Corinna Sech

March 6, 2018

SCED 499

Professor Gjoni

InTASC 4 Reflection

The fourth Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC)

standard focuses on content knowledge. The standard is, “the teacher understands the central

concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates

learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for

learners to assure mastery of the content.”1 This standard reminds teachers that instruction needs

to be meaningful in order to interest students. To me, this standard means that I need to be

knowledge about my content area and know how to successfully teach my content to students.

When doing this, it is important that I remember not everyone will love social studies as much as

I do. I have to make my lessons meaningful for learns so they enjoy and understand the content. I

think a great way of doing this in social studies is showing the relevance of topics. For example,

while teaching a unit on the Civil War and reconstruction, I could have students read an article

on removing Confederate monuments as a result of the Charlottesville, Virginia protest in 2017.

This will show students that although the Civil War ended in 1865, it has created a modern day

issue. Students could then have a debate on if Confederate monuments should be removed.

Being knowledgeable about content is necessary to teach the correct information but

being able to create positive learning experiences to make learning interesting for students is

1Council of Chief State School Officers. (2011, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and
Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards: A Resource for State Dialogue.
Washington, DC: Author.
essential. This could mean that a teacher may be brilliant in his or her contact area but does not

have the skills to teach it in a way that interests non-expert students. This is important for those

students who do not want to grow up to be historians.