InTASC Standard 7: Planning for Instruction
The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.
A fundamental part of being a teacher is being able to plan out instruction. In planning the instruction, the teacher must have knowledge of the content that is being taught, ideas in which to help the students to make connections with what they are learning, ways in which they will be teaching the content, and ways in which to make the instruction of the content meet the needs of all the learners in the classroom. A teacher should also possess the understanding that lessons will not always follow the plans that they have, so they should be prepared for ways in which lessons may be altered.
At my first placement, I did quite of bit of planning when it came to instruction and this planning included thinking of ways in which to capture the interests of the students and ways to vary the instructions for the students according to their needs (enrichments and accommodations). One such place you could see this, was in my planning for math class. In our math class, I ended up breaking the class into two different groups of students so that I could address the needs of these students more closely. One group of these students included the majority of the class and the other group included just a few students that were ahead of the others in this subject area. Both of these groups were similar in many ways – they had the same main instruction, they used the same materials to learn their lessons, and had to work on the same worksheets – but they also differed in some ways, as well. The group that was more advanced usually got through the day’s main content and lesson at a much quicker pace then the other group. Due to this, there was time for us to work on other skills. This means the advanced group received the main instruction, got a worksheet or activity pertaining to that, and new instruction and a worksheet or activity to go with it, whereas the first group only received the main instruction and a worksheet/activity to go with it. The Math Lesson Plan artifact shows what was planned for lesson and Group 1 and Group 2 video artifacts show the different lessons.
This varying of lessons happened throughout the day in many different subjects and could only be properly prepared when it had been included in my planning of instruction. Things did not always go the way that they were planned, but having something planned helped to set the stage and ease the delivery of the lessons, even when they were off track.
At my first placement, I did quite of bit of planning when it came to instruction and this planning included thinking of ways in which to capture the interests of the students and ways to vary the instructions for the students according to their needs (enrichments and accommodations). One such place you could see this, was in my planning for math class. In our math class, I ended up breaking the class into two different groups of students so that I could address the needs of these students more closely. One group of these students included the majority of the class and the other group included just a few students that were ahead of the others in this subject area. Both of these groups were similar in many ways – they had the same main instruction, they used the same materials to learn their lessons, and had to work on the same worksheets – but they also differed in some ways, as well. The group that was more advanced usually got through the day’s main content and lesson at a much quicker pace then the other group. Due to this, there was time for us to work on other skills. This means the advanced group received the main instruction, got a worksheet or activity pertaining to that, and new instruction and a worksheet or activity to go with it, whereas the first group only received the main instruction and a worksheet/activity to go with it. The Math Lesson Plan artifact shows what was planned for lesson and Group 1 and Group 2 video artifacts show the different lessons.
This varying of lessons happened throughout the day in many different subjects and could only be properly prepared when it had been included in my planning of instruction. Things did not always go the way that they were planned, but having something planned helped to set the stage and ease the delivery of the lessons, even when they were off track.
Artifacts: