Elissa J. McClain
​​​Professional Portfolio
The concentration of my master's degree was Literacy Education. As I pursued this degree, I learned how to create many effective lessons and assessments. I also engaged in research to improve my knowledge of literacy education which would support the wide range of modalities of classroom students. Below, you will see a variety of the projects and papers I completed that demonstrate the skills I have gained which have helped me become a more effective literacy instructor.
Elissa McClain's Literacy Showcase
Teaching Story Elements
TE 802: Reflect & Inquiry Teaching Practice I
Teaching students a variety of strategies to support comprehension while reading is incredibly important. During my internship year, I worked to develop lesson plans that taught students to closely study story elements. In these lessons, the students engaged in note-taking using sticky notes. Then, they placed their information in a PowerPoint. Click the image to the left to see the interactive retelling project I created relating to story elements. Click the link below to see the individual lesson plans.
Integrating Literacy Across the Curriculum
TE 803: Professional Roles & Teaching Practice II
In order to incorporate literacy as much as possible, it is important to integrate it across the curriculum. In TE 803, I learned how to successfully integrate literacy and social studies. I designed a unit for 3rd grade which required students to study primary and secondary resources as they learned about the history of Michigan. The purpose was to help students understand what life would have been like during early settlement and to explore reasons why people migrated to Michigan while viewing how Michigan achieved statehood. Click on the image to see the entire unit plan. Click on the links below to see an overview of the unit and two individual lesson plans.
Creating Differentiated Lessons for Struggling Students
TE 846: Accomodating Differences in Literacy Learners
As teachers, we must always differentiate our instruction in order to help all students reach their full potential. We are faced with a variety of students who all have different skills and needs. In order to design an effective literacy plan that supported a struggling student, I engaged in a case study of a 2nd grade student with a variety of challenges, both academically and emotionally. Click the image to see the final case study. Click the links below to see the lesson plans I created initially in order to conduct my case study.
Teaching Narratives, Revising and Editing
TE 848: Writing Instruction and Assessment
In order to be an effective writing instructor, it is important to first view who you are as a student of writing and then decide who you want to be as a teacher of writing. In this course, I learned about writing instruction through a genre approach. Then, I chose an area of writing instruction to conduct a research paper on. Click on the image to see my Teaching Exploration Project which focuses on the teaching of revising and editing, an area which I find to be difficult, yet extremely important. Click on the link below to find my genre exploration project -- a paper I wrote about a true event during my second year of teaching. The purpose was to choose a genre I'd like to practice writing -- a narrative.
Creating Effective Instruction for Students with Aggressive and Hostile Behavior
CEP 832: Teaching Students with Challenging Behavior
While this course did not necessarily focus on literacy instruction, I engaged in a case study of a young boy who demonstrated aggressive and hostile behaviors. These behaviors often illustrated themselves during writing workshop -- an aspect of school which he found to be extremely difficult. As teachers, we find ourselves faced with students with challenging behaviors every day. This case study shows the intervention I created in order to support his emotional and academic needs. Click on the image to the left to view the document version of my case study. Click the link below to view a PowerPoint presentation I created of the case study.