I have always felt that outside school experiences are
necessary for deepening content knowledge. Growing up, I always knew that what
I was learning was important but I never truly understood its importance until
I was able to use those skills in the outside world. For example, I really
struggled with finding percents of whole numbers in middle school. Although I
tried to learn how to solve these problems I didn’t see the point in trying to
learn them. One day, I went shopping with my mother in a store where everything
was 30% off. She so easily found the reduced price for each item she looked at.
Once I was able to see the practical use of what I was learning in the outside
world, I was instantly more engaged in the topic. As a teacher it is my job to
show my students these connections so that they see the importance of what they
are learning.
This idea greatly connects to one of the topics we addressed
during the class discussion of the Ball article. On page 5 Ball writes that,
“teachers in all subjects influence students through their own engagement in
ideas and processes. Teachers’ intellectual resources and dispositions largely
determine their capacity to engage students’ minds and hearts in
learning”. I’ve always felt that
engaging your students is one of the most important jobs that a teacher has.
However, I was also enlightened to hear the different perspectives my
classmates had when reading this section.
We discussed that a teacher’s enthusiasm can greatly effect
how your students receive a lesson. Also, a teacher’s lack of interest in a
subject can negatively affect a lesson. Ball also mentions on page 10 that
students begin to determine which subjects they like or dislike and this can
shape their interested in their education. Just as my own tastes can form my enthusiasm
for a subject, my students also have their own dispositions.
Overall the discussion of the article raised a lot of
questions for our class. We were able to discover that ultimately teachers do
not always have deep knowledge of the subject matter that they are teaching. As
an elementary school teacher, it seems almost impossible to have the knowledge
that is needed for every single subject area that I am expected to teach. Since
I am still early in my teaching career, I find that the only way to improve
this is by reflecting at the end of each school year and determining how I can
better my knowledge for the next year.
Coming into the program I had an initial idea of the line of
inquiry I would like to pursue. My current school district has begun exposure
to the new common core standards. One of the major challenges that I see with
the common core standards is push towards non-fiction text and expository
writing in Language Arts. With so few hours in the school day I want to find a
way to examine this type of text using our own Social Studies and Science
resources.
The question that I will be perusing is: How can I teach
Language Arts Strategies in other content areas such as Science and Social
Studies. Through conducting some research I have found that there is a
significant amount of information available in this area. My goal is to take
the information that I have collected from my research and design lesson plans,
mini lessons, and other strategies to test in my classroom during this upcoming
school year. These experimentations will allow me to collect some experimental
learning sources for my final capstone project. I hope to create a venue to
share all of this information with other teachers so that they may use these
strategies in their classrooms.
The blogs that I responded to are:
The blogs that I responded to are:
Karen Vigna
Jocelyn Brodeur (Rohan)
Kelly Giotta
