Standard Six: Reading, Writing, and Oral Communication The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing,

and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge. I chose this artifact because I believe it addresses every aspect of this standard very well. This artifact is a good representation of the standard because not only do I have to be knowledgeable and proficient in reading, writing, and oral communication to make this unit go well, but my students are also being asked to perform all these skills well throughout the unit. To even come up with the unit and the PowerPoint presentations, I had to read through numerous sources. Not only did I read their required textbook chapters, I also did outside research on each section to make sure I had enough content knowledge to supplement the book material and answer any questions the students may have. In addition to that reading, I took notes on everything I read. I also had to write up the unit plan, each individual lesson plan, the PowerPoint presentations, each part of the project and the questions for all the document and picture analyses. Once it was all planned and prepared, I then had to effectively communicate that information to my students. I used a lot of relatable examples and analogies to ensure that my students understood the content. To determine the level of understanding of my students, I had them perform a variety of tasks. The students were required to read the chapters and answer the critical thinking questions at the end of each section, testing their reading comprehension. They had to take notes from the PowerPoint presentations, which tested their writing and comprehension skills. They were also required to complete several steps of a project throughout the unit, which required them to analyze the information they took notes on and apply it to a different situation. After doing that, they had to write their explanations behind their decisions. Additionally, we had many discussions throughout the unit, especially on days when we did document analyses. In this way, they were able to orally communicate to me their understanding of various primary documents and images. Planning this unit really helped me grow as a teacher, as it was my first planned unit that was fully implemented into the classroom. It really challenged me to be organized every day and make sure I had everything planned for the coming days. To create all the PowerPoint presentations, document packets, various parts of the projects, and then grade all of them was a huge undertaking but I feel that it was a great experience for my future. I refined this unit so many times as I was teaching it that I feel I have a strong unit to teach my future students. I have a variety of resources that I discovered that can not only be useful for this particular topic, but many other topics within American History as well. I have a better understanding of how much work each unit will take but I feel that I am well prepared to complete more now.