One thing that I truly believe, is that all of my students are unique, with their own special talents and abilities.

 I am very fond of a saying from the Disney/Pixar movie Ratatouille that "Anyone can cook!" But as he says, I have to make sure they are not afraid, and that they have confidence. There is no "one-size-fits-all" in teaching. I meet my students where they are, and provide a safe, nurturing environment for them to learn and grow. I want my students to love school and to love learning. 

An example from one of my lesson plans:

For a math lesson I was teaching, I had some students who were still struggling with number recognition and counting. I developed this activity to work with partners and let these students help their more advanced partners while the more advanced students helped the learners find their measurement and they all worked together to measure each other and compare themselves to the penguins in the main unit.

In another lesson, I invited a pair of students to join me to play this game during math workstations. Through collaboration with another teacher, we up cycled and slightly modified this game from an early unit. It allowed them to be part of the math activity and allowed me to evaluate their understanding of the numbers as we played. They both were very excited to play and enjoyed their math work time as they developed their number formation and understanding.

A good example of scaffolded math lesson. 

I also like to scaffold my reading and writing lessons. This writing paper is provided to the students. I can suggest or "recommend" the next level to students as I see them develop or to encourage them to develop. These writing exercises also help me evaluate their practical phonics.

Some examples of virtual teaching from my courses.