Demonstrate a Solid Foundation in the Arts and Sciences.
It is not enough to be an expert in the field of ELA, but we are also required to have a solid foundation in the arts and sciences. According to SUNY Cortland's Conceptual Framework, "Such grounding provides educators with a necessary breadth and depth of knowledge and facilitates the development of essential skills in critical thinking, problem solving, writing, and oral communication" (10). Critical thinking is something that ELA teachers will be teaching to our students, so it is very important for us to be able to do on our own. Because of the variety of classes I have taken from Painting to Biology to History, I now feel comfortable critically analyzing a variety of texts. Our job does not stop at teaching our students how to speak, write, read, listen, and think, because we must guide our students to critically analyze the world around them.
While student teaching at my first placement, my teacher and the history teacher collaborated when possible. For example, when students were learning about the House of Representatives, their assignment was to write a script for a skit they were to perform in social studies class the next day. In this skit students had to pretend that they were the representatives from their assigned state and give their reasons to George Washington (a selected student) why they should have the amount of representatives that they do. During class time my host teacher and I walked around to help students write their scripts and extract information from their social studies notes/text book. Without the history classes I've taken at Cortland, I do not think I would have been prepared to help the students with this information. However, I was prepared and capable to help students and their scripts/plays went very well!
As a future teacher, I hope that I will be apart of a team-teaching district. It is always beneficial to the students when they are apart of a school that operates as team players.
Within my poetry unit with my seventh graders, I taught the poem "Dreams" by Langston Hughes. I decided that it would be important for students to know about the Harlem Renaissance because it was a very important time in American literary history. Yes, this is English related, but at the same time this relates to history and what I previously know about the Civil Rights Era and the treatment of African Americans in American history. Since "Dreams" is such a short poem, I was able to talk about a decent amount of background information in multimodal ways. First, as students walked in I had music playing from a mix I made on soundcloud so they could hear the type of music that was played. Next, I had them read a higher-level nonfiction text explaining what the Harlem Renaissance was. Knowing that this was a hard article, I made sure to take some time for us to really break it down together. The last thing we did before the poem was watch a youtube video that gave a brief description of the Harlem Renaisance. Students really seemed to enjoy this lesson and this background information really helped them understand the importance of Hughes' work.
While student teaching at my first placement, my teacher and the history teacher collaborated when possible. For example, when students were learning about the House of Representatives, their assignment was to write a script for a skit they were to perform in social studies class the next day. In this skit students had to pretend that they were the representatives from their assigned state and give their reasons to George Washington (a selected student) why they should have the amount of representatives that they do. During class time my host teacher and I walked around to help students write their scripts and extract information from their social studies notes/text book. Without the history classes I've taken at Cortland, I do not think I would have been prepared to help the students with this information. However, I was prepared and capable to help students and their scripts/plays went very well!
As a future teacher, I hope that I will be apart of a team-teaching district. It is always beneficial to the students when they are apart of a school that operates as team players.
Within my poetry unit with my seventh graders, I taught the poem "Dreams" by Langston Hughes. I decided that it would be important for students to know about the Harlem Renaissance because it was a very important time in American literary history. Yes, this is English related, but at the same time this relates to history and what I previously know about the Civil Rights Era and the treatment of African Americans in American history. Since "Dreams" is such a short poem, I was able to talk about a decent amount of background information in multimodal ways. First, as students walked in I had music playing from a mix I made on soundcloud so they could hear the type of music that was played. Next, I had them read a higher-level nonfiction text explaining what the Harlem Renaissance was. Knowing that this was a hard article, I made sure to take some time for us to really break it down together. The last thing we did before the poem was watch a youtube video that gave a brief description of the Harlem Renaisance. Students really seemed to enjoy this lesson and this background information really helped them understand the importance of Hughes' work.
DreamsLesson | |
File Size: | 111 kb |
File Type: | docx |
With the seniors, I did a lesson with Hamlet that had to do with Ophelia and analyzing her character through artwork. I personally love art, so I really was excited about this lesson. I had students get into groups and analyze a selected piece of art (I printed enough images for each student). After about twenty minutes of analyzing, the groups came up one at a time to talk about their image. I had them answer the following questions: Who is depicted in the image? What colors do the artist use and how does these colors impact the image? What mood does the image portray and why? What do you think the author's message is?
Students came up with some really good explanations of photographs! I really liked this lesson because it allowed the students to focus on the character of Ophelia instead of just Hamlet. I also believe that this lesson catered to many different learning styles because in the beginning of class we listened to "If I Die Young" in order to start critically thinking about Ophelia, we worked in groups and collaborated with each other, and we analyzed artwork.
Below are the images of Ophelia that I used in class and my lesson plan.
Ophelia1, Ophelia2, Ophelia3, Ophelia4, Ophelia5, Ophelia6
Students came up with some really good explanations of photographs! I really liked this lesson because it allowed the students to focus on the character of Ophelia instead of just Hamlet. I also believe that this lesson catered to many different learning styles because in the beginning of class we listened to "If I Die Young" in order to start critically thinking about Ophelia, we worked in groups and collaborated with each other, and we analyzed artwork.
Below are the images of Ophelia that I used in class and my lesson plan.
Ophelia1, Ophelia2, Ophelia3, Ophelia4, Ophelia5, Ophelia6
hamlet_lesson_18.docx | |
File Size: | 114 kb |
File Type: | docx |
CAPP Report Screen Shot | |
File Size: | 245 kb |
File Type: | png |