Pedagogical Content Knowledge
During my time with the KU Math and Science Center, I was a member of the Jerry Bailey Educational Opportunity Scholarship Committee. The Jerry Bailey Educational Opportunity Scholarship is awarded to current of former participants of any KU TRIO Programs. To be awarded the scholarship, one must be a first-generation college student or demonstrate high financial need. In addition, I was the chair of the Scholarship Selection Committee. During this process, I organized a group fellow colleagues to be on the Scholarship Selection Committee, created a rubric which was approved by the group, kept track of incoming scholarship applications, reviewed/scored applications, and notified scholarship recipients.
Below I've attached the scholarship application and the scholarship rubric. I chose to include this as part of my portfolio because of its relation to persuasive writing. As you'll see under the links is a paper titled, "Persuasive Writing in the Social Studies" which I created for C&T 862. After being involved with the Scholarship Selection Committee, I realized the need for assistance with persuasive writing for students at all levels. The scholarship required two short essays, which really was the deciding factor for some of the applicants. Having the ability to prove yourself (through writing or speaking) is a skill that begins in elementary school and carries throughout ones' life.
As I transitioned into teaching Social Studies, the need to teach persuasive writing within the discipline was crucial. Many students are still working on forming complete sentences and paragraphs, so expecting full persuasive writing pieces at the beginning of 6th grade is unrealistic. Instead, we worked step-by-step throughout the school year by modeling how to come up with an argument, creating opening & closing sentences, and to eventually take a stance and write about it.
With the upcoming school year, I understand and realize that many students won't be able to write a five-sentence paragraph that flows and has complete thoughts. One way I plan to develop their writing skills is by having a composition notebook that will serve as a journal where students will conduct on-demand writings, write opinion pieces, use as "bell ringers", etc.
Below I've attached the scholarship application and the scholarship rubric. I chose to include this as part of my portfolio because of its relation to persuasive writing. As you'll see under the links is a paper titled, "Persuasive Writing in the Social Studies" which I created for C&T 862. After being involved with the Scholarship Selection Committee, I realized the need for assistance with persuasive writing for students at all levels. The scholarship required two short essays, which really was the deciding factor for some of the applicants. Having the ability to prove yourself (through writing or speaking) is a skill that begins in elementary school and carries throughout ones' life.
As I transitioned into teaching Social Studies, the need to teach persuasive writing within the discipline was crucial. Many students are still working on forming complete sentences and paragraphs, so expecting full persuasive writing pieces at the beginning of 6th grade is unrealistic. Instead, we worked step-by-step throughout the school year by modeling how to come up with an argument, creating opening & closing sentences, and to eventually take a stance and write about it.
With the upcoming school year, I understand and realize that many students won't be able to write a five-sentence paragraph that flows and has complete thoughts. One way I plan to develop their writing skills is by having a composition notebook that will serve as a journal where students will conduct on-demand writings, write opinion pieces, use as "bell ringers", etc.
|
|
KU Math & Science Center Summer Institute - First Amendment Course
The KU Math & Science Center Summer Institute is a five-week program where high school students have a pseudo-college experience by living in the dorms and taking classes at the KU campus. Students take math, science, english, foreign language, and an elective. In 2012, I was an instructor for the elective course where I focused solely on the First Amendment. Since the course is so short, it's unique in that you get to key in on a specific idea and concept. Even covering the First Amendment, in depth, in five weeks was a challenge!
Listed to the right are several of the activities we completed throughout the course. In order to determine their knowledge of the First Amendment, I gave a pre-assessment quiz on the First Amendment on the first day of class. One of my personal favorite projects was watching the John Stossel video, "What's Happening to America?" He talks about extreme cases of people defying the First Amendment. Students seemed to connect with this as well because of the rare situations and the mention of Westboro Baptist Church, which some of them live very close to. The majority of the lessons allowed students to analyze a situation and determine their opinions, something that I've realized is more difficult to do with 6th graders. Relating to the Freedom of Religion clause, we did a "Utopian Society" activity where students had to create rules and laws with a town that had a wide variety of religions. Students also looked at Freedom of Religion case studies and made predictions on what the outcome would be. The activity that most related to students seemed to be the Cyberbullying Readings which led to a class debate for the cases of Tyler Clementi and Megan Meier, each of which committed suicide due to cyberbullying. The Cyberbullying readings led to conversations of personal issues related to social media and how it relates to students' lives. With the debate, students practiced their listening and speaking skills as they had to prepare rebuttals as well. Lastly, students created a project on their understanding of one specific First Amendment clause by creating a poster, skit, poem, essay, speech, etc. I gave the final project assignment at the beginning of the course, with the syllabus, so that students could be gathering ideas for the final project throughout the five weeks. A few of the students capitalized on this head start and created truly unique projects. |
|
C&T 762 Position Paper - Citizenship & the C3 Standards
In relation to the First Amendment Course for KU MSC, I attached my C&T 762 Position Paper which discusses Citizenship & the C3 Standards. This nicely aligns with the course because we covered rights of a United States citizen and this paper leads into what citizenship looks like. Within KU MSC, we often encouraged our students to take up activities related to "citizenship education" by volunteering, taking up leadership roles within their school and community, and being involved in extracurricular activities.