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
"I have always felt that outside school experiences are necessary for deepening content knowledge."
ReplyDeleteI would agree with your response totally and completely about outside, relevant experiences deepening content knowledge. I remember growing up going to the grocery store with my dad. I remember that he would always estimate the cost of groceries he would put in the basket and always know roughly how much he was spending in the store. When teaching a math class to students and teaching a lesson on estimation, being able to use real life situations to make the topic relevant will always help your students understand the concepts more deeply. When teaching a class on percentages and explaining to your students why it is important to understand the concepts so that you can save the most money when shopping. As a teacher your concept knowledge is deepened by all of the outside experiences you have had with shopping, saving money, investing, etc. which students can understand and appreciate because money is important to them. Using real life examples helps students understand concepts because they want to understand the concepts. These examples increase teacher content knowledge and also help students understand the subject matter as well.
Katherine, I really enjoyed what you wrote about learning math in the “real world.” A couple of months ago, I was asked to long-term substitute for a 7th and 8th grade pre-algebra class. Initially this opportunity terrified me because my confidence in math has always been weak; however, after starting the position, I soon realized that by giving meaningful real-life tasks the students’ interest and performance increased. As we worked on converting decimals to percentages I included target/CVS magazines to make things more interesting. It proved really effective with these students, and I realized my personal interest in teaching math expanded greatly.
ReplyDeleteAs for your capstone project, I really love your idea of putting together a compilation of non-fiction texts within social studies and science. Two resources that I use within my classroom are Junior Scholastic Magazine (Social Studies/Current Events) and National Geographic Kids (Science). In my experience the students love reading these two sources because they tend to discuss issues related to their lives and interests. They also have wonderful visuals! I am excited to see how your project progresses and I think it is a wonderful idea, especially with the Common Core Standards approaching.
Hello, Katherine:
ReplyDeleteI am really excited by your idea of using material from other disciplines to assist in expository reading and writing strategies! Historically there has been so much emphasis placed on literary analysis, but I think with the new common core standards they are recognizing that, while it's nice to be able to interpret Hamlet's motivations and connect his experience to one's own existential angst, it is also nice to be able to write a competent email, effectively understand an article in a newspaper, and determine whether that thing you're looking at in the US Weekly magazine is an actual informative article or just a well-designed advertisement. Perhaps it's unfortunate that these sorts of skills aren't safe to assume anymore, but here we are.
When I was a student teacher, one of the most engrossing lessons I saw had to do with reading multiple informational non-fiction articles and synthesizing them into a persuasive essay with text evidence from the prior sources. IT was quite challenging for even 11th graders, but the part that I enjoyed most was how the teacher had the students read particular articles as practice, which were (I am sure) specifically chosen to be *informative* to the students in their own right: articles about homophobia and bullying, teen suicide, volunteerism, even the environmental cost of using bottled water. So through the careful selection of these expository texts, she was able to teach the students how to be decent people at the same time. I love subversive teaching!
Hey there Katherine,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your intriguing blog post. As a single subject social science teacher I am very interested in the way you want to incorporate Language Art skills into Social Studies.I think it is very important not to look at each subject as separate and different but in a way that we can connect the needed skills and similarities between each subject and link them together. As you and I both know understanding how to read and write is one of the most important things that students learn during elementary school and beyond.
I am pleased to hear that there is a lot of research on this topic and I am interested to see what strategies and ideas the research shows you about incorporating Language Art skills in other subjects. Like I said, I teach history to high school students and even though the subject is defined as "history" I have worked hard to try to design my class in a way that students can work on other important skills as well. One of the most important being how to write a good essay. I wish you luck on your research and please let me know what you find because I would love to implement it in my classes.
-Lauren Lahey
Katherine.....I really enjoyed reading your post and how your experience with your mom helped you to better understand how math connects to the real world. I totally agree with when you said, "As a teacher it is my job to show my students these connections so that they see the importance of what they are learning." I think it's very important to tell students why they are learning it and why is it important to know. It's important to not just teach the how to students but also to explain the why they are learning it.
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to what research you find on incorporating Language Arts into other subjects. As a multiple subject teacher myself, you have to find ways to teach all the standards and incorporate them into other subjects. There is not enough time in the day to teach each subject in isolation. You have to integrate Language Arts and writing into all subjects. Using non-fiction and expository text allows students to become researchers and to ask questions. It allows students to explore topics that they are interested in and to come up with their own conclusions. When you make the content fun and interesting, students will want to read and write. I think Science and Social Studies are great content areas to integrate Language Arts standards. Good luck with your research! I look forward to what you find out and look forward to see what you end up doing for your final project.