Week 6 -- Triad Two
Monday 11/05/12 to Friday 11/09/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM
Content - Subject Matter
Relating Content to Diverse Learners
Relating Content to Diverse Learners
Area of Concentration:
Specific SEPT Element Subject Matter
Specific SEPT Element Subject Matter
A teacher must understand the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of Communication Arts and be able to create learning experiences that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students.
Connect disciplinary knowledge to other subject areas and to everyday life
Evaluate teaching resources and curriculum materials for comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usefulness for presenting particular ideas and concepts
Critical Dispositions Matrix
This week’s experiences highlighted two critical dispositions related to Subject Matter:
- Teacher is committed to work toward each learner's mastery of disciplinary content and skills.
- Teacher realizes that content knowledge is not a fixed body of facts but is complex, culturally situated, and ever evolving. Teacher keeps abreast of new ideas and understandings in the field.
Culturally Responsive Framework
Four markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and Subject Matter have been underscored by this week’s experiences:
- Model cultural competence
- Establish ground rules with learners for the discussion of controversial or sensitive topics
- Consistent incorporation of culturally relevant classroom materials
- Enhance meaning
Implications for Practice
My sixth practicum week was very challenging and very rewarding. While I see the constraints in the district’s Focused Instruction model for classroom teachers, I also see a great value in it for the student teacher. Since, creation of my own untested and possibly unsuccessful lesson is not a pitfall in this particular practicum, I am able to concentrate on delivery of content – without fear of failure due to faulty instructional design.
Far from being restricting -- the imposition of a set, unit lesson plan is determined to be a liberating condition, freeing the student-teacher to focus fully on the learners and the learning.
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:
- To be engaging, urban learners must see an activity as both, relevant and doable.
- Use analogies or metaphors from everyday life to help illustrate abstract concepts.
- Increase the amount of time urban learners spend in collaborative and cooperative group work.
- Carefully and constantly evaluate curriculum and classroom materials for comprehensiveness, accuracy, and bias.
- The research-based understanding of motivation (Lambert and McCombs, 1998) is that it is part of human nature to be curious, to be active, to initiate thought and behavior, to make meaning from experience, and to be effective at what we value. These primary sources of motivation reside in all learners, across all cultures.
