Summary:
Standard five, Application of Content, ensures that teachers understand how to engage learners in concepts with critical thinking, peer collaboration, problem-solving and creativity. The teacher must connect students with meaningful learning experiences within the classroom.
Importance:
This standard is important because teachers need to be able to convey this content accurately and in a way that learners’ can easily understand. Teachers must understand how interdisciplinary skills and social concepts are intertwined. Educators should teach students how to use their content from the classroom, and apply it to the real world. This standard allows for students to think critically, creatively, and collaboratively to come up with solutions.
Click on the image to see a reduce, reuse, recycle lesson plan perfect for learning about how to save the planet!
Artifact #1- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
This artifact demonstrates the incorporation of real world scenarios into the classroom. I chose to incorporate a reduce, reuse, and recycle lesson plan to illustrate problem solving skills needed for the real world. This lesson also includes cross-disciplinary instruction including math, science, language arts and social studies to demonstrate to students about the importance of our planet and ways to include peer collaboration to come up with a solution.
Click on the image to see an activity, “supermarket,” where students have to spend their money.
Artifact #2- Grocery Shopping
This artifact demonstrates a math lesson involving money where students are working with different amounts of money and required to collaborate with peers to assess what they are able to purchase. The teacher has the students figure out how to pay for their groceries and how much money they would spend. This is another great way to demonstrate a real world example through standard 5. Students are able to problem-solve with their peers to come up with a solution.
Click on the image to see an example of a PBL for students having to do with weather in their hometown.
Artifact #3- PBL Weather Activity
This artifact demonstrates project based learning in the classroom with a specific weather activity where students work collaboratively to figure out what type of weather and the temperature for the day is in their hometown. This not only promotes peer-collaboration, but kids are also able to relate this to real life because they are using context clues to understand the weather.