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Tschappat Portfolio-Knowledge of Content
Tschappat Portfolio-Knowledge of Content
Tschappat Portfolio-Knowledge of Content
young people, another is a commitment to subject matter. Accomplished teachers are dedicated
to acquainting students with the social, cultural, ethical, and physical worlds in which we live,
and they use the subjects they teach as an introduction to those realms. A comprehensive
understanding of subject matter entails more than the recitation of dates, multiplication tables, or
grammatical rules within a single content domain. Rather, it requires the pursuit of substantive
knowledge by exploring domains and making connections to become fully engaged in the
learning process. The goal of curriculum and instruction is for students to gain a true
understanding of content, gain transferrable skills and be authentically engaged in the learning
process. Wiggins and McTighe (2005) refer to the design of such curriculum as “backward
design” (p.17) in which the instructor begins the plan with desired results, determines evidence
of student understanding and then plans the methods of instruction. This 4th grade unit on
ecosystems is an example of backwards design, in which the instructional design started with a
“big idea” and several enduring understandings for each content area included in the unit. The
unit was designed to align with Alaska content standards for science, geography, history,
reading, writing, and art. The “big idea” of the unit presented is to explore the impact that
Understanding the relationship that students have with the natural world and the impact
they have on the world around them provides them with learning “value beyond school”, or what
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Wiggins and McTighe (2005) would refer to as the “transfer value” (p. 69) of a big idea is the
understanding that “learning will be more adaptive or powerful when students can connect new
information to their own experiences” (Newmann et al., 1996, p. 286). The unit described earlier
is the first step in students’ understanding that humans can alter the living and non-living factors
within an ecosystem, thereby creating changes to the overall system. In order to construct new
knowledge and understanding of ecosystems, the student must first be able to identify their
personal experiences and then connect those experiences to new information to create meaning.
Inquiry is a process of questioning and discovery, as Koechlin and Zwann (2014) elaborate, it is
a social process as well: “inquiry is at its best when teachers design the learning experience to
include plenty of opportunity to work with others” (p. 10). In the unit described, students
engaged in the questioning process with how ecosystems, as a community of organisms, are
dependent on another for survival and how natural disturbances effect an ecosystem.
Wiggins and McTighe (2005) stress the importance of assessing for understanding
through the use of authentic performance-based tasks. Such tasks demonstrate understanding
through the “transferability of core ideas, knowledge and skill… variety of contexts” (p. 153).
Understanding our students learning processes helps us decide the instruction; how we will
teach, what we will teach, and the pace at which we will teach it. If we know ahead of time what
the most prevalent misconceptions are we can then design learning experiences and questions
that fill the gaps. All this goes to show that curriculum must and does change regularly, making
it an even more essential foundation on which to base our teaching methods. By effectively using
curriculum, you’ll be helping your students stay on top of the latest in-demand skills and to have
a more coherent learning path. Experts in teaching science recommend that scientific reasoning
be taught in the context of rich subject-matter knowledge. Plainly put, “Teaching content alone
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is not likely to lead to proficiency in science, nor is engaging in inquiry experiences devoid of
To be effective in the classroom, accomplished teachers need to have a strong command of the
subject matter they teach. Students are more likely to connect with a lesson and therefore recall
the lesson’s information if it genuinely combines more than one subject matter. This also
supports Piaget’ Constructivist Theory that learning occurs when connections are made through
active and hands-on learning (Kitchener, 1991). This kind of learning can be naturally
incorporated into lessons that cover more than one content area. Content knowledge is the basis
for effective teaching however, knowledge is not stagnant. As quickly as information and
technology evolves in this day and age, it is essential that teachers stay abreast of evolving trends
and developments in their areas of expertise – this is true for what they teach – content – and
how they teach it –pedagogical knowledge. For teachers this truly means being a life-long
learner.
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References
Koechlin, C. & Zwann, S. (2014). Q tasks: How to empower students to ask questions and care
Kitchener, Richard. (1991). Jean Piaget: the unknown sociologist? The British Journal of
Newmann, F., Marks, H. & Gamoran, A. (1996). Authentic pedagogy and student performance.
https://scinapse.io/papers/1985852959
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson.
Willingham, Daniel T., (2016) Knowledge and practice: The real keys to critical thinking,
Knowledge matters: restoring wonder and excitement to the classroom. Retrieved from:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZcM2U66OrUcMXs5EpXbLpvR5pmhCy-pV/view?
usp=sharing