Sarah Engström, Outdoor and Environmental Educator
K-8 Teacher Certified
ALASKA STATE TEACHING STANDARDS
Evidence supporting my ability as a teacher to adhere to Alaskan Teaching Standards
Standard 4: Content Area.
A beginning teacher knows the teacher’s content area and
how to teach it.
Rationale
Artifact
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Standard
4A. Identifying the connections in instructional plans to the
student content and performance standards adopted by reference in 4 AAC 04.150; and
district curriculum;
4B. Developing and teaching lessons or units that demonstrate
·accurate and current knowledge of the content;
·instructional strategies that are suited to teaching the content area, integrating technology where appropriate;
·consideration of students’ developmental stages of content mastery using an analysis of various qualitative and quantitative assessment data;
·a variety of teaching strategies that encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and performance skills; and
-
connections across disciplines that enable students to apply their content knowledge and process skills to real world situations.
All of the lessons I created demonstrate my ability to adhere to Standard 4a by linking the student content and performance standards and district curriculum.
This lesson plan discussing the life cycle of Salmon, for a more specific example begins with the academic standards to be addressed. Only when we know the objectives we hope to cover can we tailor our lessons to maximize understanding.
This lesson plan is to supplement the district curriculum of Salmon Life Cycles used in most elementary schools.
All of the units I created support my competency in Standard 4B. All of these multi-lesson plan units incorporate accurate and current knowledge of Alaskan weather patterns and mapping techniques, as well as historical connections to famous explorers.
Where appropriate they use technology (compasses, computers, citizen science documentation methods and blogging.)
All of these units are created to be as interdisciplinary as possible. They are not specifically designed for any one subject area, because they discuss literature, math, history, ecology, and outdoor skills equally.
Problem solving, creativity, and creating connections are an important component of all three units, and help students apply their knowlege to real world situations.
MIDPOINT PORTFOLIO ARTIFACTS AND RATIONALES
FINAL PORTFOLIO ARTIFACTS AND RATIONALES
4A. Identifying the connections in instructional plans to the
student content and performance standards adopted by reference in 4 AAC 04.150; and
district curriculum;
4B. Developing and teaching lessons or units that demonstrate·accurate and current knowledge of the content;
·instructional strategies that are suited to teaching the content area, integrating technology where appropriate;
·consideration of students’ developmental stages of content mastery using an analysis of various qualitative and quantitative assessment data;
·a variety of teaching strategies that encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and performance skills; and
-
connections across disciplines that enable students to apply their content knowledge and process skills to real world situations.
FINAL PORTFOLIO ARTIFACTS AND RATIONALES
This artifact proves my ability to meet standard 4B because in this unit I have developed an interdisciplinary way of looking at science, by bringing in language arts connections as well as mathematical computation of ratios and scale.
This unit was taught both inside and outside as the particular lessons required. Since each of the class periods to which I taught this unit had their own unique challenges I was constantly reevaluating the material and how to modify it for the conditions and the students to maximize their comprehension and engagement.
This unit was also designed to focus on age appropriate elements of the complex field of astronomy. The Alaska State General Learning Expectations mention only two key GLEs for the 6th grade level, namely contrasting the characteristics of planets and stars (i.e., light reflecting, light emitting, orbiting, orbited, composition) and being able to define a light year. My unit went further in depth about creation of scaled drawings and the importance of cultural heritage in science. We also spent a lot of time looking at standard SF1.1 which states that students will be able to tell a local or traditional story that explains a natural event and relate it to a scientific explanation in our constellation story writings.
For evidence of the growth that students achieved please examine this secondary artifact, a comparative graphy of their pre and post test scores.
This artifact proves my ability to meet standard 4A because every lesson that I have created is written in the Understanding by Design method of starting with the standards as a base and building activities and assessments to make sure that such standards are met.