Standard 5: USING CONTENT KNOWLEDGE TO BUILD MEANINGFUL CURRICULUM

Key elements of Standard 5

• 5a: Understanding content knowledge and resources in academic disciplines: language and literacy; the arts--music, creative movement, dance, drama, visual arts; mathematics, science, physical activity, physical education
• 5b: Knowing and using the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of content areas or academic disciplines
• 5c: Using own knowledge, appropriate early learning standards, and other resources to design, implement, and evaluate developmentally meaningful and challenging curricula for each child.

Personal Analysis

In many ways, Standard 5 is the most challenging standard to meet and demonstrate for early childhood professionals. Having worked with each age/grade level from birth to second grade except for first grade throughout my field experiences, I now feel that I have a good sense of the content and central concepts for each developmental domain and curricular area. I also have a better understanding of how these concepts flow along a continuum from one age group to the next. However, this particular understanding is something I would like to develop further as I continue my professional development. When I first started off as an early childhood education student, I had a general background knowledge of the content in each academic discipline. Slowly, I began to build up a repertoire of content knowledge about each developmental domains for younger children. I also took courses that not only taught me the central concepts and content knowledge of specific academic disciplines, but also how to apply this knowledge in developmentally appropriate practice. In my very first teaching placement, I felt very underprepared concerning this standard. Now, I have had the opportunity to learn about each academic discipline in depth: literacy, math, science, the arts, and social emotional/social studies. In concurrence with my understanding of the content knowledge, I also had the opportunity to apply this knowledge for each academic discipline in a field experience. Each field experience was with a different age group, which gave me a greater appreciation for the ability to know and use the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of the content areas or academic disciplines.

I feel that I have come such a long way since my first teaching placement. I have occasionally struggled with explicitly communicating my content knowledge, but have always been able to demonstrate it through its incorporation into my lesson plans. Most recently, I have completed a curriculum unit project for two civics topics. This project was a new challenge for me because I needed to draw upon content knowledge for both preschool and first grade, and visualize the developmental continuum for the two social studies and social emotional topics for which my group was developing a curriculum unit. Another recent challenge was working with older students outside the early childhood scope (i.e., over age 8), and accommodating lessons for them in the resource room in my most recent student teaching placement. I had to very quickly re-learn as much content knowledge as I could about fractions, Colonial America, and simple machines. Although this was a challenge at first, it pushed me to be a better professional and have a greater appreciation for the necessity of this standard in the early childhood field.

Artifact: Science Lesson Plan Block C

1. Description

The artifact I have selected to demonstrate my proficiency in this standard is a lesson I planned and implemented during one of my earlier field experiences. The context for this artifact was a second grade class of 27 students at Brookside Elementary school. The students in this class were fairly diverse, with more than half being black or African American, just under half being white, and a few being Asian or multi-racial. Brookside Elementary is a public school in Christina school district in Newark, Delaware. All of the students here qualify for free lunch and snack, which speaks to the socioeconomic statuses of the majority of families the school serves. This particular field experience was part of my Block C placement in my undergraduate studies, in which I was placed with a second grade class while concurrently taking courses in science curriculum and guidance and behavior support for early childhood. I worked with this class during my spring semester of 2016, and implemented the lesson plan in May. By this time in the year, the students and I had gotten to know each other well and we were both comfortable with my role in the classroom. Since this was not a student teaching placement, I was not in the classroom every day, nor was I teaching lessons each time I was there. This elementary school alternated the instruction of science and social studies curriculum units every few weeks, and at the time when I was implementing my lesson this class was in the process of transitioning from social studies to their new FOSS science unit of life cycles.

This particular lesson plan is a science lesson plan which addresses the content area of life science and poses the question, "What is needed to make a bean plant grow?" Although the class had not actually begun their science unit yet, I implemented this lesson as a way to introduce the content area of life science and get the children interested in the subject matter. In a previous lesson, another pre-service teacher who was placed in the same classroom on different days implemented a lesson in which she introduced the parts of a lima bean and the students worked in small groups to prepare their lima bean plants in plastic bags. The purpose of the lesson was to encourage the children to use the scientific method to determine whether their bean plants would grow better in light or dark environments by observing what they see, making predictions, performing experiments, and recording their results. By placing a stronger focus on the scientific method in the context of life science, I hoped to scaffold their later understanding of life cycles and ability to use the scientific method when learning about them.

In my lesson plan, I include a description of the activity, the required background knowledge to implement the activity, and the Next Generation Science and Common Core standards I would be using. I then included a rationale as to why I decided on this particular learning experience, listed my objectives as they related to my standards, and discussed my interdisciplinary connection with literacy. My objectives for the children were for them to plan and conduct an investigation by working in small groups to ask questions about how plants grow and determining a way to test their hypotheses; demonstrate an ability to make observations by recording their observations of how the plants have grown in each setting in their science logs; use analysis and critical thinking

skills by determining which setting is more suitable for the plant to grow; demonstrate an ability to gather new information as well as an understanding of the topic by asking and answering pertinent questions in whole and small group discussions; and improve their writing skills by recording their observations in their science logs. The accommodations I described for my students involved grouping children heterogeneously to support ESL students and children at different points along the developmental continuum, checking in with individual students one-one on their specific needs, and adding an extension for children who finish early and need an added challenge. I then listed the materials needed and procedure for the lesson. I would need 12 lima bean plants, 27 observation sheets, pencils, and the book The Life Cycle of a Bean by Linda Tagliaferro. I began the lesson by reading the book as a whole group and discussing both target literacy and science concepts. We then recalled what the children did with their other teacher when they were first introduced to their bean plants, and we made predictions of what environment they think their plants will be best for their plant to grow. I modeled the activity by showing the students my own observation sheet and how I both drew a picture of and wrote a sentence describing my observations. Then the students broke into their small groups and observed their plants, making and recording their observations. After the procedure I included my assessment method for the activity which included a rubric, and a table showing how my standards, objectives, and assessment aligned. The final components of my plan are pre-implementation reflection in which I discuss how I am promoting active learning and higher order thinking among the students, as well as a bibliography of resources used in my planning.

