Importance of Planning for Instruction
InTASC Standard seven focuses on the teacher’s ability to plan for a student’s instructional zone and incorporate each student’s learning goto can be accomplished. Creating instruction plans that include ways for students to achieve their learning goals helps the student to learn new things and develop a sense of achievement based on their goals and accomplishments.
Artifact #1: Cross-curricular Lesson Plans
Cross-curricular lesson plans are essential to include when planning for instruction because it exposes the children to the material multiple times. Exposing the students’ to the material as many times as possible will only help to reinforce the information and help the children. Another benefit of cross-curricular lessons (especially during covid times) is that you have more time to teach or talk about the material, like during history/science when there are only about 30 minutes to teach for about a week. One example of a cross-curricular lesson is linked here when I made our history unit on famous people interdisciplinary.
Artifact #2: Lesson Plan the Specifically Addresses a Standard/Concept
All lesson plans should always address at least one concept or standard. During my student teaching experience, I had been allowed to create numerous lesson plans that focus on a particular idea. The most recent concept that I have planned for is the student’s ability to count mixed coin groups. One example from my lesson that helped the students practice counting diverse coin groups is to count out how much money was on their ice cream cones with the play money in their bags.
Artifact #3: Class Project
Class projects are an excellent way for students to express their knowledge while also allowing them to divide students into different instructional levels or common goals. Teachers can also pair up students based on needs, such as a child above grade level with a child who is on or below grade level, to try helping the students grow from peer learning experiences. Projects are a good way for teachers to narrow down their expectations to ensure that the students understand the material being taught. Linked here are the instructions for my students to follow when creating and running their candy shops.