Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I think that this standard wants me to recognize that in order to create learning experiences that
best meet the diverse needs of all students and make learning meaningful, I will need to be
knowledgeable of the content I plan to teach to my students and also analytic of the various
approaches, principles and theories related to teaching specific disciplines. This standard states
that competent teachers not only evaluate teaching resources and curriculum material, but also
apply various viewpoints and theories so to provide students with learning experiences that
maximize opportunities for students to make connections, use technology, and practice inquiry
skills.
2. Explain how the artifact you chose demonstrates your understanding and
application of the
standard.
problem-based lesson plan I created for my Curriculum and Instruction 432 class – Investigative
lesson, focused on a grade level of interest, which teaches through problem solving, meaning,
students learn mathematics concepts by solving problems. Creating this lesson plan required me
to make myself an expert on the concept at hand – identifying and locating numbers on a
hundred number chart – and the strategies used to do so. I was adapting the lesson from the
Saxon curriculum, so I was forced to modify the lesson so that students had to use problem
solving strategies to learn, which allowed me to apply the following aspect of the standard:
“Understands the processes of inquiry central to the discipline.” In addition, the outline of the
lesson plan included a table in which I had to fill out the teacher initiated questions, the expected
students responses to those questions, and the reactions to student reactions I planned to use. In
doing so, I anticipated and adjusted for “common misunderstandings of the disciplines that
impede learning.”
3. A If the artifact has been used in your practice, reflect on how your
teaching will change in
B. If the artifact has not been used in your practice, i.e., a class
assignment, reflect upon how
My teaching will be impacted by the assignment, because the assignment has allowed me to
study and apply aspects of pre-planning that are often overlooked. In the future, I plan to
consider how students may misinterpret content, and the questions I can ask and activities I can
include that will help to correct these misinterpretations. In being prepared in this way, I can best
meet the needs of all my students and provide a “variety of explanations and multiple
representations of concepts that capture key ideas to help students develop conceptual thinking.”
In addition, I am now able to see the importance not only of being aware of various learning
theories, principles, and debates, but also the importance of applying them to instruction and
evaluating their worth. The theory I worked with was “teaching through problem solving.” In
applying it to my instruction I was able to make an educated evaluation of its value in the
classroom.
A major aspect of this assignment was to include explicit English Language Learner strategies
into instruction so to best meet the needs of all learners, including those with linguistic barriers. I
included language objectives for the English Language Learners, and also included several
key terms, providing explicit vocabulary instruction, etc. In addition, I wrote several paragraphs
explaining the strategies used and my reasoning for doing so. This is one of the only lesson plans
I have written keeping in mind ELL accommodations, because I have yet to teach in a classroom
with ELLs. From having written this lesson, I feel prepared to teach and learn in a diverse
society.