Brianna Larkin
Student Teaching Portfolio
Fall 2005

Artifact for Standard Seven: Engagement with Subject Matter

 

 

 

Contact:
Brianna_Larkin@brown.edu

Evidence: Legal System Pre-test

Description of Artifact:

This artifact is a pretest I gave to students during the first week of the semester. The pre-test includes many questions that I planned to address throughout the semester. Some of these questions I knew the answer to and some of them I was unfamiliar with. I wanted to find out what my students knew already in order to spend the rest of the course learning along with my students different aspects of the legal system.

Standards demonstrated by this artifact:

Engagement with Subject Matter

Reflection:

By teaching a social studies course that I was not familiar with, I had the opportunity to engage in learning more about my discipline. The legal system pretest shows what questions I planned to address in the semester. Some of the topics, such as the order of a trial and the jurisdiction of federal and state courts, were topics that I had to learn with the students. By making learning a collaborative effort, students felt as if they had a partner in their learning and that the difficulties they faced and questions they had were reasonable ones, because I had them as well. I enjoyed learning about the legal system and appreciated the challenge of teaching a subject that I was not an expert in.