The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge.
A Lesson on Sources and Student Presentations
Rationale:
Attached above are two articles that demonstrate this standard. The first link is for a guide that I made for my students on writing a lab report. A problem that I have noticed that is prevalent in schools and in the real world is that so few people know how to read scientific papers or find reliable scientific information. Therefore, this guide was made for the students to follow in writing a lab report-- and perhaps more importantly-- to read lab reports and scientific articles by familiarizing them with the structure of such media. The second artifact here is a lesson plan for my Survey of Plants and Animals elective class. In this lesson, students explored different scientific sources and were tasked with noticing strengths and weaknesses along with the reliability of such sources. After that, they began their summative assessment-- the rubric to which has been added as the third artifact. This summative assessment was an oral presentation about a unique plant species on our school's campus that the students researched. They gave oral presentations along with having a visual element such as a PowerPoint presentation. These three artifacts were made so that students could gain invaluable experience with scientific sources--written and oral. The first artifact was made in late November of 2022, and the second and third artifacts were made in early November of 2022.
Firstly, by my creating a Lab Journal Guide from scratch, I believe that this demonstrates a "foundational knowledge of reading [and] writing...within the content area". On top of this, the Lab Journal Guide itself is meant to "[address] student reading [and] writing...needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge." The second artifact shows how I intentionally exposed students to different kinds of sources which further addressed their reading needs. Lastly, the third artifact shows how I created a chance for students to grow in their oral communication needs which are a vital part of the scientific enterprise as a whole.
From these artifacts, students learned about how to read scientific sources, how scientific papers are written, and how to communicate their research orally in scientific manner. In a world often riddled with confusion about science, these skill are indisputably important, and I believe that more opportunities for access to the scientific community and data need to be given to people if we want progress in the scientific and educational communities. I have personally learned how truly crucial these skills are in the making and distributing of these artifacts along with how students responded to and grew as a result.