Study, directed observation of, and initial practice in the various phases of teaching in a laboratory-demonstration school or in an area elementary and secondary school. The major goals of this course focus on preparing you for intern teaching. In this course you will experience an educational setting and prepare and teach a classroom curricular unit plan.

• conduct instruction to facilitate learning,

• manage the classroom to promote learning,

• design instruction that will meet the needs of learners through appropriate instructional materials, content, activities, and instructional strategies.

E-mail:

Each student is assigned an e-mail address at registration. Students are expected to use e-mail as one form of communication with the instructor during this semester.

Reserve Readings [E-Res and Online]:

Pennsylvania Department of Education. (1999). Pennsylvania Academic Standards. Harrisburg, PA: PDE. Online available: http://www.pde.psu.edu/standard/stan.html

Field placement:

10 days observation period.

20 days classroom teaching at least one curricular topic.

You will be observed teaching 2 class lessons during the field placement.

Below is a list of assignments that will be graded, along with the total points available for each. The assignments are explained in detail in the "Assignments" section.

Your written report should use the following format:

• How are materials and seating arranged? Why? What materials do students have access to? Do restrictions exist for materials? What are they? Where are lab materials located?

• How does the organization of the classroom contribute to the teaching/learning atmosphere? Is the organization formal or informal? Why? Do students place finished assignments in specific locations?

• Do bulletin boards, learning centers or stations, or other displays contribute to: motivation? Curriculum-based topics? Are these areas easily accessed by students? When can students use them?

• Is the room stimulating and exciting? How can you tell? Does the room invite science learning? Is there a classroom library, resource section, or activity center area? How is it used?

• What procedures are routine? For example, how does the lesson start and end? Is there an order or a sequence for activities?

• How and when does the teacher use: the board? visual aids? instructional technologies such as computers and calculators? video? texts? worksheets?

• When is group work utilized? Are cooperative learning strategies used? What rules exist for group situations?

• How does the teacher utilize questioning? How is discussion encouraged? Does the teacher encourage student reflection and expression of opinions?

• Is previous learning or prior knowledge utilized?

• Does the teacher vary voice inflections or tone? When and why? How does this contribute to motivation, discipline, and emphasis of content?

• How are students engaged in processes of inquiry? Do students explore objects, events, and organisms in their environment? Do students develop and explain concepts in their own words, both orally and by writing and drawing?

• How is content information presented in a developmentally-appropriate and engaging fashion?

• How are students provided opportunities to extend and elaborate their understanding and knowledge through independent inquiries?

• How does the teacher assess student performance? How is progress in conceptual development, inquiry skills, and collaborative work assessed?

• What are the stated and unstated rules of this teacher? How can you tell? Are the rules uniformly and fairly applied? List as many rules as you can. Pretend that you need to inform a new student of what is acceptable. Can you do it? What happens if a rule is broken?

• What strategies does this teacher use to obtain student attention to begin and end class? What does the teacher do to use time effectively? How are transition times (moving from one activity to the next) minimized? How does organization of the classroom or of actual lessons contribute to decreasing discipline problems?

• When and how is praise or positive reinforcement used?

• What happens when there is an announcement or an interruption?

• Does the teacher use nonverbal signals or gestures to control student behavior? Which ones? Why? Does the teacher use proximity control (moving closer to a specific student in order to gain attention or stop some in appropriate conduct)? When and why?

• Who are the students? Can you identify students who are motivated or unmotivated to learn? What can you tell about individual students by watching them? What interests do the students have? Which types of individual behaviors can you predict from certain students? Who is on-task? Who is off-task?

• Do any students appear to have health or emotional problems? Do any have any special needs? How are they accommodated?

• Why do any students misbehave? What clues can you discover? Do they seek attention? Try to gain acceptance from peers?

Do you envision your classroom to be similar to the one you observed? What types of things would you do differently?

