Standard Three: Planning
Teachers create learning experiences that reflect an understanding of central concepts, structures, and tools of inquiry of the disciplines they teach.
(RIPTS #2)
Teachers create instructional opportunities that reflect an understanding of how children learn and develop. (RIPTS #3)
Teachers create instructional opportunities that reflect a respect for the diversity of learners and an understanding of how students differ in their approaches to learning. (RIPTS #4)
Teachers create instructional opportunities to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills. (RIPTS #5)
Teachers use effective communication as the vehicle through which students explore, conjecture, discuss, and investigate new ideas. (RIPTS #8)
In what ways does the student teacher:
create engaging lessons and units that are organized, linked to other disciplines, and applied beyond the school setting? (RIPTS #2.1)
prepare focused, thorough, sequenced lesson plans? Does the lesson help students to see connections with previous material and their prior knowledge? (RIPTS #3.1,3.2)
prepare a variety of learning activities chosen in to accommodate different levels of prior knowledge and learning styles? (RIPTS #3.3)
design lessons to accommodate individual differences (developmental, language, cultural background, learning style or disability)? Does the student teacher use resource personnel to help with this planning? (RIPTS #3.2, 4.1, 4.4)
make his/her plans clear to the students? Does the student teacher use meta-language to aid students in understanding the purpose of activities? Does the student teacher relate individual lessons to the larger curriculum?
use written plans? Are these usually an accurate guide to what actually happens in class? (RIPTS #2.2 ,2.3)
encourage learners to see, question, analyze and interpret concepts from multiple perspectives? (RIPTS #5.2)
prepare for active engagement of students throughout the lesson? (RIPTS #5.5)
consciously determine how s/he will know if students are on task/on target with the lesson?
prepare a variety of communication strategies (modeling, questioning, counter-examples, etc.) in his/her planning? (RIPTS #8.1)
incorporate technology, where appropriate, in his her planning? (RIPTS #10.2)
design lesson plans that reflect an understanding of how students learn – how students construct knowledge, acquire skills, develop habits of mind, etc.? (RIPTS #3.1)
seek knowledge of and demonstrate sensitivity to the particular communication needs of all students. (RIPTS #8.5)
Meeting Standard Three at the End of SummerPrep:
The teacher candidate’s lesson plans are carefully written and detailed, noting primary content and skills objectives linked to appropriate standards for the content area. Lesson plans list materials, preparation required, key vocabulary and step by step classroom procedures for activities. The teacher candidate estimates time needed to teach the lesson with increasing accuracy and predicts how students will respond to questions and instructions. S/he begins noting expected variations, in the lesson plan, from diverse or special needs learners where appropriate. Lessons exhibit clearly focused assessable objectives, sensible connections from previous lessons as well as throughout the range of actions/activities planned for a single lesson, and by the end of SummerPrep are designed to promote students’ active construction of knowledge – student as worker, not teacher as teller. The teacher candidate takes time to explain lesson objectives to students and, using a variety of strategies including demonstration and modeling, checks that students are clear about what they are doing and why they are doing it. The teacher candidate reflects briefly, in writing, on each lesson taught.