The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic and local issues.
After becoming familiar with our content, we must figure out how to teach the content. This is how we apply our content. As teachers, we must find new and relevant ways to teach students the content that they will hold onto forever. The best ways for students to learn the content is for the teacher to apply the content in creative and interactive ways. If students interact with the content, they will remember the content better because the content has meaning. When the teacher encourages the students to make something of his or her own, the content becomes more meaningful to the students. When students interact with the content in meaningful ways, it becomes more relevant. In summary, application of content should be as student centered as possible.
When it comes to planning how to apply content, teachers should always keep the students in mind. My first artifact shows how I thought about one student in particular when planning on content application. This child has issues with behavior. He is always harassing other children in the class and drawing on his desk. My cooperating teacher uses a behavior chart in which students move up or down depending on his or her behavior, and he is always moving down on the chart. We would also scold him when he engaged in these behaviors. One day, he told the woman helping with literacy centers that he was the worst kid in the class. He also has a problem staying engaged while we were teaching. She told my cooperating teacher, and she realized that we were being too negative towards him. During my time with this student, I noticed that he liked to build, not just with blocks, but with anything. For example, he seems to like the word work center in which we let the students build letters with wiki-sticks. When he did this, he did what he was supposed to do. I noticed that he likes these word work centers in which he makes words. I inferred that he would enjoy a center in which he got to do word work with playdough. Not only would he enjoy it, but all the students would enjoy it because most young children love making crafts with Playdough. Therefore, I decided that the children would make their words on the word wall, or sight words out of Playdough. This artifact is so significant because it shows how important it is for a teacher to think about his or her students when deciding how to apply content. As I said before, I knew how important it was to think about all my students when planning my literacy center. However, it was thinking about motivating one student in particular that signifies its relevance. Some students are harder to motivate than others, so teachers must apply the content so that those students who are hard to motivate are engaged. This not only helps these students learn, but it also eliminates future behavior problems. Students who are happy in the classroom are less likely to cause behavior problems because they are engaged in the learning and not in their negative behaviors.
This artifact makes me a better teaching candidate because it shows that I think about what is best for all my learners to gain knowledge of content. At the same time, it shows that I know how to decrease possible behavior problems in my class. The best way to do this is to have students doing something creative and interactive. Furthermore, students should enjoy what they are doing with the content for students to remember the content forever. As I said before, most young children enjoy playing with Playdough. They will remember their sight words better because they will remember the fun time they had playing with Playdough. Students with behavior problems will be more engaged in content when they enjoy what they are doing with the content. It shows that I want to make my lessons as relevant as possible for my students to retain. After all, teachers should always teach content relevant to the real world. Those are the kinds of teachers a school is looking for, and I should be one of those teachers who makes content relevant to the real world, so they remember forever.
Perhaps the best way to figure out how to apply content to teaching is to allow the students to participate in activities that result in a creation they can say is their own. The second artifact I chose is a “My School Day” booklet I created for the students to complete as their writing literacy center. The assignment required students to write about their favorite parts of their school day; then, they draw a picture of them participating in that part of school. I chose this artifact because although students are participating in the same assignment, each student has different interests in school and will draw different pictures of their favorite part of school. In other words, each student has a booklet they can call their own. Furthermore, not only do they have a booklet they can call their own, it allows me to know my students’ interests and how I can apply the content I am teaching based on their interests. In fact, it allows me to find a way to make my lessons interdisciplinary. I can see what subjects and specials my students like and try to apply the content based on those subjects or specials.
This demonstrates my understanding of this standard because this shows how students are applying the content based on their interests. They are expressing their ideas of their favorite parts of school through writing and drawing. They are learning what how to write based on their interests in school. Even though I had a word bank on the board to help them with spelling, they are still learning to express ideas through writing. They are also using drawings to express those favorite parts of school. It also has another function of helping me find new ways for students to interact with content based on interests. I can see their responses and integrate those parts of school into my lessons in the future. This artifact makes me a better teaching candidate because it shows that I am getting to know my students through my application of content as I am teaching them to express their ideas through writing. I am teaching them to write with this book while also learning about their favorite parts of school. It helps them learn writing and helps me teach at the same time.