Standard 3: Knowledge of content and integrated curriculum
Educators should know, understand, and use the central concepts and tools of inquiry appropriate to the subject matter and age/grade levels they teach. They should be able to create meaningful learning experiences that develop children’s understanding of subject matter and increase their skills. Educators should plan integrated units of curriculum, instruction, and assessment based upon their knowledge of subject matter, curriculum goals, and developmentally appropriate practices among the families, communities, and cultures from which their children come.
In order to teach a class successfully, a teacher needs to be knowledgeable across all content areas. Teachers need to be able to answer students’ questions and teach them in all the different areas. These areas include science, social studies, writing, reading, and math. Once teachers understand the central concepts of different subjects, they can begin to combine subjects. Lessons that focus on multiple subjects are great for students. It helps students to make connections between subject areas. Lots of times, it also provides real life examples for what students are learning inside the classroom. Good teachers understand that the learning doesn’t just stop at the classroom, but it continues into the real world. Students need to understand this as well.
Great teachers understand the importance of integrating curriculum. In the book, Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum(2004) Drake and Burns discuss the importance of integrating curriculum and how to bring it into a classroom. One way to do this is through curriculum mapping. Curriculum mapping is when you map out each different subject’s curriculum. Teachers can then look at all the curriculum maps and see if there are any places to make connections throughout curriculums. Students and teachers can then look into different lessons and explore them more deeply. A science unit on space can also aspects of a writing unit by having students write about how the moon looks each day for a month.
Part of having a successful classroom is planning very well. In the book Understanding Backward Design Wiggins and McTighe (2006) talk about planning lessons using backwards design. An important aspect in designing a lesson using backwards design is creating an essential question. Essential questions are large, open-ended questions that get to the “big idea” of a concept, an historical event, or a subject area. Often they have a variety of answers. . By asking an essential question, teachers encourage students to think critically and to answer the question across a variety of different domains.
Early on while I was in my practicum, I noticed that a lot of the girls in my classroom were involved in cheerleading and liked to make up cheers. All the students in my class also really liked movement activities. As we began our geometry unit, the other two teachers and I thought about different cheers we could make for geometry terms. A favorite in the class was for a parallelogram. As we broke up the word, the things we said about it matched the definition. The lyrics were ‘p-a-r the lines go far, a-l-l hear me yell, e-l-o do they touch? No, g-r-a-m two pairs of them.’ The children were often seen singing the cheer and preforming the moves that went along with it. By the end of the unit, the children were able to make their own cheers up. By having the students learn and create their cheers, they were bringing music into their math lessons. They also brought in dance and movement by doing these different activities. In appendix 3A is the template used when students created their cheers
During my practicum, we also taught a Native American unit. In this unit, we talked about different types of tribes, where they came from, what they ate, what types of shelters they had, and what their daily lives were like. After we talked about different tribes, I planned a field trip for my students to go to a local park and collect different things they found that Native Americans would have used. Once the students arrived back at school, their task was to use the items they collected to make a Native American community. The students eagerly created teepees using sticks, and they made longhouses using sticks and bark. Some students even picked up berries at the park and added them in, because we read a story about Native Americans smashing berries to create paints. This lesson showed students that the community around them has a lot of things that Native Americans used to survive. In appendix 3B are images of students collecting items in the park as well as their final product of creating Native American communities.
It is important that teachers understand the content they are going to be teaching. Once teachers understand the content and what aspects of it are appropriate for the grade they are teaching, they can begin integrating curriculum. By exploring different topics in multiple ways, children will become even more knowledgeable about that topic and more motivated and interested in learning
References
No comments:
Post a Comment