2-1 Content Knowledge

The candidate understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of
the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates content-specific learning and literacy
experiences that make the discipline accessible and relevant to assure mastery of
the content.

As a music teacher, it is important that the teacher not only knows the content well
that they are teaching, but also understand the central concepts, tools of inquiry,
and structures of discipline(s) that they teach. Teachers need a starting point when
teaching students music content, so they begin a concept by using the district
approved curriculum. Below, readers will see that I did just this by using the
district’s scope and sequence, which goes hand-in-hand with the district curriculum.
Using this to determine where students are at and where they should be headed is
how I begin to write a unit plan for students.

In my time at K-State, I learned how design whole units that explore one concept.
Included within these unit plans are plans for activities, assessments, and multi-
subject integrations. For example, in my first artifact you will see an elementary unit
plan for the concept of Re. In it this unit plan I have selected songs to teach that
include Re and prepared them in a way that uses the “prepare, present, practice”
method. Within this plan there are not only songs, but also various activities that
range from body percussion to Orff instrument accompaniment, improvisation, to
musical games. These are all methods that keep students engaged in their musical
experience all before they even know what they are singing in regard to Re. The
next artifact is an observation document from my advisor that details feedback on
me teaching a lesson from a similar unit plan (yet this one is about Do rather than
Re). In this observation feedback you can see the different methods for both
classroom management and tools of inquiry that I used with these students that
allow me to constantly check in with these students to see where they are at
cognitively. The final artifact focuses on my secondary planning methods in which I
designed a full year curriculum with extensive detail on both the content and the
assessments used. This particular curriculum details the “why” behind each of these
musical selections and gives goals and objective to base the unit plans on for each
of these pieces.

Artifacts: Elementary Unit Plan, 2nd observation feedback document, Full-year

curriculum