Content Knowledge

The impact that subject knowledge has on teaching. What are some resources you can turn to for support in lesson planning ideas? People, places, websites…

Having a strong foundation of content knowledge has been very beneficial for my student teaching. My first elementary lesson plans that I used focused on my particular specialty, ceramics. My experience and knowledge of hand building gave me confidence going into the lessons. I knew how to answer the questions that my students were asking and I was able to recognize and fix problems before they became major issues.

Another benefit of having good content knowledge is being able to create a variety of projects to suit the level of students that you teach. Differentiating lessons by adapting them to an individual's needs comes with the experience of having worked with the materials before.

Ordering, storing, and managing certain materials is a skill that is hard to come by without experience. My content knowledge has helped me immensely because I have a full understanding of how much material (clay) a student needs, how quickly it can dry without breaking, how to manage the materials (firing kilns & cleaning properly), and how to store materials with little or no loss.

The resources that I have turned to when looking for some lesson plan support are people, websites, and books. My practicum teacher will be retiring at the end of this semester and was kind enough to share several of her lessons with me. I was able to witness several of them being taught, which was very beneficial. During my time with this veteran teacher, I took very detailed notes while observing so that I would have a better understanding of each lesson. She has become a great resource and inspiration for ideas and advice.

I find that websites and books are also useful in my search for ideas. I have found a few that I have used, but most seem to need some modification to fit the students, time constraints, or materials that I have on hand. One website that I have chosen to use, incredibleart.org, has an overwhelming number of lessons. This is one spot that I have found to search for ideas when my mind has gone blank at the end of the day.