Content Area and Pedagogical Knowledge

This artifact is an English Language Arts lesson that was written for my cooperating classroom that I novice taught for and continued my student teaching in. This lesson was for the course EDUC380: Diverse and Learner Ready Teaching and was produced for October 6, 2022. This lesson was produced with modeling, partner practice, and individual practice in order for the students to show their understanding of the main ideas of a story. The use of the website Padlet was incorporated in order for students to have practice with typing their answers, rather than writing. 

This lesson is an important artifact as it incorporates the “use(s) of technology to support instruction and enhance student learning” (2L). Within this lesson, Padlet was used in order for students to individually record their answers. I then showed all of the answers on the board (without students names) in order to discuss and build off of one another's answers. The standard of Content Area and Pedagogical Knowledge is being reached within this artifact because there is a meaningful learning experience that is created within this lesson. Technology surrounds our daily lives so it is important that students are using different resources to be able to help build their future excellence. 

By creating and putting this lesson to use, I was able to gain an amazing experience of incorporating a simple, yet effective resource of technology into my lesson. I was able to understand how important it is to incorporate technology into lessons in order for students to grow in that area of their lives. This will not only help them grow in the area of technology, but it can help them grow in many other areas of their lives. As an educator, it is important to recognize how technology can help students access and broaden their knowledge beyond the computer in their daily lives. For example, by having the students type on the computer, it can help them recognize how words should be spelt and be a continuous tool for them as they go back and write with pencil and paper. 

This artifact is a lesson that was created for my cooperating classroom during my student teaching experience. This was a two day lesson in which the students learned about what is in a community and what type of communities they/their families are in. As a class, we went through the chapter, discussed communities, completed worksheets, and did some individual practice of describing the differences of communities. I produced this lesson so that the students can learn to recognize what communities they are a part of and how they might differ from those in the classroom. 

This artifact is very important as it teaches the younger generation of what is around them and “facilitates learning experiences that make connections to other content areas and to life experiences” (2N). The students use this experience of learning about communities and recognizing what is similar/different within the communities they are in, whether that be the sports they play or the type of house that the students live in. Lessons like these are meaningful learning experiences for the students because it allows students to enhance their understanding of themselves and to connect and understand those who differ from them.

Social studies is a fascinating subject that allows for not only the students to learn about one another, but for me as the educator to learn about everyone as well. It is extremely important to recognize and embrace the differences between the students, and with lessons like these, I am able to do just that. By teaching this lesson I was able to discuss with the students what kinds of communities they are involved in outside of school. There is great significance in learning about what the students enjoy in their daily lives to help build respect and connections with one another. My goal as a teacher is to continuously learn about what the students enjoy, so that I can incorporate these things in brain breaks or even throughout lessons to keep engagement high and build a greater comprehension of what is being learned.