Monitoring is a critical element of teacher engagement, and will be reflected in student engagement. While content and pedagogical knowledge are paramount to success in teaching, systematic, explicit yet flexible moment by moment monitoring of individuals and groups to continually check for content understanding is the key to successful lesson planning and delivery, and student content comprehension.

        As such, close teacher monitoring is an integral aspect of pedagogy, and has many applications, for example : continual assessment and monitoring of evidentiary artifacts that reflect individual student content comprehension, level of engagement and interests; monitoring small and large groups (e.g.-thumbs up/down) as a routine and integral part of guided practice to gauge whether and which students will be able to fulfill explicit content, process and product assembly instructions for small group or individual work to follow; systematic rotational monitoring of individuals for continual assessment of content comprehension revealed in reading, writing, listening and speaking activity artifacts, and coupled with monitoring accompanying journalized reflections, thoughts, ideas and questions; monitoring of small group work to facilitate optimum support and productivity for individual group members, and/or to be able to know when and how to modify grouping to achieve this; monitoring using a dialogue journal along with periodic individual student interviewing for the explicit purpose of student & teacher acknowledgement of specific individual strengths and weaknesses in all proficiency areas, and to guide self-monitored goal revision explicitly based on content and productivity attributes of journalized content, process and product, etc.

      I have included several artifacts that demonstrate my ability to effectively  implement monitoring opportunities in my lesson planning.The primary artifacts I have chosen to demonstrate my understanding of monitoring applications in lesson planning include a 3-4^th grade content standards based math lesson for introducing a unit on fractions;  a 5^th grade interdisciplinary content standards based History-Social Science/Science/Language Arts/Math lesson for introducing a Science unit on the solar system that lays the ground work for an over-lapping History-Social Science unit on ‘The Age of Exploration’ and celestial navigation.             

        In the 4^th grade fractions lesson anticipatory set, I am mingling with all students who are up out of their seats, after a highly engaging and pictorial fraction concept read aloud. They are having many math conversations and  are wearing large distinctly colored signs with a fraction related number representation, and they are helping one another figure out how to line up to form a logical expandable pattern which they will post on the wall for reference using their signs.

    Meanwhile, I inter-changeably use monitoring to facilitate my engagement and vice-versa. I am actively engaged in monitoring facilitated by: roving and listening to small group productivity and processes; instigating disengaged or complementary students to interact by asking many math questions, modeling academic language in my questions and comments; modeling writing conversion equations to reveal or justify a pattern.-Students have been instructed to do the same, and have been front-loaded with the necessary vocabulary definitions that correlate with their sign representations. Students will be given ample time to line up and share and justify their ideas for building a useful pattern.- Meanwhile, I am observing many collectively revealing reading, writing, speaking and listening interactions, and gauging and documenting the level of individual and group understanding. Also, by monitoring closely I will know who to call on for input to drive the following large group debriefing in which reiteration of all justifications for the order of the line up are posted. analyzed, debated and voted on (e.g. thumbs up/down). I will also know with whom I should maintain overt eye contact meanwhile to both recognize, engage, identify and address struggling and/or enthusiastic confident and capable individuals.

        Afterward, close monitoring of small group  tiered learning center artifact production and reflection will afford me: time to document specific strengths and weaknesses of systematically targeted students, and many others; tangible evidence that documents and dispels or corroborates my earlier observations. As such, I will know: which learning center activities need to be retained for the next lesson, and/or modified or scaffolded to accommodate; whether I should introduce and/or modify sequential, expanded or extended activities for the next lesson. Most importantly, I will know for whom and specifically why I am making these decisions and preparations concerning specific, explicit and documented individual proficiency area goals for content, process and product. My rationale and detailed solutions as such will be proactively and readily shared with a particular student or students, a parent, a counselor or an administrator as needed for individual student planning. The following

artifacts show how I am able to incorporate these monitoring procedures with  complementary History and Science, Language Arts, and Math academic language and vocabulary comprehension.

        These monitoring processes actively engage students in the monitoring process in many ways and are designed to facilitate engagement, inspire group and individual  productivity and goal progress, and ultimately self-monitoring with guidance. All teacher and student data generated will serve as documentation of a clear plan to optimize individual goal progress in all proficiency areas. Please review the following artifacts.

      This Teacher Performance Expectation for interpreting data lends itself well to methods and lesson planning that include a variety of teaching and learning strategies for extended exploration, concept introduction with direct instruction, and finally application that encourages and leads to further exploration. This process invites many reading, speaking, listening and writing opportunities for soft and hard skill assessment and yields  product that can be differentiated in   many ways for  multi-level  learners for ongoing formative and summative assessment of learning. I have attached several artifacts that demonstrate my understanding of interpreting assessment data. They include: An Age-adapatable Persuasive Argument Writing Lesson ; A Reading and Writing Analysis Case Study; A 'Hands-on'  Age-adaptable Physical Science Density Lesson Plan, and several other supporting artifacts. These artifacts represent my ability to interpret data, and apply it effectively to continually accomodate multi-level learners, and to guide lesson pace and planning. 

       The Case Study for reading and writing  demonstrates that I know how to use, collect and interpret reading and writing data according to state adopted methods to find out about and address ‘the whole student’  with specific teaching and learning strategies according to their strengths, needs and interests, and encourage them to think about the way they think in order to facilitate content comprehension so that they can self-monitor with my guidance and regulary set attainable, challenging goals. The Persuasive Argument Writing Lesson plan includes synergized SDAIE teaching and learning strategies throughout and includes a broad representive range of specific learning needs accomodations as well as modifications for beginning, intermediate and advanced language learners, and a range of struggling and gifted learners. The Hands-on’ Physical Science Lesson demonstrates all of the former and as well includes specific examples of accommodations for a student with a learning disability (dyscalculia), and a student with a physical disability(orthopedic problems that diminish manual dexterity). The design of all three artifacts reflect my ability to maximize on designing and planning lessons inclusively  by embedding flexible accommodations and scaffolding in the essence of the lesson design to include and accommodate diverse learners. Various grouping strategies allow me to monitor and recognize when further accommodation is necessary, and flexible, modular and tiered learning center activities all ow me to be able to seamlessly make changes as they occur.