2-2 Application of Content

The candidate understands how to engage learners through interdisciplinary lessons that utilize
concept based teaching and authentic learning experiences to engage students in effective
communication, collaboration, outside resources, reading, technology, and in critical and creative
thinking.

An effective teacher demonstrates his or her understanding information through the way in
which he or she presents that information to his or her students. With that, an effective teacher
understands that the best way for his or her students to learn is by his or her students applying the
information they have learned. These authentic learning experiences can be identified through
student engagement. Other ways in which experiential learning can take place might be
communication, collaboration, outside resources, reading, and technology. Each of these
examples are great ways to develop critical and creative thinking. By getting students involved in
classroom discussion, reading, listening to guest speakers/performances, and exploring concepts
on technology, students become active and engaged in the learning process. These strategies,
along with several others are approaches I try to utilize when teaching every concept because it
allows my students to apply and discover the content they are learning.

In my student teaching experience, I have had many opportunities to work on teaching students
content in manner in which they can see the application. For instance, my first artifact is an
activity I developed for my second grade students who were learning about the staff as well as
line and space notes. The worksheet proved to be a good activity because while the concept was
still very new to them it helped them begin to realize which ones were line notes and which ones
were space notes on the staff. A number of them struggled at first, coloring a square the wrong
color by not distinguishing if it was a line or space note. However, this worksheet did a good job
of applying the concept by exposing them to seeing line and space notes. In the second artifact, I
did a little rhythm activity with the wind ensemble to help them learn 32nd notes. (See the 20:37)
What is important though is that at the end of the activity I ask the students “Which rhythm do
you notice the most throughout the piece?” This helped students to see the application of the
content. In the third artifact, I am working with the Concert Band, made up of mostly freshman.
In the video I did an intentional warm-up with them in which I modeled octave lip slurs. The
French horns who needed help with an octave rip in their piece, then made the connection
between the warm-up exercise to implementing that to the specific place in the piece.