InTASC+5+Application+of+Content

Teachers should strive to transform students into emerging experts in their content areas, constantly building upon the knowledge that students already possess. By using Bloom’s Taxonomy, teachers can push students to higher levels of thinking. Asking students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information and texts, teachers encourage students to act as disciplinarians, teaching them the skills and strategies necessary to be successful in that content area. Teachers should also incorporate student-led inquiry into their classrooms. When students complete self-guided research projects, they generate disciplinary questions, evaluate texts, and develop informed opinions. Furthermore, through research projects, teachers instruct students on how to utilize and evaluate resources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, websites, and article databases. These researching skills transfer to other content classes and higher education, preparing students to take increased ownership of their learning process. In addition to asking higher order questions and including self-guided research, teachers should create activities and projects that develop students’ disciplinary literacy. Students need to be taught how to read, write, speak, and think in each discipline. Therefore, in the English classroom, teachers should not assume that their students already know how to closely read texts, explicate poems, write thesis-driven arguments, or deliver a rhetorically effective debate. While these are all tasks that experts in English Language Arts can do, students need scaffolding and specific instruction to learn these skills. Teachers, therefore, ought to model these processes and create constructive activities to allow students to acquire new content specific vocabulary, reading skills, writing techniques, and thinking methods. However, unless teachers make this information and these skills relevant to the real world, students will not be motivated to learn and succeed. English teachers should utilize literature as a means of discussing current or age-appropriate issues. For example, multicultural literature could be used to explore diversity, social issues, and cultural perspectives. In order to be a culturally relevant teacher, however, teachers need to be willing to talk about difficult or often taboo subjects such as racism, prejudice, poverty, or censorship. In other words, teachers should bring social justice into their classrooms through the literature that they read, the discussions they have, and the types of writing they complete. For instance, while it is essential to teach students how to compose an academic essay, students should write formal letters, newspaper articles, and speeches as a way to encourage students’ to take action against social justice issues and practice real world writing. Regardless of the writing assignment, teachers need to remind students to code-switch to academic language, using Standard English syntax and grammar. By encouraging students to become disciplinary professionals, teachers ensure deeper learning and give students the necessary skills they need to succeed not only in that course but also in higher education or career.

To demonstrate my mastery of InTASC Standard 5, I will be referring to a lesson plan that I designed for an eleventh grade American Literature class at Owings Mill High School. To view this lesson plan, a video of this lesson, and my reflection on my teaching, please visit Appendix I of this Wiki. Over the course of this lesson, I asked students to act as disciplinary experts. They completed a close reading of Phillis Wheatley’s poem “On Being Brought from African to America” and analyzed how elements of the poem contributed to meaning. They worked in groups to defend claims using textual evidence during both a class debate and individual writing. By the end of the lesson, students increased their disciplinary literacy in reading, writing, and speaking and acted as content experts. To assist students in reaching these goals, I provided scaffolding and modeled disciplinary thinking in order to encourage them to move to higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. When students encountered difficulty analyzing the poem, I chunked it into individual lines and began by having students summarize the meaning. After students understood the poem’s meaning, I was then able to use questioning techniques to guide to higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy by analyzing the poem and evaluating the author’s purpose. Additionally, while students brainstormed for the debate, I visisted both sides and modeled how I would think about and analyze the poem in the context of the debate. By giving students an example of how to analyze for a specific purpose, I provided them with the necessary support they needed to succeed during the debate and on their independent writing activity. Overall, by giving students the opportunity to act as content experts in the classroom, I fostered higher levels of disciplinary literacy and learning.