InTASC standard #5 is Application of Content. Application of content connects the teacher to the students through the content of the lesson. I achieve this by incorporating a variety of lessons based on the experience and interests of my students. I am able to clearly communicate the lesson, while encouraging critical thinking and real life application of the content to the class by connecting to the students directly through including assignments that appeal to their interests, including both intellectual and creative activities in a complete unit, and adjusting my lessons based on the level of need in my class.
This artifact is an example of a lesson from a Pre-AP class that is studying Julius Caesar. Though students read the play out loud in class, the majority of the assignments are very literary based, and usually focused on writing. Knowing I have a large population of students that attend a magnet school for the arts in the morning, I began incorporating more creative activities to accompany the play. Here the students were to create the cell phone of any character in the play, and defend their choices with evidence from the text.
This student connected with the play in a way that simply reading and writing about it didn’t allow for, which resulted in a moment of effective teaching.
Though an English classroom can easily fall into the “Read a novel, write an essay”, I make an effort to not only offer creative outlets for the class, but also try to marry the two. In the artifact below my students fill out the police report about witnessing the slaying of Caesar. They demonstrate both reading comprehension and creative writing skills, resulting in a well-rounded lesson.
While teaching my unit on The Lord of the Flies, I got a lot of feedback from my class. After a while, most of my students started to understand why the book was so hard to get into, and participated in daily class discussion. However, I noticed not all of my students were connecting. I had originally scheduled a plethora of activities for the class to do on a daily basis, but as I saw the need to address their questions about the chapters, I changed my plans to incorporate a socratic seminar on each chapter. Still, I wasn’t addressing the needs of the entire class. I decided to try a similar assignment as the cell phone for Julius Caesar. In the artifact below students created a picture of the beast based on evidence from the text. 
This student was able to connect through their interests, and began to better understand the content in the book. Adjusting my curriculum to address the needs of the class allows for a productive and interactive learning environment.