The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Standard 5: Application of Content

The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues.

The artifact that best encapsulates InTASC Standard 5 is my Strategy Lesson I

Rationale

The InTASC standards that best exemplify the included artifact are:

5(a) The teacher develops and implements projects that guide learners in analyzing the complexities of an issue or question using perspectives from varied disciplines and cross-disciplinary skills (e.g., a water quality study that draws upon biology and chemistry to look at factual information and social studies to examine policy implications).

5(d) The teacher engages learners in questioning and challenging assumptions and approaches in order to foster innovation and problem solving in local and global contexts.

5(e) The teacher develops learners’ communication skills in disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts by creating meaningful opportunities to employ a variety of forms of communication that address varied audiences and purposes.

5(f) The teacher engages learners in generating and evaluating new ideas and novel approaches, seeking inventive solutions to problems, and developing original work.

5(h) The teacher develops and implements supports for learner literacy development across content areas.

5(k) The teacher understands the demands of accessing and managing information as well as how to evaluate issues of ethics and quality related to information and its use.

5(l) The teacher understands how to use digital and interactive technologies for efficiently and effectively achieving specific learning goals.

5(m) The teacher understands critical thinking processes and knows how to help learners develop high level questioning skills to promote their independent learning.

5(n) The teacher understands communication modes and skills as vehicles for learning (e.g., information gathering and processing) across disciplines as well as vehicles for expressing learning.

5(o) The teacher understands creative thinking processes and how to engage learners in producing original work.

5(p) The teacher knows where and how to access resources to build global awareness and understanding, and how to integrate them into the curriculum.

A description of the artifact, when it was created, the purpose and process of its creation:

The included artifact was created as an assignment for Reading and Multiple Literacies: an essential class in the Education Development and Training program at University of Maryland University College. The artifact, Strategy Lesson I, is meant to be developed for a class that had been observed during a field experience. I chose to create this lesson for a blended English 9/ Reading Intervention class at Frederick High School, located in Frederick, MD. There were two parts of this lesson that were especially tailored to fit the needs of the students in this class: the behavior plan and the model for grouping. Frederick High School has a high population of students that come from families with low socioeconomic status. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, adolescents have certain needs that must be met before they can really focus and perform well in school. Not all students have these needs met at home, which means they may need to be accommodated in school. Though there are many ways in which such students can be accommodated, grouping and classroom organization can make it easier to learn and complete group assignments. In my lesson plan I made sure to mention that groups would be heterogeneous and should be organized to best accommodate behavior in the classroom, reading level, and over all class performance. I also emphasized that no matter the socioeconomic status of the student, expectations should be the same. It is important to know and be understanding of the various backgrounds and family life of students, but it is more important to hold them all to the same educational standards.

How does this artifact demonstrate achievement of Standard 5: Application of Content?

Part of what Standard 5: Application of Content asks of teachers is to understand and promote creative thinking processes and how to engage learners in producing original work. It also asks that the teacher understand communication modes and skills as vehicles for learning. This lesson demonstrates both of these standards, as it requires students to come up with their own opinions that they must discuss before writing their views into an essay. Students must work and learn collaboratively to be creative in formal arguing and writing through the course of this assignment, questioning and challenging assumptions and approaches in order to foster innovation and problem solving in local and global contexts, as well.

How has my understanding of the standard been affected by the creation of this artifact?

Through the creation of this artifact, I challenged myself to focus on utilizing different forms of literacy and to guide learners in analyzing the complexities of an issue or question using perspectives from varied disciplines and cross-disciplinary skills. Learning to write is a skill that is needed in all classes, and students should be prepared to write about topics that are not only English related. In this assignment, students get the opportunity to choose their own topic of research, permitting it is appropriate for a argumentative essay. These topics can be social, science, or even politically charged, as long as students can use such information to create a well organized and formatted essay. Teaching this writing skill as a group based research project also asks students to practice digital, social, and written literacy, supporting the need for developing a variety of learner literacy across content areas. I had not considered that there were different kinds of literacy, or that they could be applied to a lesson at the same time. Creating Strategy Lesson I altered many preconceived ideas I had about literacy, and allowed me to be redefine, for myself, what literacy can look like in an English lesson.

What are my strengths related to this standard? What do I need to improve on?

Though I believe this project meets the requirements of Standard 5: Application of Content, I think I could work on the development of the critical thinking process. I don’t think I offered students enough support to develop their critical thinking when formulating their arguments. If I were going to revise this lesson, I would include critical thinking questions that were generic and could be applied to any topic. This would allow students to use these questions for whatever topic they chose to research for their essay. Another improvement I could make to this lesson, would be including websites that students could visit to conduct research. Providing students with a list of websites to get them started would help them with future research, as it would provide them with a model website. Providing more models, in general, for this lesson would be a big improvement. Writing an essay can be a daunting task, whether it be individual or as a group, so providing students with additional examples would help them feel more comfortable completing this project.

From my perspective, I successfully created a project that prompts students to look at the world around them, form an educated opinion, and convey that opinion in an organized manner. Teaching students to support their opinions with facts is one of the more important jobs we have, as teachers. This skill will follow students on to college, or to the work place and beyond. This lesson also helps learners to develop communication skills, as students will be working in groups to complete the assignment. Students will have to voice their opinion and discuss with group members to decide what their topic will be and how their argument will be supported. High school students, especially ninth graders, are often uncertain of how to discuss opinions with each other. It is important to give students a platform to learn how, and to practice discussing real-world issues, which is exactly what Strategy Lesson I accomplishes.

Artifacts

Strategy Lesson I:

Created for High School English

Supplementary Presentation: