Standard #7 – Planning for Instruction
The teacher candidate 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.
Summer 2015: No task excites me as much as planning for the instruction of my future students. I hope to meld the information of my content area with the application of the materials from the methods classes that I have participated in to form a structured vision of instruction in my classroom. Guided by the state academic standards and district requirements, I shall employ sound and modern teaching methods to instruct my students. I look forward to using technology and data to help self assess what aspects of my instruction are sound, and which areas need improvement. Teaching isn’t a career where once can become complacent, and by constantly trying different approaches, I hope to find methods that reach the needs of all of my students.
Autumn 2015: Planning for instruction continues to be one of the favorite parts of my clinical experience. I enjoy taking the subject matter, aligning it to standards, and finding creative ways to relate it to students. I most enjoy finding real-life applications of our topics, or using inexpensive everyday materials to complete projects and labs. We try to be thoughtful in our use of technology in our room, and utilize projection and our school’s online student system to post assignments and grade them. I have thought about the culture of our school, and the community that it is set in, and have planned instruction accordingly, such as my problem based learning unit, and the silvering of Christmas ornament lab. We ask our students to employ writing skills in out room, by asking chemistry I students to write letters detailing what it was like to be an electron moving though a gas tube being powered by electricity, and through formal lab write ups for the dual level chemistry II students.
Spring 2016: I loved the idea of planning for instruction a year ago when I began this program, and I still love it just as much as the program concludes. I constantly ask myself, “How can I present this? What can the students do to better understand it? How can I adapt this and differentiate it? How can I shift this from me presenting it, to them doing it? Is it better to take an inquiry approach and then discuss, or discuss then perform a lab about it? Can I make this into a kinesthetic station partner activity?” Sometimes, I have an idea straightforward, other times, I have to think on things a while. Occasionally, ideas strike me, as they usually do, at 9 PM the night before I teach a topic, and I lose some sleep assembling and activity for the next day. Not because I don’t plan in advance, I do, but rather because a new, better idea has struck me. Sometimes, nothing creative hits me, and I am disappointed in myself. Other times, I start off with a less engaging lesson, and as it was with the vacuum pump, scrap my lessons during plan period and create new ones because a piece of equipment was discovered that would be a terrific way to present the material of that day. I love it. I love looking at the standards, dissecting them, and then deciding how I am going to teach things. This is the art of teaching and what makes me go.