2.Content Area and Pedagogical Knowledge

The artifact chosen, "ELL Learners, Literacy, And Physical Education", is an assignment that allowed me to dig further into literacy and Physical Education. Within this artifact, one can find evidence and research that makes connections between English Language Learners, the impact of literacy in Physical Education, how it affects different types of learners in P.E., and strategies to help support literacy in Physical Education. This document was produced during my middle school methods course, ad serves as an important tool to bridge a connection for myself with P.E. and other academic backgrounds.

The importance of the artifact is to outline how literacy not only has a role in the general education courses, but in Physical Education as well. This artifact complies with IPTS knowledge indicator 2H that states the competent teacher, "understands the relationship among language acquisition (first and second), literacy development, and acquisition of academic content and skills. " The artifact presented allows me as an educator to expand my horizon on being competent in interdisciplinary lesson planning with literacy in my content area and using evidence based practice to connect literacy development and Physical Education.

While creating this artifact, I learned there are methods of engaging those from diverse background with literacy and Physical Education and using their backgrounds can play a key part in the connection. Learning and applying this content to my teacher toolbox will allow me to go through the academic day without blinders and look for new way of engaging students to literacy through Physical Education. For my future classroom, this artifact will help me by providing me with a higher level understanding of what ELL learners experience in the classroom, how they are as learners, and how I can help support them with various strategies to help them be successful in the classroom.

This artifact was made in part of a curriculum plan designed for middle school aged students. When I was in my methods course for Physical Education in 2018, in various stages we put together a curriculum plan for a middle school and this 4 lesson plan artifact is a product of that plan. Aligned to the current Christian College lesson template, inside you will find four lesson plans aligned to the Illinois state standards, different concepts of inquiry for focus activities. You will also find meaningful learning experiences that focus on students interacting with the content area, pedagogical knowledge, and evidence based learning.

By aligning with IPTS performance indicator 2M which states the competent teacher, " uses a variety of explanations and multiple representations of concepts that capture key ideas to help each student develop conceptual understanding and address common misunderstandings;" this artifact demonstrates at different points my ability to do so. In this artifact, I provide various explanations and demonstrations of skill based instruction, a variety of partner and group opportunities that capture main ideas for conceptual understanding, and allows for me to give feedback for common misunderstandings. There are points where students need further guidance to discover main ideas of learning physical skills and this artifact allows for that to happen.

A major takeaway from the development of this artifact was the idea for consistency throughout each lesson plan. When a lesson plan is aligned throughout, it minimizes the chances for errors and allows me to focus on teaching and using the strategies and lesson I planned for with the students. This helps my development as a teacher in that for a small time frame for unit planning, I am able to conceptualize and formulate a multiple lesson plans that are effective in pedagogical knowledge, methods of questioning, and connects P.E. specific literacy. This artifact connects to my future classroom as many classrooms are diverse in the student body and by providing accurate content area concepts and ideas tied to literacy will help them succeed in other academic areas as well.