KSA #4- Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content they teach. Lauren demonstrated the importance of teachers knowing their content as well as discovered resources available for teachers to use. For me this KSA is fairly straight forward, you don't know your content you can't teach it properly. You can't teach your subject and your student's don't learn. This sounds like a lose-lose situation. Other reasons we discussed, as a class, was notion of respect. It is likely that as a teacher if I am not knowledgeable about my subject that my students will develop little respect for me as a teacher and for the subject it self. This is not a goal of mine. It is also important to know your subject so that as a teacher you are able to make the learning experience interesting for students. As well, to perform formative assessment I need to know the content in order to assess if my students are meeting the outcomes. Resources are basically endless now a days with the technology available. Some of the realistic and usable resources I intend to use are my PLN for one, classroom textbook, our Curr Lab at the University, the Program of Studies, other teachers, students, teacher manuals and so on. My PLN is a good place to post ideas and get feedback as well as discover articles about strategies and ideas. The Curr lab contains many different books and resources based on subject and topics. The Alberta Education website is another place to start which will branch myself out to other resources digitally.
KSA #8- Establishes relationships with students that respect human dignity. During this presentation we discussed what it means to establish human dignity. Human dignity is defined as 'self esteem and self respect based on being respected by others.' What an important and complex notion to establish in a classroom. During this KSA lesson we discussed how a teacher could go about establishing these relationships and how to implement them in to the classroom. Sarcasm does not belong in the classroom, especially with young children. As at teacher we want to be open minded and accepting and interested in student differences. I want to embrace different languages, cultures and ideas in my classroom as well as teach students how to respect each others differences as well. I want to establish a classroom filled with respect, friendliness and genuinely caring for one another. During this lesson we chose "I will.." statements. A few of mine were "I will discuss respecting human dignity with my students during the building relationships process and put it in my classroom rules." I think it is important to address this type of thing early on and before it is a problem. Proactive! "I will embrace student differences and insure my students "feel okay." Feeling okay- was one of the Gr8 8 important for powerful learning. Students need to feel accepted and confident in the classroom in order to learn.
KSA # 9- Teachers use a broad range of instructional strategies. Ian presented on this KSA and did a great job. He introduced the class to using props and role play for instruction. There is many approaches to teaching and learning. All students learn differently and it is important that I recognize this and use a variety of instructional methods in my classroom so that I engage all students. For some lessons and content some instructional strategies will be more appropriate than others. We discussed using visual, kinesthetic, group discussions, props, role plays, videos and so on in this lesson. Each lesson could incorporate all of these types of strategies, just one or several. As a teacher for me it is about getting to know your students. Recognizing how they learn best and being able to address those needs.
KSA #15- Teachers engage in assessing the quality of their teaching.This is an obvious important KSA for myself as a pre-service teacher. I am beginning to learn that even after the Education program and a few years of teaching I will not have mastered it and I will never stop learning. It is important that teachers are always looking for ways to be better teachers. As teachers we can assess our quality of teaching through several methods. Using our PLN, assessing our formative assessment (are our students learning/meeting the outcomes), videotape our classes, have other teachers sit in on a class, use other teachers for support to bounce ideas off of, follow and reflect on our lesson plans, analyze our professional growth plans, RESEARCH and more RESEARCH!
I hoped you enjoyed this blog post and liked following my reflections through these different KSA's. Thanks for reading!