In preparing to apply to the SIM summer institute in the spring of 2020, I was teaching the Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy to my 8th grade special education students. We were working in lesson 7 when schools were shut down. I had attempted to record a video of a lesson but had technical difficulties so future videos were planned. Obviously, I was unable to finish the lessons or the videos as we were in pandemic survival mode. Then, as school resumed this year, not only were my previous 8th graders now in high school, we were all adapting to online learning obstacles. As I now prepare my application this year I do not have the amount of evidence of instruction as I had planned. I am preparing to begin the Word Identification Strategy in my reading content support class this spring semester. I plan to make some videos and will have those and student portfolios available to fully round out this application by summer if all goes as planned. That way I still have the experience and evidence of completing an 8 stage strategy, as the bulk of my previous experience and evidence are lesson based strategies, because a good professional developer has a wealth of knowledge regarding as many strategies as possible.
