During the weekend leading up to my week of student teaching in an E1 (grades 1-3) classroom, I was blessed with a feeling of calm and peace that descended over me, after feeling much turmoil and trepidation during the previous months over my upcoming experience. I had finalized all my tentative lesson plans by Friday, had gone …
Do Kids Have to Learn Within Their Personal Learning Styles?
I realize that I've been posting mainly teaching-related content lately, but you have to realize that I am passionate not just about writing, but also about education (and am an Elementary Education major, which brings a lot of these articles to my attention). I found this to be an excellent article with some interesting new …
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Teaching Reading: Final Paper (Part 1)
My final paper for my Instructional Practices for Reading Teachers was made up of 5 short essays in response to 5 prompts about teaching reading. Here is the first prompt and my essay response. Stay tuned! Parts 2-5 will be posted over the next week or so. Compare and contrast the bottom-up curriculum and the top-down …
Biblical Integration: The What, Why, and How
My Biblical Worldview Assignment essay for my Instructional Practices for Content Teachers class at Liberty University. I believe there are two ditches Christian teachers can fall into when it comes to teaching and talking about worldviews and beliefs in the classroom, especially in public school classrooms. The first ditch is the belief that biblical values …
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Four Methods for Teaching Phonics
Abstract: This essay discusses three alternatives to Synthetic Phonics Instruction: Analytic Phonics Instruction, Analogy-Based Phonics Instruction, and Embedded Phonics Instruction. Definitions and examples are given for each method, and the different strategies are compared to each other. The Synthetic and Analytic methods are traditional approaches, and the Analogy-Based and Embedded strategies are modern approaches. While …
My Directed Reading Activity
For my Instructional Practices for Reading Teachers class, I was to practice using a Directed Reading Activity (DRA) with at least three students while reading an informational text. DRA is a strategy that provides students with instructional support before, during, and after reading. The teacher takes an active role preparing students to read the text by …
Teaching With(out) Textbooks
Here is my final assignment for Instructional Practices for Math Teachers. I must say, I had a very nice final's week (which is unusual). I told my family that it was probably the most stress-free finals week I had ever had! I think it was due, first of all, to the fact that I did not …
Biblical Integration Math Lesson
The idea for this assignment was to create a math lesson that integrated the Bible. The completed lesson plan was posted on a discussion board, where all students in Liberty University's Instructional Practices for Math Teachers class could view each other's plans and give each other advice and encouragement. One classmate advised me "to integrate …
Math Class Differentiation
I have something a little different for you all today! Usually I post my research papers, essay, and assignments from my Education program, but today I'm going to post one of my discussion posts from Instructional Practices for Math Teachers. I got 100% for this assignment, and my teacher and the students who replied to …
My Very First Math Lesson! (Part 2)
If you missed Part 1 of this installment, click the link to check it out. It contains my lesson plan and pictures of the materials I used. Below is the list of reflection questions that professor asked me. Again, my grade for this assignment as a whole was 98%. This reflection in particular, though, my …
Sarah E. Brown 