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The Teaching Areas of Special Interest Section

All teachers should have curriculum areas of special interest, elementary and secondary teachers alike. You may create multiple 'Areas of Special Interest' sections in your portfolio, naming each accordingly, or you may incorporate this all into one section. Be sure to have a separate sub-section for each different area of interest to you. It is anticipated that subject specialists will, at the least, have a section on each subject area. You may also wish to focus on pupil groups of special interest: pupils who are more able; specific marginalized groups; pupils will special needs; etc.

You should emphasize and demonstrate the following principles:

Your enjoyment of these areas. This should be evident in your belief statement and in the artifacts you include in the Portfolio, as should your awareness of the value of these subject areas in our understandings of the world, our creation of new knowledge, our relations with each other, our wellness as societies in a global context, and our own individual balance and wellness. The bigger question here is, 'Why does this subject area matter?'
How your subject area expertise brings with it understanding of how that knowledge connects with other types of knowledge.

Your subject area knowledge may be in traditional subject areas such as science, music or French, or wider areas such as Literacy.

You may be especially interested in integrating different subject areas: If so, your examples will show particular examples of that integration.

Your areas of special interest might be areas that have been weaknesses for you, which you have addressed through strongly targeted professional learning. If so, be sure to indicate this both here and also in your Ongoing Professional Learning section.

In addition to the entries below, include evidence of pupil work or pupils at work such as photographs of pupils in the activity, and scanned or photo-reduced copies of your pupil's work. The work should be about 1/4 page in size with your comments, always, next to all such inclusions.

We recommend the following entries to this section:

A Belief Statement, which includes an articulation of your enjoyment of the area(s) and awareness of the importance of these particular curricular areas in the everyday lives of people.
Initiatives in the Area that you have undertaken.
Web Sites of Interest both To Teachers and To Students in the subject area(s), with a one-line annotation of each site.

The Build Your Portfolio assistant will give you specific tables and charts that you can use to keep this compacted.

Previous: The Planning Section
Next: The Profiles of Pupil Learning Section

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