Standard 3

	Standard 3. Knowledge of Content and Integrated Curriculum
3.1	Know, understand and use central concepts and tools of inquiry appropriate in subject matter and age/grade level
3.2	Create meaningful learning experiences to develop children’s understanding of subject matter and increase skills
3.3	Plan integrated units of curriculum, instruction, assessment based on knowledge of subject matter, curriculum goals, and developmentally appropriate practices among the children’s families, communities, and cultures.

            Curriculum informs teachers what information needs to be taught to a specific grade within an academic year. It is the teacher’s job to be familiarized with the content of the curriculum in order to provide effective instruction to all students within her classroom. A teacher should be able to identify appropriate subject, grade, and age level techniques and material to teach her students appropriately and effectively.  An efficient way to do this is by weaving a curriculum goal throughout multiple subjects taught as well as combining student’s personal interests and cultural with subject matter to increase their enthusiasm about learning.

            In hopes to diminish the achievement gap and raise test scores, many school districts have reached out to scripted curriculum with hopes to enhance student learning. Scripted curriculum often provides teachers with a dry, bland script to follow with dull, hollow busy-work to be supplied to students. I believe for an educator to be an expert in the profession, they must be able to dismantle scripted curriculum, isolate the main and crucial parts of the subject matter, and recreate the curriculum in a meaningful and appropriate way for students.

While in my practicum, I was required to create and implement a unit (five lessons) for my third graders. My supervising practitioner felt that I should create a unit on a topic which would interest the students, rather than expand on a topic the students were learning in class. Each day, I was appalled to watch my students eat brownies, potato chips, and cookies: therefore, I chose to create unit to teach students about healthy eating. To be reassured that nutrition was within the curriculum I looked the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for Health. By doing this, I came across a nutrition standard which explained that “students will gain the knowledge and skills to select a diet that supports health and reduces the risk of illness and future chronic diseases… 3.2: Use the USDA Food Guide Pyramid and its three major concepts of balance, variety, and moderation to plan healthy meals and snacks,” (p 28). Once I discovered that nutrition was a subject taught within the third grade curriculum for Massachusetts, I began to research nutrition and the food pyramid for my unit. I made sure that while I was reaching, I fully understood the content I was teaching. I also made sure that I presented the information into grade and age level appropriate material for my students.While creating my unit, I thought of how I would be able to incorporate my unit throughout different subjects, besides health. Artifact 3.1 is a copy of the overview I used for this unit which explores how I incorporated science, reading, writing, math, and art into my nutrition unit.  By integrating my mini-unit throughout different subjects I was able to expand students’ knowledge of nutrition just past the idea of what nutrition is and what healthy and unhealthy are; I was able to teach students how different foods are created as well as how to use decision making skills to maintain a healthy diet.

            Standard 3 also addresses the concept of supplying students with stimulating lessons in order to increase their understanding of a subject as well as develop upon previously developed skills. Within my full practicum, there was not a specific writing curriculum used within the school. As a result of this, my supervising practitioner chose to teach writing by focusing on the six traits of writing: ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, conventions, and word choice. During my leadership week, word choice was the specific trait the students were working on. One writing lesson I taught (artifact 3.2), I focused upon the effectiveness of using sensory words within writing. To do this I first asked children to draw a picture of a monster. After that, I asked children to fill out a chart to describe what the monster looked like, smelled like, tasted like, sounded like, and felt like. After this, students were asked to take this chart and their picture and write a paragraph to explain what the monster looked like. Once the activity was complete, I hung the monsters up on the board in order to allow all students to look at each monster. I than read the class the paragraph written about the monster and asked students if they would be able to identify the monsters: based solely upon the artist’s drawing of the monster and the author’s word choice of the monster.

            I chose this lesson plan to use with my students due to the fact that I knew my classroom was filled with students who had a strong interest in drawing. I also chose to have the students draw monsters because the seventeen boys within the classroom currently were deeply involved in stories surrounding monsters. By taking the curriculum for the class and changing it into a memorable and intriguing experience for my students, I feel I was able to teach sensory words more explicitly to the students rather than just telling the students to ‘use their senses and write a story’. For a few students within the classroom, they often needed direct instruction of how to improve their school work rather than just a general lesson plan. Instead of just ignoring these students and deeming them as “unsuccessful” I attempted to create a lesson in order to help students develop their writing skills while using their personal interests and direct instruction to reach this goal. Educators and experts in the field of curriculum development, Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe (2006) explain that some teachers identify students as “successful” and “unsuccessful” based upon how a student performs in a class with the implemented curriculum, instead of readjusting future lessons to provide the student with the ability to succeed, (p 18).  Because I was able to adjust my lesson plan to help all students succeed I feel I taught a successful lesson.

            Once I have my own classroom, I believe I will continue to develop upon this standard: specifically by connecting my lesson with my student’s culture and families into my lesson plans. Within my practicum, questionnaires were sent home the first day of school which would provide us with information about each student’s home life but few of these were returned. My supervising practitioner explained to me that when she began teaching she would call each student’s home to introduce herself as well as ask questions to find out information about each student instead of sending home a questionnaire. By doing this, I can learn about each specific child’s interests and home life in order to enhance my curriculum to provide an equal opportunity for all children to succeed. I believe that children also have the ability to succeed within a classroom when a teacher understands the content she will teach and has the ability to expand the content throughout her curriculum.

Works Cited

Tomlinson, C.A. & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction and

Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Department of Education (1999). Massachusetts Comprehensive Health Curriculum Framework.

Malden, MA; Massachusetts Department of Education.