Standard Seven: Engagement with Subject Matter

In what ways does the student teacher:

• demonstrate enthusiasm for the discipline?
• understand how knowledge in the discipline is created, organized, and linked to other disciplines?
• carefully select instructional materials and resources based on their comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usefulness?
• demonstrate a clear awareness of the discipline’s variety of explanations and multiple representations of concepts (including analogies, metaphors, experiments, demonstrations, illustrations) that help a diverse population of students develop conceptual understanding?
• demonstrate an awareness of differing viewpoints, theories, and methods of inquiry in his/her discipline and is that understanding evident when teaching concepts?
• design lessons and teach in ways that reflect a variety of academic, social, and cultural experiences?
• demonstrate a broad knowledge base which could be used to create interdisciplinary learning experiences?
• mediate the tension between content and skills demands in the subject area?

English Subject Matter

In what ways does the student teacher:

• demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts from the canonical to popular culture, a range of genre and forms, and a range of symbol systems including print, speech, and visual media?
• help his/her students read and write widely and with increasing understanding?
• demonstrate that s/he is a fluent and clear thinker?  Is his/her instructional focus to present reading, writing, speaking, and listening as processes of making meaning?  Has s/he developed strategies for balancing the process and skills aspects of student literacy development?
• foster thoughtful classroom discourse, emphasizing multiple purposes and approaches to talk?
• demonstrate knowledge of the patterns, conventions, and terminology of Standard Edited English?  Does the student teacher engage students in activities in which they put these patterns and conventions to use?     
• foster awareness of various discourse patterns and their relationships to function and identity?
• incorporate technological and informational resources in instructional design and classroom practice?

Teachers create learning experiences using a broad base of general knowledge that reflect an understanding of the nature of the world in which we live.  (RIBTS #1)

Teachers create learning experiences that reflect an understanding of central concepts, structures, and tools of inquiry of the disciplines they teach.  (RIBTS #2)