"Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be."
InTASC Standard:
Standard #5: Application of Content
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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 (InTASC, 2013).
Brief Description of Evidence:
During my fall semester of 2019 in my EDUC 233-Literacy Development through Children’s Literature course, I worked in a group to complete an Integrated Literacy Lesson Plan for K- 1st-grade students. We had the opportunity to go to the YMCA in Muncie and implement this lesson plan as teachers. We also had the chance to choose any children’s book we wanted so we picked “Green Eggs and Ham'' by Dr. Seuss. We decided to choose this book because we think it was appropriate for their age and because it has the potential for us to teach the students about rhyming words by using the vocabulary words that are in the book. We decided that after doing the rhyming words activity we would do a rhyming word game where the students will have the same words but we got the pictures of the words like a picture of a house and a picture of a mouse so they would have to match up the picture by rhyming them. We wanted to challenge the students in different areas such as engaging them in critical thinking and problem-solving. This allowed us to help the students to connect different concepts and use different perspectives to engage them and keep their interest in learning.
Analysis of What I Learned:
By conducting this Integrated Literacy Lesson Plan, I understood how to work collaboratively with the students and other teachers. I have gained knowledge on how to teach the students to connect concepts by teaching them rhyming words. I understand how to use differing perspectives to engage my students by creating a rhyming game with pictures to test their critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving skills. This lesson plan also allowed me to see how their vocabulary grows and the students will ask more questions such as “What other words could rhyme together?”. The students also started to suggest other words that rhyme together and it made me feel that I accomplished the goals I’ve set for them in the lesson plan.
How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the InTASC Standard:
I am competent in this standard because it shows that I understand the importance of working together with other teachers to create a lesson plan that challenges the students. I genuinely feel that I can help students understand what is expected of them, which leads to more students being more engaged in their learning. By using the rhyming words activity and the rhyming words game with pictures, I understand how to teach students to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage the students in critical thinking, using their creativity and imagination, and collaboratively with other students implement their problem-solving skills. By interacting with the students at the YMCA and developing two activities made me think that John Dewey’s “Hands-on Approach” (Staff, 2021) was the best match to be my theorist in this lesson plan. John Dewey believed that children learn through a hands-on approach (learning by doing) by interacting with their environment in order to adapt and learn. This lesson plan assignment helps me to connect concepts and use different perspectives that allowed me to implement challenging learning experiences for the students. When I taught this lesson, I did not realize that it could be connected to an authentic local and global issue, but after reflecting on it, I can see how this lesson could be used to discuss the idea of kindness and bullying with the students and respect each other's opinions and differences as did not happen in the book when it was constantly asked of the characters.