Element A: Teachers provide instruction that is aligned with the Colorado Academic Standards, their District’s organized plan of instruction, and the individual needs of their students.
In my lesson plans, I include the standards and always consider if I am hitting those standards at every step when implementing the lesson. I stop and ask myself, "are students showing evidence of invent and discover to create?" The evidence for this would look like students trying a new material or technique, or exploring a new idea. Standards inform my teaching practice by providing me with guiding criteria to follow and look for in students.
Element B: Teachers develop and implement lessons that connect to a variety of content areas/disciplines and emphasize literacy and mathematical practices.
I always gave written and oral "I can statements" to my elementary students so that they could have multiple ways to access the information. This was especially important for my ELL students. They could hear the words, read the words, and then make connections to what they were doing in art class to gain understanding of the words. This created associations for them, such as an association between the word "birdhouse" and the feeling of actually drawing one. Making connections like this is essential for literacy.
Element C: Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content, central concepts, inquiry, appropriate evidence-based instructional practices, and specialized characteristics of the disciplines being taught.
This image is a picture of my presentation to students about one point perspective. I created the presentation with examples, key vocabulary to know, and we discussed in detail how to create a scene like one would see in real life using lines, angles, and shapes. In this lesson, I demonstrated one point perspectives drawing techniques for them, sharing my knowledge in a way that was accessible for students this age (not crazy complicated). Students were able to understand the central concept of how to make objects look like they get smaller and smaller, creating depth.
Reflection: This standard was the one that came the most naturally to me. I feel that I am accomplished in this area. As a recent graduate, all of my knowledge from my coursework at CSU is fresh in my mind. The studio skills and habits that I learned have become so second nature to me, that teaching my students this information came easily. It was the same with my knowledge of the standards. The area that I did need to work hard to develop in was asking inquiry questions. I learned the power of these questions through conversations with my coach and by simply being more intentional about implementing them in my lesson. This helped my students reflect on the key components of the lesson and allowed me to better gauge understanding and motivate learning. As a result of this reflection, I have set a professional goal of using my knowledge of the content to my advantage, by showing my students how excited I am about the content. This will encourage them to be excited as well and dig deeper into the content.