For teachers of students whose dominant language is other than English.

Teacher candidates will think critically about the context in which all students learn and will learn about historical and current patterns of inequitable education that marginalize students who have been minoritized according to race, culture, language, or ability. The course will focus on research-based practices that teacher candidates can use to create identity-safe classrooms and how they can work with families and communities using an asset lens.

Prerequisites:

Admission to Professional Education and the Elementary Education program.

Students learn to use a variety of developmentally appropriate, motivating techniques to disrupt predictable patterns of achievement and to advance children¿s: oral and written language, knowledge of phonemic awareness, phonics, and concepts about print within a balanced literacy framework. Additionally, the interdependent nature of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, stages of spelling development, and role of vocabulary and fluency in reading comprehension are addressed.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course is designed to prepare teacher candidates with the understanding and application of concepts related to human diversity and interactions, structures of power, the identity of individuals and communities, and explicitly connects social studies concepts with their influence on educational experiences of diverse learners.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course introduces elementary teacher candidates to areas of exceptionality in learning. Teacher candidates within the course will analyze elementary instruction within the general education classroom and learn to develop antiracist instruction that builds on students¿ assets and cultural capital with consideration of individual differences.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

The focus of this course will be providing teacher candidates with strategies and tools in providing daily instruction for diverse learners in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, language, religion, sexuality, social economic status and class. The course will focus on learners with complex and multiple disabilities that requires a variety of materials, strategies, and differentiation. The teacher candidates will have an opportunity to implement their plans in the classroom during field experience while closely working with a classroom mentor teacher and university mentor.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course will engage teacher candidates in critically analyzing children¿s texts. Teacher candidates will learn how to integrate diverse literature across the elementary curriculum and meet objectives and standards in math, literacy, social studies, science, and the arts. Teacher candidates will learn how to guide students in developing their literacy identities in order to promote reading engagement and students as independent and collaborative readers.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course is centered around three goals to help prepare teacher candidates to enact practices that develop learners¿ mathematical proficiency. The first goal is to explicitly teach skills for disrupting patterns of injustices and inequities that often get reproduced within the context of elementary mathematics classrooms. The second goal is to develop professional skills for the high-leverage practices of eliciting and interpreting students¿ thinking and leading a group discussion. The third goal is to gain the mathematical knowledge needed for engaging learners in inquiry-based instruction for number sense & operations, place value, computation, and rational number concepts in grades K-6.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course will provide elementary teacher candidates with the knowledge and skills necessary to: (a) Identify concepts to be explored through scientific investigations, and then design and conduct investigations of those concepts, using appropriate scientific apparatus and mathematical tools to improve their investigations; (b) know and apply basic concepts in the physical, biological and earth sciences; (c) know and apply appropriate pedagogies to foster inquiry the elementary classroom; (d) identify and mitigate their students¿ science misconceptions; and (e) understand and apply guidelines for proper procedures and safety practices while teaching science.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

Presents strategies for teaching reading and writing knowledge, attitudes and skills in the various teaching content areas.

This course will explore the incorporation and extension of physical education and the arts into the elementary curriculum to strengthen subject matter learning, support artistic expression, and promote physical fitness.

This course will explore practical information, assessment tools, instructional ideas and activities for effective implementation of an inquiry-based approach in elementary curriculum. Teacher candidates will focus on developing inquiry-based methods and strategies on improving students learning outcomes while linking one or more elementary content areas in a progressive way.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course is intended to provide a co-teaching mentorship between the teacher candidate and mentor teacher. Teacher candidates will use this semester to focus on co-teaching, and establishing a relationship with the district, school, and classroom environment. Candidates are expected to develop and demonstrate, through performance assessment, integrated knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to become committed professionals in education.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

This course provides hands-on experiences through which students learn the basics of engineering. Topics include the engineering design process, reverse engineering, and engineering fields/professions. The course focuses on the engineering strand of the K-6 Minnesota State Science Standards.

Student teaching is the capstone field experience for the teacher education programs at Minnesota State University, Mankato. The purpose of the experience is to provide an opportunity for Teacher Candidates to experience fully the role of the professional educator and demonstrate their ability to successfully enter the induction phase of teaching. The Teacher Candidate uses this opportunity to produce evidence of their teaching competency in four domains: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities.

Prerequisites:

Admission into Professional Education and the Elementary Education program

Elementary education teacher candidates will study the technology skills needed in order to become effective STEM teachers.

The practicum consists of a minimum of four weeks during which candidates teach in the specific academic subject for the new licensure field. Those holding a license at the elementary level complete the experience with students in grades 7 or 8. Those who hold a license at the secondary level complete the experience with students in grades 5 or 6. The focus is on applying the standards of effective practice in teaching students, demonstrating both knowledge of the academic subject and students as well as the pedagogical skills required at the middle level.

This course provides students with familiarity in regard to emerging topics of importance in elementary STEM education.

In this pedagogy course, elementary teachers will learn to integrate the four disciplines of STEM; science, technology, engineering, and math.

Field experience focusing on the struggling reader and instruction in an integrated approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Student teaching in a second content area for a full-day, half-semester, in a middle school setting. For elementary students student teaching in middle school.

Provides clinical experiences for pre-service teachers; extends laboratory experiences for those who have completed pre-student teaching experiences.

By contract between student and faculty member.

To prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to use technology in the elementary classroom. Applications to each content area will be considered.

Foundation level knowledge concerning the reading process and how it pertains to the ESL student including strategy instruction.