Core+Concepts+for+Teaching

=**Core Concepts to Teach This Year:**=


 * 1. What important and enduring concepts are fundamental to each subject you teach? Refer to content standards you teach to determine those covered by the "big umbrella" concepts.**

Math:Comparing and Contrasting statistics, percentages, and probability in relevance to "World Hunger" English: Critical thinking using current events and knowledge from the text. Social Studies: Analyze (examine) historical events using evidence/research and being able to recognize the historical significance of "World Hunger" Chemistry: hypothesize and experiment based on given and researched evidence of chemical and nutritional imbalances.


 * 2. Why do these concepts matter? Why are they important?**

These concepts will help our students be able to make predictions, infer, and gather information about the world around them. These concepts help prepare and guide them into the world.


 * 3. Outside school, who cares about these topics? What is their relevance in different people's lives and in different parts of the world?**

Teaching students by relating to their lives is crucial in getting them to care about things outside of their lives. It's not completely their fault if they are only exposed to certain types of media that prevent them from learning about the world. Therefore, in the classroom, it is our job to teach them as many things about the world outside themselves. Some information, like "World Hunger" will make them uncomfortable to hear or understand but this is only the first step to transitioning students to care.


 * 4. Select one or two of the most promising of these topics and think about real-life contexts to answer the following: What are the interdisciplinary connections? What other subjects might be incorporated?**

Math: statistics about countries and the percentage of people who are suffering from lack of nutrition/food English: connect statistics to book: //Angela's Ashes// where students will read real life situation of poverty for an Irish family. Social Studies: Causes and Effects of the "Potato Famine" in Ireland as well as British Imperialism in other countries. Chemistry: Understand the importance of nutrition intake and lack of nutrition in the human body. How it causes chemicals in the body to negatively afftect day to day performance. Learn how to build a calorimeter to measure the energy content in food, read nutrition labels to recognize good and bad chemicals in food.

As you can see each subject relates to the other and is referenced during this one project.


 * 5. As you begin to imagine working with these topics, how might you push past rote learning into analysis, evaluation, and creation? Incorporate Bloom's "rigor" verbs into your answer.**

Students need challenges in the classroom other than bubbling in provided answers. They should be able to grasp concepts of analysis, evaluation, and creativity in all that they do. Therefore, through interdisciplinary studies, they should leave the classroom being able to characterize, compare, and explain information that they gather on their own. Not only that, but judge, debate, and decide over topics that are pressing in today's changing world. Lastly, imagination should never be lost in a classroom after elementary school; creativity should always be flowing in the purpose of projects and big ideas.


 * 6. Imagine authentic ways students might engage in the project and the ways 21st century skills might be addressed (collaboration, digital tools).**

Students of all core disciplines taking part in a Hunger Banquet as a final project. If students experience and bring to life these inequalities in food and other resources, they will understand the problems hunger and poverty play on a person's life.


 * 7. What aspects of these topics will interest your students?**

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The first word that should appear in our minds when we see or hear the word "project" is "collaboration." In order to create an engaging project in our classroom, I would have to implement things our students come into contact with in their everyday life. Internet, cell phones, and music are just some of the digital tools that students would find joy in using in the classroom. These tools are second-nature uses for students but to use them in the classroom is usually shunned upon. If students are able to collaborate and use digital tools then this motivates their "intellectual muscles" to expand. =====


 * 8. What learning dispositions should you cultivate and ask your students to pay attention to?**

Students do not see reasons to learn or expand their thinking if they are not directly effected by something that should be otherwise important to them. They do not understand that current issues like war and genocide may not be effecting them now but will one day influence policies, economics, or people in the future. This is where learning dispositions take place because we cannot directly teach students qualities like courage or curiosity. Getting to know who our students are as individuals in your classroom is important in teaching them learning dispositions. Show them things they care about and change it by showing them what it would be like to not have them. For example, there are people in the world who haven't even touched a cell phone, let alone have internet, but do our students know that? Long term effects of war is not something that phases students today either. This is because we are rarely taught the long term effects of war on our economy, policies, or way of life. Sometimes we must throw our students into the world outside of their bubble in order to make them care.