6.

1 Continuous Learning - demonstrate continual growth in knowledge and skills of

current and emerging technologies and apply them to improve personal productivity and
professional practice.
Reflection
The close read lesson plan and presentation was completed as part of a
professional learning opportunity I was chosen to participate in with seven
other teachers from our county. The reflection demonstrates how this
experience meets this standard.
Our county has been focusing on improving the critical reading and writing
skills of our students through reading and writing across the curriculum.
With this in mind, the county supervisor invited me to attend a professional
learning workshop to grow my knowledge of how to implement the strategy
of close reading with my students using an emerging technology within our
county, an Elmo document camera. With the focus on reading and writing
across the curriculum, and the recent acquisition of an Elmo document
camera, I was excited to learn how to use this technology. After learning how
a close read was conducted, I worked with a partner to apply the knowledge
and skills we learned to develop a model unit plan that would be shared with
teachers across our county. I then personally implemented this unit plan in
my professional practice with my students. The model lessons were
recorded and demonstrated how to use the Elmo camera to conduct a close
read with my students.
I learned several things from completing this artifact. I learned how to
effectively implement the close read strategy with my students and I also
learned how to use a document camera in my classroom. Both of these skills
have since proved to be very useful when integrating critical reading and
writing assignments with my students. The first time I implemented this, the
students wrote their response to the reading by hand. If I were to do this
again, I would have the students create their response in Google Docs and
share it with me. This would allow me to provide feedback to them in a
digital setting and would also allow them to have access to the work from
any workstation throughout our school.
The completion of this artifact had a positive impact on faculty development
and student learning across the district that I teach in. Each of the health
teachers used this same unit with their students and were given access to
the model lesson video so they could see how the lesson was first
implemented. I was designated the contact person so I was able to answer
questions of several teachers across our district. This artifact also positively
impacted student learning. By completion of this artifact, students were able
to use health related articles to conduct close reads and respond to a writing

prompt. The impact was assessed because their writing was graded using a
content specific and writing rubric.