Common Core Teaching

Christina Gurahoo EDCI 5060 Week 3 Connecticut Common Core of Teaching The Connecticut Common Core of Teaching (CCCT) is a state document, which sets high standards for educators in the state of Connecticut. The Core of Teaching explains that teachers should strive to foster skills, knowledge, and growth with each student. It also encourages educators to grow and harness skills throughout their careers. CCCT defines how teachers will build their abilities in addition to achieving their unique goals as educators. Moreover, all academics are specified within the document along with standards for each respective content area. Furthermore, the Connecticut Common Core of Teaching: Social Studies focuses on the teacher’s responsibility to the student to instruct and encourage the understanding of History. Six domains are covered in Social Studies including: World History, U.S History, government and politics, geography, economics, and behavioral sciences. The content is meant to challenge students thinking and hone the ability to analyze events and documents in their historical context. The objective is to have students question history, outside and within the classroom. Students will grow and challenge their knowledge by using primary and secondary sources, research, and debates.

I plan to focus on three ideals: Social Studies Skills, Civic Competence, and the Learning Environment. By teaching Social Studies Skills in the classroom I believe that each student will learn to express their ideas, opinions, and disagreements eloquently and precisely. They will learn to analyze events/ documents to gain knowledge, meanwhile developing their own perspectives. When using documents and various resources to unveil historical events, students will then form opinions and gain the proof to support their ideas. In order to place these ideas into practice, I will encourage students to work in groups to allow them to exchange thoughts and ideas with one another. They will use varying sources to better understand the content and share their discoveries through research, essays, projects, and presentations. Furthermore, I will guide each student through Civic Competence. I believe this area is especially important to students because we should embrace diversity inside and outside of the classroom. It is extremely critical to understand that we all live in a culturally diverse world and we should be informed about other histories besides our own. Each student should be able to identify common themes from varying histories and evaluate how they are similar or different from one another. Students will be encouraged to share their backgrounds and learn more about each other through

group activities. The curriculum will also include studying similarities and differences between international histories and America’s history. Lastly, I will foster a Learning Environment that provides a foundation for free thinking, challenging what we think we know, and sharing opinions/ thoughts openly in a caring, supportive, safe classroom. I will provide this environment to students by establishing my encouragement of freethinking and empowering students to create arguments with historians. Furthermore, students will engage with one another and the classroom will be mixed up to facilitate diversity, sharing, and comfort with other students. I believe that students will be able to form their own thoughts and opinions about history and challenge their ways of thinking in a warm, safe learning environment. Ayers (2004) believes, “…there is no such thing as receiving an education as a passive receptor or an inert vessel…” and encourages teachers “…to demonstrate to students, and to yourself, through daily effort and interaction, that they are valued, that their humanity is honored, and that their growth, enlightenment, and liberation are the paramount of concern” (p.33).