Chelsea Womack

Rationale Reflection
Standard 3
Example 1:
Artifact: Interdisciplinary Unit
Topic/Title: Health
Medium: Written lesson plans
Technology Used: Microsoft Word
Example 2:
Artifact: Lesson Plans
Topic/Title: The Character of One Impacts the Rest
Medium: Written lesson plans
Technology Used: Microsoft Word
Example 3:
Artifact: Curriculum Based Assessment
Topic/Title: Forms of Government
Medium: Written assessment plans
Technology Used: Microsoft Word
Example 4:
Artifact: Impact on Student Learning Project
Topic/Title: The Enlightenment
Medium: Written lesson plans, Website
Technology Used: Microsoft Word, Internet Research, Weebly
Standard 3: Middle Grades Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Middle level teacher candidates plan interdisciplinary curriculum based on core and
elective curricula that are relevant, challenging, and exploratory. They understand
and apply the major concepts, principles, theories, and research unique to effective
middle level instruction and assessment, and they employ a variety of
developmentally responsive strategies to meet the varying abilities and learning
styles of all young adolescents.
In the Interdisciplinary Unit on health, I created assessments that, not only
catered to a variety of learning styles, but incorporated different disciplinary
subjects. This project was ultimately one of the hardest that I completed during my
undergraduate career because I had to incorporate multiple classroom practices at
once without ever having actually been in the classroom to know how to implement
these practices. I struggled greatly with the hypothetical and theoretical approach
to teaching, which made me appreciate my student teaching even greater because I
was able to actually practice teaching rather than just read and write the theoretical
on a piece of paper.
The lesson plans pulled from the unit The Character of One Impacts the Rest
demonstrate my ability to incorporate relevant media such as song lyrics as a form
of classroom instruction and assessment. Furthermore, it demonstrates my ability to
incorporate pop lyrics with older literature and develop a centralized theme that
helps me to communicate an idea to my students. This artifact is different from the
others because, rather than focusing on different forms of assessment, I am

focusing on my ability to incorporate relevant material to material embedded in the

curriculum. However, because I am incorporating these pop lyrics from Taylor Swift
songs, I am reaching the interests of my students and accessing different learning
styles within the classroom by incorporating other forms of media.
For the Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA), I chose to create an assessment
that analyzes students understandings of government structures. In doing so,
students have collected research on a form of government and they will
demonstrate their knowledge of this government by completing the individual
journal prompts. These prompts ask for specific knowledge regarding a made-up
country that demonstrates the students individual understanding of the structure of
the government. This artifact demonstrates my ability to create assessments that
reflect the content of the curriculum in challenging and abstract ways. Rather than
giving students a test on the different forms of government, students are engaging
their creative thinking by immersing themselves inside of the history. In doing so,
the lesson becomes more relevant to the students and allows for students to
develop a deeper understanding of the content. Throughout the duration of a
students history education, they will come across countries that operate under
different forms of government. By approaching forms of government using this
strategy, students are collecting an understanding of government forms and
structure as an entire concept. In this approach, students are understanding a
specific form of government as an umbrella and the individual countries that fit
underneath that umbrella. This is beneficial to student because they are collecting
the main concept of the government rather than just identifying a few random
countries that operate under the same government structure without ever truly
understanding how that government works. This standard has required me to
approach my teaching as a more conceptual strategy rather than a collection of
individual bits of information. By practicing teaching in this way, I, myself, have
developed a far greater understanding of history than I ever could have imagined.
For the Impact on Student Learning Project, I chose to create a unit on the
Enlightenment that required students to engage with the material in more mediums
than they might normally be exposed to. In this unit, students explore the historical
impact of the Enlightenment while navigating through narratives, online resources,
vocabulary puzzles, and visual images. By taking this approach of instruction,
students of various learning styles were able to benefit from the instruction. Not
only does this approach allow me to reach various learning styles, but by mixing up
the ways in which I present information to students, I am constantly keeping them
hooked and engaged with the material because the only thing that they can expect
is that they will constantly see something new. This artifact allowed me to observe
individual student growth and the benefits of incorporating multiple forms of
instruction to students. By completing this project, I was able to see how rewarding
it is to spend the extra time working on other forms of assessment because I was
able to see all of my students individual talents that I may not have otherwise seen.