Note: this is actually a form with check marks from "No evidence" to "Expert". This document only includes the comments for each section, correlating to the California teaching "strand". This was my last quarterly assessment with my new supervisor.

Overall

1. Michele connects with students on many levels. She works hard to learn about students as people and as learners, and crafts ways to support students in ways that work best for them as individuals.
   
2. Michele is an amazing curriculum writer. Though she often admits she “hates” creating curriculum, the unit she wrote (and taught), as well as other activities and assessments she has adapted or created over the past six months, have been models of access and have required students to construct their own meanings about difficult mathematics.
   
3. Michele is willing to try new things. The plethora of activity structures, activity types, access points and uses of technology she has incorporated into her lessons is outstanding.

Strand One: Engage and Support Students in Learning

1. Michele continues to work hard to support individual students. This is clearly a primary commitment for her, and she has expanded the ways in which she supports students in the past quarter. For example, Michele used an exploratory activity in groups of eight to provide students safe, collaborative space to determine the relationship between a circle’s radius and circumference.
   
2. Michele consistently works to re-frame problems and concept in ways that make sense to students. Her opening to a unit on probability focused on an adventure-based game that clearly appealed to students and that she used throughout the unit to provide students with a conceptual base.
   
3. Michele’s class had the lowest number of failing grades currently than any other Algebra II class at Sequoia.

Strand Two: Supportive Learning Environment

1. Classroom management is still one of Michele’s clear strengths. In the past quarter, however, she has worked to refine some of her practices to create an even safer and more collaborative environment for her students. For example, she implemented “stuck strategies” for students working in groups such that they would use each other for help and support before using her.
2. Michele has also expanded her work with parents in the spring quarter, and has focused on reaching out to the families of a few students in particular who need extra support focusing in class and completing work.
3. Michele has made strides in her use of instructional time, as well, by working harder to prepare technology, manipulatives and other resources ahead of time. She often has directions for students and handouts for the first activity ready as students walk in the door so they know what to expect as soon as the bell rings.

Strand Three: Content Knowledge

- See next Evidence section -

Strand Four: Curriculum

1. Michele has done some amazing work this quarter with designing and implementing curricula that blend her understanding of content with providing access to that content to students. Two examples from one observed period are the following:
   
   • Michele re-organized an activity from the textbook in which students worked in randomized groups to come to an important mathematical discovery. In lieu of having students do the tracing and cutting of paper circles to use in the activity, as suggested by the text, she provided circles to groups and challenged them with a question that got to the meat of the mathematics. This choice not only saved time but focused students’ attention on the important part of the activity related to goals.
     
   • Throughout the same lesson, Michele spiraled the primary discovery made by students in four other ways into the lesson. The result was that over the 90 minutes students were exposed to the same important geometric idea in multiple ways, and it was clear that students who had not quite gotten it in the beginning had a better handle of it by the end of the period. This facilitated the quick development of students’ procedural and conceptual understanding of an important and ubiquitous mathematical idea.
   
   
2. Additionally, Michele is adept at using materials and problems from other sources to supplement the textbook. Though Michele has reported “not liking” the [omitted] textbook her CT and placement department use, she has made every effort to understand it and use it most effectively for her students. This is exceptional considering it is easy to dismiss a curriculum in one fell swoop instead of working to see the possibilities it has the potential to provide. (Note: I got more used to the textbook as I went along.)
   
3. Michele does the majority of her formal lesson planning “in her head.” Though she often creates supplements to her textbook in the form of worksheets, quizzes, handouts, etc., I will continue to encourage her to more formally connect the things she uses with students to larger goals and over longer periods of time.

Strand Five: Assessment

1. Michele has expanded her definition and use of assessment in her class quite a bit. As one example, Michele gave a warm-up worksheet recently on topics that had been covered the previous few class periods. Michele used this as a formative, un-graded assessment to learn more about students’ understandings by walking around and noting student work. I have encouraged her to take the next step and collect this work in order to have time outside of class to review the work in more detail in order to make changes to the next day’s lesson accordingly.
   
2. Michele has implemented a policy that she will not accept a test or quiz with any blanks. This means students must attempt every problem in order to be able to submit it. During tests and quizzes students have learned to approach her when they are truly stuck and ask for help instead of turning in the test incomplete.
   
3. However, observing that students had begun getting used to being able to approach her with blank problems and get a jumpstart without having necessarily thought through what to do on their own, Michele created a group test that students completed in groups of four and were not allowed to seek her help with.
   
4. I am not sure how Michele involves students in assessing their own learning, nor have I seen her ask students to self-assess their work. The primary mode in which Michele gives feedback is orally, and I will encourage her to expand not only how she gives feedback to students and helps them understand where their learning trajectories are, but also the types of feedback she gives. For example, Michele uses test score data comprehensively in assessing students’ progress, but I am not sure how she uses more qualitative data.
   

Strand Six: Professionalism

1. Michele has come a long way in terms of being able to talk about her practice openly and reflectively. She often comes up with possible answers to teaching dilemmas or questions I have asked in creative and student-focused ways that lead to innovations in her classroom.
   
2. Though Michele is still as busy as ever with extracurricular activities, her students are always her top priority, and they clearly know this.
   
3. Michele has overall enjoyed working with her CT and his department this year, and they with her. Last time I visited her classroom her CT mentioned to me how proud of me he was of the many ways he had seen Michele grow over the course of the year, particularly in how she addressed specific student needs and uses curricula flexibly.

Overall

It has been a pleasure working with Michele the past two quarters. She has grown so much in a short period of time because of her consistent willingness to engage with me on tough issues about her practice and the teaching practice as a greater profession. Most importantly, this observed growth has helped her reach even more of her students. I encourage Michele to continue to set specific, short- and long-term goals for herself for her professional practice so that her success with students continues as she continues in her teaching career.