INTASC+4

INTASC 4

Reflection of INTASC 4: Instructional Planning: As educators, one of the most important parts of instruction is the instructional planning that goes into creating lesson plans that will be most effective for our students. Within INTASC 4, educators examine the specific concepts that help the planning stage of a lesson. To begin, we find that it is important that we create a goal for the lesson or the unit and keep the end of our lesson or unit in mind. This gives us something to focus on and it may also help us gage the progress of our students and the effectiveness of our instruction. To also keep us focused with our planning, we need to be sure that our objectives, activities, and assessments are all aligned. Ultimately, this will help us to direct our attention to what we want to focus our lesson plans on, and it will also help us understand how we want to assess our students. We must also consider the idea of differentiation. Because our students vary in academic ability, interests and accommodations, it is important that we accommodate for our student’s needs. Another key aspect, to keep in mind, is that we vary our assessments enough to keep our students motivated. This motivation is one of the most important aspects of the lesson. We can achieve the motivation by showing relevance with the students and the material, or even showing a YouTube clip that provides or taps into student background. If we maintain the same assessments, students will become disinterested from the monotony, but if we continue to activate their interests and curiosity with motivation, we can provide that important hook needed to hold our student’s attention. For example, in an English classroom, if we were creating an introductory lesson for Lord of the Flies, we might begin by asking students what they would do if they were stranded on a deserted Island with a group of other people. What would they do for food, shelter, or any other type of organization they might find to be important? It is within this motivation that we invite our students into our lessons and we can perform a more effective lesson. The instructional planning part of the lesson is the most important aspect for student success.



Reflection A: “The teacher understands principles, techniques, advantages, and limitations, associated with various teaching and learning strategies” For INTASC 4, I have decided to showcase a lesson plan that I implemented for a segment within the unit of //Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave//. Within the lesson plan, I have provided a creative way for students to show their knowledge and understanding about important quotes within the Narrative. For this lesson plan, I decided to spit the class into six groups and have them walk around the room to different posters with quotes. At each poster students were instructed to paraphrase the quote and to write the significance of the quote for Douglass’s purpose for the Narrative. As the students went around, they were told that if a group had already stated what they believe, then they were to circle, underline, or write “I agree” with the comment. However, if the students disagreed with the comments made prior, then they had to write “I disagree” and then explain why. Within this lesson, I planned to have students work in groups to help them formulate many different perspectives based on the quotes provided. Many times, when students work together on assessments such as this, they find that they actually instruct and learn with each other. This method of instruction proves my mastery of the INTASC because I was able to combine the advantages of students working together with the instruction of the carousel activity where students travel from poster to poster and reflect on different ways to paraphrase the important quotes. This introduced my students to a new activity that kept them motivated and engaged, while it also forced to not only reflect upon their own beliefs of the quotes, but they were forced to reflect upon their peers understanding of them also. This method of instruction relates to a positive impact on student learning because it allowed them to get out of their seats in order to physically work with and create their own connection with the material. This assessment of inquiry learning kept my students motivated and engaged for the duration of the session and it gave them a deeper understanding and connection with the material. This lesson plan is also a good demonstration for my planning, teaching, and assessing abilities as a beginning educator. Because I am aware that many of my students have IEPs, I understood that cooperative learning would help all of the students. The higher readability students could learn by assisting the lower readability students, and all of the students would be given multiple perspectives which called for a higher level of thinking and reflection for all students. The way I implemented the lesson was also very helpful for my students. By creating a model, I not only provided my students with an example of what was being asked of them with direct instruction, but I also gave them insight as to how to look deeper into the quotes to find important connections. This artifact truly demonstrates my ability to implement a lesson in the classroom that is not only just effective, but that causes students to become engaged and engrossed with the material and with the perspectives of their peers.

Reflection B: “The teacher uses a variety of teaching and learning strategies to engage students in the development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.”

Reflecting on this lesson for INTASC 4, I am aware that I implemented many variations of teaching and learning strategies for my students and their understanding of the material. My lesson plan of the important quotes of Frederick Douglass allowed my students the opportunity to deeply reflect upon the purpose for Frederick Douglass’s //Narrative// and it also gave them the opportunity to put these important terms into their own words. To best help my students with their understanding of the material, I understood that I would need a specific focus to draw my student’s attention and focus. This method proves my understanding and implementation of INTASC 4. With the choice of the six quotes from the text, I believe that my students could better grasp the material and the deeper, underlying message of Douglass’s //Narrative//. Also, considering the performance of my students and their individual accommodations and needs, I found that the best way to assist my students with their learning would be to have them work in groups to reflect upon the quotes. This proves the positive impact on student learning because, in doing so, my students would be introduced to many different perspectives and insights as to what the passage might mean. In deciding this, I knew that I would be developing my student’s critical thinking abilities because I was not only questioning their own thoughts about the passages, but I had asked them to question the reflections of their peers. This method then became a very student centered and engaging process of meaning. Students then had to, if there were any disagreements (and there were) work with their problem solving skills in order to create a final paraphrasing of the quote. At first I wasn’t sure of how in depth students were going to be with their arguments, but as I walked around the room, I found that many students remained very strong in their beliefs and understanding of the text. To see this affect within a new lesson was nothing short of uplifting. My students weren’t only engaged in the assessment, but they were engaged with the material. I found that the cycle of planning, teaching, implementing, and reflecting for this lesson went extremely well, because it not only gave my students the basic information needed to understand the Narrative, but it also gave them the ability to analyze and reflect upon their work and the work of their peers to create a better understanding.