You will be creating interdisciplinary resource units for one curricular topic in your field placement. Your resource unit will contain:

• a comprehensive content outline that serves as a resource for the entire unit (materials to be used for activity centers, extension activities, etc.)
• a minimum of 10 lesson plans using one of the three required lesson plan formats,
• integration of reading, writing, and literature into your unit,
• at least one lesson that incorporates instructional technology into the unit (examples may include Web-based Inquiry Exploration, CBL probes, hypermedia, software, etc.)
• at least 3 authentic assessment instruments. Two of these instruments must be rubrics.

A. A one-sentence focus statement that summarizes the direction and intent of the unit.

B. Conceptual Outcomes — State the concepts that students will develop by completing the activities in this unit.

C. Related content standards or frameworks for the unit (National Education Standards and/or Pennsylvania Standards).

D. Objectives - Identify three or four specific process and/or content objectives you wish students to master by the completion of the unit.

E. Materials and Resources - It is advantageous to determine all the necessary materials and resources after the unit has been written. The way, you avoid limiting yourself to a few familiar items. Many of these items can be used in activity centers or for extension activities.

F. Integrated Activities. Outline integrated activities you wish to use throughout the unit in the other curricular areas you teach. For the most part, these activities will be broad-based, covering a range of curricular areas including mathematics, social studies, language arts

G. Literature Selections. See Materials and Resources above. Select books related to the topic of the unit. For your literature selections you may wish to develop a pre-reading activity, a variety of cross-curricular learning activities, and open-ended discussion questions. Select books from a variety of genres. Specific activities integrating literature should be described here.

Create at least one activity center for your unit. Your activity center must involve students manipulating some type of physical object. Activity centers can be one of the following: Exploration center, Game center, Problem-solving center, or an Application center. You will display your activity center during class.

Your activity center written submission should include the following:

1. List concept(s) explored
2. List materials required for the activity center
3. Provide a detailed description of the activity that students will be engaged in.

Your resource unit must contain at least 10 lesson plans. The lesson plans must show developmentally sound scope and sequence to the content and concepts that are presented. You may get ideas from other places but do NOT just zerox intact lesson plans from somewhere else. You must use three authentic assessment instruments to evaluate student mastery of concepts and processes. Your selected assessment should correlate with your objectives.

1. Target Grade or Age Level

2. Process(es) Addressed

3. Concepts Addressed/ Related Content Standards or Frameworks (National Education Standards and/or Pennsylvania Proposed Standards)

4. Process-Oriented Objective(s)

5. What Do I Want My Students To Discover?

6. Description of Introductory Activity (Anticipatory Set) and Discussion

7. Materials Needed

8. Description of Activities

9. Typical Discussion Questions

10. How Students Will Be Encouraged to Investigate On Their Own in the Classroom

11. Expected Conclusions

12. Assessment

13. Applications to Real Life Situations

Topic:

Grade level/s:

Instructional Objectives:

Concepts Addressed/ Proposed Pennsylvania Department of Education academic standards:

Materials required:

Engagement (motivator or anticipatory set):

Procedure: Describe your procedure step by step. This should read like a script to what you will do in the classroom.

Key discussion questions:

Closure. How will you end your lesson.

Assessment. How would you assess whether the students have mastered the objectives?

Extension activities:

A. Target Grade or Age Level

B. Process(es) Addressed

C. Concepts Addressed/ Proposed Pennsylvania Department of Education academic standards

D. Instructional Objective(s)

E. Materials Required

1. Engage - students are engaged by an event or question related to the concept that the teacher plans to introduce.

2. Explore - students participate in one or more activities to explore the concept. This exploration provides students with a common set of experiences from which they can initiate the development of their understanding.

3. Explain - the teacher clarifies the concept and defines relevant vocabulary

4. Elaborate - students elaborate and build on their understanding of the concept by applying it to new situations.

5. Evaluate - the students complete activities that will help them and the teacher evaluates their understanding of the concept using a variety of assessments.