This blog post contributes to the achievement of FEAP(s) goal (a) Quality of Instruction: 3.i. Instructional Delivery and Facilitation. The effective educator consistently utilizes a deep and comprehensive knowledge of the subject taught to: Support, encourage, and provide immediate and specific feedback to students to promote student achievement.
Our reading for Seminar this week, The Reflective Educators Guide to Classroom Research (Dana, Yendol-Hoppey, 2009), provided an explanation of how passion leads to inquiry. We were asked to select one passion from the 8 listed in the book. I chose Passion 3: Focus on Developing Content Knowledge. I had several reasons for choosing content knowledge as a passion. The first is that, I feel like I already pursued passion 1 last semester with my inquiry into an individual learner; I didn't want to repeat research. Secondly. I've noticed in my CT's classrooms, that when students are interested in a topic, they tend to have an abundance of really good questions. I feel like not having the answers sometimes, and telling them " Well I don't really know", can discourage their interests. I want to keep them engaged in the conversation by being as knowledgeable as possible in the areas I'm teaching. I do believe that they should have to research on their own, and use other resources, however when they're engaged and excited about something, sometimes you just need to run with it. The subjects, I believe, that should get the most focus are Science and Social Studies. These are subjects that I've noticed produce the most questioning out of students, and that seem to be the most interesting subjects for the students. After choosing my passion at Seminar, I reported to my partnership school for the last hour or so of the day and then to planning. During our planning session, we were joined by a Math resource leader from the district to assist in planning our next unit. During our time together he stressed how important it is to know your content inside and out, so that you can understand the many different ways that a student produces an answer. If you aren't a master of the content, then you may not be able to asses a student's understanding of a concept by seeing their work. You have to be able to recognize and process all the many different entry points that students may have in a problem; Entry points were also discussed in our Math class this week. Now even though this planing was for Math and not Science or Social Studies, which are my main focus, it reaffirmed the fact that content knowledge is essential in instruction, especially in the diverse classrooms that we are in. We have so many different types of learners to accommodate and knowing the material is crucial. I aspire to be a lifelong learner. I always want to find new information and master new things, to keep my brain fresh even in my elderly years. So not only would an inquiry of this sort benefit the students, but me as well. By achieving a goal in increasing content knowledge, it will also satisfy the FEAP requirement of FEAP (a).3.i, Support, encourage and provide immediate and specific feedback to students to promote student achievement.
This blog post contributes to the achievement of FEAP(s) goal (a) Quality of Instruction: 3.i. Instructional Delivery and Facilitation. The effective educator consistently utilizes a deep and comprehensive knowledge of the subject taught to: Support, encourage, and provide immediate and specific feedback to students to promote student achievement.
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