"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 #8: Instructional Strategies
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The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.(InTASC,2013)
Brief Description of Evidence:
During the spring semester of 2021 as part of my EDUC 240- Introduction to Physical and Health Education for Teachers course, I had the opportunity to work collaboratively with my group and create a health and physical education Flexible Learning Path/Lesson Plan for third-grade students. Due to COVID-19, I couldn’t go to a school to implement this lesson plan. Luckily, we were able to implement our lesson plan with our peers acting as our third-grade learners via Zoom. Our “third-grade learners” watched a video to learn about the five dimensions of health and how being healthy does not only mean being physically healthy but also including mental, spiritual, emotional, and social health too. They were also able to be actively engaged in their learning by participating in the Workout Shuffle. For the workout shuffle, I used 13 cards from the deck and each card had a specific exercise. I would roll the dice to see how many times they had to do each exercise (For example, push-ups). Before they could do the workout movement, I had my learners divide or multiply the number rolled by a number from 1-10.
Analysis of What I Learned:
Through the process of preparing a health and physical education lesson plan, I learned how important it is to use a variety of tools such as videos, a dice roller app, a deck of cards, and a google document to create a lesson plan filled with different strategies that I can implement in my future classroom. I learned that there are various ways children communicate, and it is my job to implement those different ways into my future classroom to see engagement and success in my learners. I learned that it is important for me to be flexible in my planning, and to be able to adjust my instruction. I also learned that the students can take control of their own learning and actively participate, the more they will retain and they become excited to learn. This is a good way for the learners to develop a deep understanding of the lesson in a meaningful way. I can apply John Dewey’s “Hands-on Approach” Theory (Staff, 2021) because he believes that children learn best by doing and the students were doing that exactly. The learning environment was not in a physical classroom setting, but I learned to work together with my group to make the best out of a virtual situation. I learned to encourage learners to develop a deeper understanding of the dimensions of health and building connections on how physical health is as important as the other four dimensions of health and for them to be actively engaged in their learning.
How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the InTASC Standard:
I have demonstrated my competence in Standard 8 - Instructional Strategies by providing a quality variety of tools such as videos, a dice roller app, a deck of cards, and a google document showing the different exercises to create a lesson plan filled with different strategies. This health and physical education lesson plan demonstrates my competence because it contains a variety of instructional strategies. The strategies my classmates and I compiled for this lesson plan will help us encourage our learners to incorporate what they learn in their everyday lives in a meaningful way. A few strategies I came up with were to create a google doc with the 13 cards and their specific exercise, a dice roller app for the multiplication and divisions, and a video of the five dimensions of health. These various strategies will help students develop their understanding and apply connections.
