PEDAGOGICAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Over the course of my journey at North Carolina State University, I have had the opportunity to take a variety of education courses. I believe the diversity of education courses I have completed represents the diversity found within the everyday classroom; this may include anything from culture, to language, to learning styles. I believe the courses within the MSL program will guide and support me through my experience in the professional field of teacher. My professors, mentors, classmates, and family have all played a strong component in my success within the College of Education. Below I have provided examples of pedagogical knowledge artifacts that I believe represent my best and most creative work. I have also attached my philosophy of education and definition of new literacy. As a teacher, I hope to use these tools in my classroom to create a supportive and engaging classroom environment.
ECI 430/435- Thematic Unit Plan
The following artifact is an interdisciplinary/integrated thematic instructional unit written for ECI 430/435—Methods and Materials for Teaching English Language Arts and Social Studies in the Middle Grades. For this project, students were instructed to create a minimum of a three week, and maximum of a five week thematic unit plan. To organize the unit of instruction, students chose a theme that galvanized students' energies and motivations in which to build an integrated, interdisciplinary unit. The theme for the unit that I chose was entitled, Risking it All. I chose the young adult novel, Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, as the content focus. Anne Frank and the other members who lived for two years in the Secret Annex during the Holocaust, are the epitome of risk takers. I picked this content focus because I knew this novel would draw the students into the theme, and it would also be a great way to tie in cross-curiculum integration while the historical context of the novel.
I selected the interdisciplinary/integrated thematic instructional unit to serve as evidence that demonstrates effective design of classroom instruction. This project provided me with the opportunity to craft an innovative instructional unit and related lesson plans focusing on literature and history. The instructional unit demonstrates my competency with both content knowledge, and a best practices approach to teaching the English Language Arts and Social Studies content areas. It also reflects my ability to plan instruction informed by local, state, and national standards.
Reflecting back on the implementation of this unit plan, I can certainly say that i learned a lot about myself, and my teaching styles. The students responded well to cooperative learning, so i found myself adjusting activities that were initially planned for individual work, and made them group work. I made this plan the semester before we went out into the field and student taught. When I got to my student teaching placement full time I quickly realized that much of the plan I wrote out was going to be changed and revised, which is okay. I ended up removing a few of the activities, solely because it didn't fit the needs of the students that i was teaching. I also found myself using data to plan a lot of the instruction, which is something that i couldn't do initially because i didn't have access to the data. Overall, I am extremely happy with how my unit turned out, and the growth that I saw my students achieve from the start of my unit to the end of it.
ECI 435- Social Studies Mini-Lesson
While in ECI 435-Methods for Teaching Social Studies, we were assigned, at random, an essential standard strand, grade level, and clarifying objective. From there we were to work with a partner to come up with mini-lesson that we would then teach to our peers on our assigned date. My partner and I had 8th Grade Civics and Governance Objective 8.C & G.2.1 and the objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of various approaches used to affect change in North Carolina and the United States. My partner and I decided to focus on the sit-in movement, which started in Greensboro by students who attended NC A&T University. The following lesson explains how we taught this standard and the activity.
I selected this lesson plan to serve as the artifact to serve as evidence that demonstrates effective use of using cooperative learning in the classroom. During this lesson the students were allowed to work in groups to come up with a non-violent plan of action that they would use if a Civil Rights Movement was going on today.
Reflecting back on this assignment, I believe that it was extremely beneficial. It was great to teach a real lesson in front of our peers and our professor. I ended up revamping this lesson plan and chaining a few things, but using it during my student teaching placement in the Spring of 2013. Teaching and crafting this lesson plan taught me that it is essential to design lessons that allow student participation and activeness in the learning process.