Middle Grades Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Middle level teacher candidates plan interdisciplinary curriculum based on core and elective curricula that are relevant, integrative, challenging, and exploratory. They understand and apply the major concepts, principles, theories, and research unique to effective middle level instruction and assessment, and they employ a variety of developmentally responsive strategies to meet the varying abilities and learning styles of all young adolescents.
Integrated Unit: Conflict and Resolution
I created, along with two other classmates, an integrated unit that incorporated all four content areas. Each person had a content area focus, I focused on social studies, but we all had to work together to get the content to all relate to the theme conflict and resolution. The unit also included an opening activity, a closing activity, a field trip, and a service learning activity. Since my group was a group of three we did not focus as much on math. However, we did create a general outline for math. Below is the presentation for the unit and the word document that includes all components of the unit, including 10 day lesson plans for the content areas.
Connecting Language Arts to Social Studies
During my student teaching experience I created a lesson plan on the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl to help students better understand the novel Out of the Dust. Students needed to know about these two historical events in order to truly understand the book. After the PowerPoint on the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was given students completed an activity that connected these events to literature. Students viewed five pictures from this time period and wrote about what they saw. Students then wrote a creative writing piece based on one of the pictures. The information taught was brought up throughout the unit. Below is a copy of the complete lesson plan as well as links to both presentations.
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Connecting Language Arts to Science
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During student teaching I created a nine day unit on the book Locomotion. In the book one of the characters suffers from Sickle Cell Disease. The students in my class have never been exposed to this disease, so to give them background information to better understand the struggles of the character I did a lesson on Sickle Cell Disease. A presentation was given about the disease and then students had to write a poem connecting facts about Sickle Cell Disease to the character in the book. Due to this lesson students learned how to connect scientific information to Language Arts. Below is the full lesson plan for this day and a link to the presentation given on Sickle Cell Disease.