Anchor Standard 7: Planning for Instruction &
Anchor Standard 8: Instructional Strategies
Intasc Anchor Standard 7: 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.
Intasc Anchor Standard 8: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Intasc Anchor Standard 8: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Organization is key in creating meaningful, creative, cross-disciplinary, and differentiate instruction. As an educator it is important to see where you would like your students to end up and the knowledge you hope they will gain throughout the unit plan. In order to do this a teacher must put much consideration into the timing and supporting labs that accompany such instruction. I have had the unique ability to focus my Masters degree program in curriculum theory and strategy. In doing so I have had a lot of time to practice my planning skills and have discovered that in order to provide my students with the best pedagogy, I need to plan my lessons out in advance. I also like to plan them thoroughly with a materials needed section, with specific goals and objects, along with standards met through teaching students the outline. My outlines include worksheets that are attached in order and listed next to the lessons as artifacts. In the long run I feel planning out my years unit plans in advance will be beneficial. The benefit of having a rough idea of time to complete a unit it so important with the interruption of testing, breaks, snow days, and other unplanned hiccups that occur throughout the school year. Below are several examples of unit outlines that prove my understanding on Anchor Standard 7 a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q.
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These outline also prove my understanding of Intasc Anchor Standard 8 Instructional Strategies. Within these document are examples of my abilities to adapt instruction to the need of individuals and group learners. During each of the lessons I constantly spent time walking around the room ensuring an understanding of the material and taking notes on what information was still misunderstood. I then adjusted my lessons to spend more time with students on techniques and information that needed more time and a different approach. One particular example came when making graphs in Google Drive using spreadsheet. Many students were struggling with this activities and so I made the decision to spend two days with the students ensure an understanding and their ability to apply this knew knowledge to other classes. During labs I took on the role of audience and spent time taking a step back and letting students figure out how to fix problems that arose instead of immediately assisting students with prompt questions that could help them correct mistakes or fix the problems in their experiments. The unit plans below also show my ability to provide learners with a range of learning skills and technological tools to access, interpret, evaluate and apply newly acquired information.
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The next two photo's are example of students actively engaged in building their rocket racers and they represent varying designs and creativity.
One of the greatest opportunities for me to differentiate and engage all learners in complex thinking and meaningful tasks occured with Newton's 3rd Law of Motion Lab, Rocket Racers. I began the lesson by telling the students the expectations I had for them while they were working on this lab and that they would be working in groups by table. The expectations included having fun, working as a team, keeping the noise level to a minimum, making sure everyone in the group was included, making sure they first worked on coming up with a team name (get creative), then they needed to come up with a design and sketch a top view, side view, and front view that included size in centimeters of each part of their rocket racer, and finally once again that they most importantly have fun. Next, I told students to think how Newton’s 3rd law applied to the rocket racers lab. Many of the answers were great. Once the students started working their level of questioning and critical thinking were truly inspiring. It was so great to hear their ideas, even the students who teachers have voiced trouble inspiring were engaged and excited. They were so excited that many of the students asked to come back during study hall and flex Friday to continue working on their rocket racers and if they could ask questions and problem solve to improve their designs. The questions included "Do you think it will be too heavy at this size, what if we made two different sets of wheels and tested them to find the best size, could we add a better axle and how should the front be slanted to ensure minimal air drag. They learned about air drag in Newton's 1st and 2nd law of Motion lessons. This unit also involved a class discussion after the racing trials of the rocket racers were complete. Student's discussed what worked and what didn't. They discussed possible other materials to use in future development of rocket racers. Some students even discovered that this lab helped them with the Invention/Innovation projects and the design stage. They said it made more sense to create a rough sketch and that gave them a better idea of materials to use for their Invention/Innovations projects that were due in 2 weeks. These examples prove my understanding of Intasc Standard 8 a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, and s.