Good planning makes for good instruction and good student learning.                                                                           

~Elizabeth A. Potts & Lori A. Howard

The Planning for Instruction standard is an essential part of teaching. This standard requires that teachers understand the many important parts that go into planning instruction that supports every student. By planning instruction using content knowledge, curriculum, and cross-disciplinary skills while understanding the environment of the classroom and community, a teacher can plan instruction that is engaging and takes the students to high levels of learning. I demonstrate my knowledge of this standard by using the Madeline Hunter lesson for planning instruction, by understanding the importance of collaborating with colleagues and professionals within the community, and by using assessments as the building block for planning instruction.

Artifact #1: Madeline Hunter Lesson Plan

When Planning for Instruction that reaches the many levels of high thinking that is beneficial for the students is easier to do when using a strong lesson plan template. The Madeline Hunter lesson plan template is a template that helps teachers to structure their lesson plans to create instruction that reaches higher level thinking for the student by connecting the different parts of the lesson to multiple intelligences. A strength of the Madeline Hunter lesson plan is that the lesson plan requires repetitiveness that helps to enable the first level of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Remembering. Using the Madeline Hunter Lesson plan encourages the phrase “I do, we do, you do”.

Artifact 2: Collaboration with Colleagues and Professionals

Collaborating with colleagues and professionals from the community is also another way adhere to the Planning for Instruction standard. Communication with colleagues strengthens instruction for students by allowing instruction to be cross disciplinary with subjects. When students learn about a topic through different subjects creates a higher level of thinking and understanding on the topic. Collaborating with community members who are professionals on the topic brings the topic into real life for the students. By collaborating with another teacher, as pictured to the right, I am able to verify that the students are getting the best instruction and bounce off ideas from one another teacher. Collaborating with outside resources is another way to plan for strong instruction. Pictured to the left is an instructor from the YMCA that came in to discuss water safety with the second grade.

Artifact 3:  Instruction Built From Summative Assessment

Planning instruction based off an already made assessment is another strong way I demonstrate understanding of this standard. By creating a summative assessment first, based off grade level Standards of Learning, gives me the understanding of what needs to be addressed while planning for instruction. Building instruction from the assessment will ensure that the students are getting the content knowledge that is standard for their grade level. Performing a pretest will give you data to create a summative assessment  to form strong instructional content. I show this standard when creating my two week Economics unit for First grade. By gathering the content that students need to learn first from the State Standards of Learning, I was able to create a summative assessment that would portray the students’ knowledge from the unit and began building instruction from this summative assessment.