist of practicing the three types of writing which are argumentative, persuasive, and informative. I will also have reading activities for my students, I will model how good reading should be done by doing a read aloud to them, we will practice shared reading, and I will make sure to consider the 50/50 rule when my students practice these activities. This rule consists of reading non-fiction texts, and fictional texts for the same amount of time. These activities along with formative assessments like bell ringers, entrance and exit slips, will help me guide my instruction since they will provide feedback about where my students stand, by doing this I will know whether my students are ready to continue or if I have to go back and reteach a lesson in order to have my students prepared for the different types of summative assessments I will use in my class.

For the activities mentioned I will accomplish them by using the scaffolding method that Vygotsky mentions in his theory. I will provide assistance to my students, but as they progress I will reduce the amount of assistance until they’re able to work independently, and in their zone of proximal development.

I will have my classroom set up as a student center classroom, which means I won’t have rows or columns facing me, but instead I will have the desks or tables put together so it is easier for my students to collaborate and have discussions. For every lesson plan I create, I will always consider my classroom’s diversity. I will have students with learning disabilities like ADHD, ADD, and Autism etc. I will also have ELL students and students that are talented and gifted which is why I will have to differentiate my instruction. Besides these types of diversity, I will also consider my student’s socio-economic status, whether they have the appropriate materials and resources at home, and if they don’t I will find a way to provide these students with the appropriate materials to become successful. I know that technology is becoming an important tool in education, and I will continue to grow. Nowadays it is even considered a part of literacy, but many of my students won’t have access to it so I will either have them come in before class, have them stay after class, or make time during the day so they can experience using these devices and don’t fall behind.