2. Analysis

There are three key elements in Standard 5. They focus on understanding content knowledge for each academic discipline; knowing and using the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of each discipline; and using one's own knowledge, appropriate early learning standards, and other resources to design, implement, and evaluate developmentally meaningful and challenging curricula for each child. Each key element is dependent on the others, in the sense that you cannot plan a developmentally appropriate learning experience without having an understanding of the age-appropriate standards, the content knowledge for the specific academic discipline, and the central concepts you wish to target within that discipline.

The first key element for this standard is the most broad, calling on early childhood professionals to have an understanding of content knowledge for each academic discipline. The science lesson plan I have chosen as my artifact demonstrates such understanding quite explicitly. The science curriculum course I took concurrently with this second grade placement focused on pedagogical knowledge, and a specific component of my lesson plan required me to describe the required background knowledge necessary to teach this lesson. In this section I clearly demonstrate my understanding of content knowledge in the academic discipline of science by discussing the different types of lima beans, how to grow lima beans, and the goals of making observations within the scientific process.

Key element 5b addresses more specifically the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of each content area. This essentially requires teachers to understand not only the general content knowledge, but also apply the specific concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of each content area to the classroom in which they are teaching. There is a lot of content knowledge one could have about science, but to be able to recognize how much of it applies specifically to second grade is an added challenge. In my lesson plan, I focused on the topic of growing bean plants because it related to a central concept of life cycles that the class would soon be engaging in. Besides this, I think I put even more emphasis on the children's use of the scientific process as a whole by strengthening their prediction, observation, and recording skills. Understanding the basics of the scientific process and allowing children to explore, experiment, and observe is one of the most important central concepts when it comes to science in early childhood.

The final key element of this standard is 5c: using own knowledge, appropriate early learning standards, and other resources to design, implement, and evaluate developmentally meaningful and challenging curricula for each child. In many ways, I feel that I was most clearly able to connect this element to my artifact. I believe that a quality teacher uses as many resources as he or she can when planning curricula or learning experiences. In my lesson plan, I used my own knowledge in combination with outside resources to describe the required background knowledge one would need to effectively implement this activity. While I already knew a little bit about lima beans and enough about how scientists make observations, I needed to research more information about how specifically lima beans grow. I then added all my additional resources to my bibliography at the end of my lesson plan. When selecting my standards, I learned from my science curriculum course about the Next Generation Science Standards and selected the most appropriate ones (planning and conducting an investigation, making observations, and analyzing data) to target in my learning experience. Since I also made a cross-curricular connection to literacy in this activity, I included appropriate Common Core literacy standards that addressed writing as well as asking and answering questions to comprehend a topic. Each of the standards I selected were designed specifically for second graders, making them age appropriate. I used my selected standards to develop my learning objectives, then used my learning objectives to develop my rubric for assessment. This allowed me to design, implement, and evaluate a developmentally meaningful learning experience for my second grade students.

3. Reflection

I believe this activity was very effective, because the children were all very engaged throughout the lesson and met all or most of my objectives. I was able to incorporate my read-aloud into the topic of the lesson and helped the children further focus on the life cycle of a bean plant. We focused more on the scientific process instead of the content of life cycles, but from my observations and the children’s work samples they seemed to understand enough of the content and definitely demonstrated an ability to make predictions and observations. I learned that these children all enjoy working in small groups and being able to collaborate and work together. While many children did not raise their hand when I asked questions in whole group, I was able to talk to everyone individually at some point and learned that they did know the answers to my questions and they do understand the concepts. It could be due to the fact that I am not their usual teacher and so this was a more interesting experience for them, but all the children (even those who often don’t participate) were enthusiastic and participated in all aspects of the lesson. These children also are very hands-on and like to use all of their senses to observe besides just looking at the seeds. I can use this information if I were to plan future lessons for this class by making sure to make it a small group lesson as much as possible, as well as making sure to give each child an individual opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas. My formative assessment informed by teaching both during the lesson and for future teaching. During the lesson I noticed some children needed more support and opportunities to talk on-on-one to be able to share their observations and predictions. I also decided to write the instructions on the board as well as tell the class when I introduced the lesson, because some of the children can get sidetracked at times and need a visual reminder like that. All of the children were able to make predictions and answer my questions. All but 2 children received a 2 out of 2 on my writing objective and the majority of students made multiple, quality observations about the bean plants in the sun and the dark. Many students made the prediction that neither bean plant would grow because neither has soil. If I were to continue teaching these same ideas tomorrow I would ask the children to work again in small groups to think about if their predictions were right, and why or why not. I would also discuss with them what specific things plants need to grow, as they've already noticed that they need water and some know that they need soil. One thing I would have done differently is to model every aspect of the lesson more thoroughly. I also would have encouraged the children to talk with their groups about their predictions and observations prior to writing them down, to encourage more collaboration among the children. Due to the short period of time they have for science, I also would remind the children of time limits. This lesson also impacted me as an aspiring teacher. I learned that while I plan my lessons very thoroughly, I need to put more effort into planning for the unexpected. Although I did significantly better than in the past at managing an entire classroom, I recognize that whole-group management and my confidence in leading a lesson still needs some work. This experience will also impact my future interactions with colleagues because I can benefit so much from communicating and collaborating with other teacher both when planning and implementing lessons.