Tom Downey
Educator Portfolio
Planning for Instruction
InTASC 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 their community context.
Introduction
As an educator, instructional planning is often considered to be the bulk of our job. When considering the numerous ways in which students are expected to communicate mathematical concepts, the importance of instructional planning is emphasized even more so for math teachers like myself. Teachers must be able to communicate mathematical concepts in various visual, conceptual, and procedural ways for students to truly master a skill. In addition to this, teachers must be able to convey the connections between lesson targets, mastery skills, and overarching goals. To accomplish everything, teachers must spend a significant amount of time planning their intended instruction, incorporating their knowledge of pedagogy and engagement strategies so that students may reach their full potential.
Aspects of Instructional Planning
In this section of the website, I discuss my experience with instructional planning and highlight some of the best practices I use. I explain how backwards mapping, community context, and cross-disciplinary methods have been integrated into my lesson preparation to create engaging lessons with meaningful results. These concepts can be found throughout my short-term lesson planning process as well as my long-term unit planning and yearly planning processes.
Take a closer look at the planning methods I use to boost student achievement:
Long-Term Planning
The yearly outlines I use to ensure that I teach towards the critical areas of understanding
Unit Planning
A closer look at how I connect our learning targets to the overarching student goals
Lesson Planning
An overview of how I prepare to teach specific learning targets to my students
Conclusion
When planning for instruction, it is essential to start with student learning goals and plan instruction around the desired end result. Through the use of backwards mapping in the multiple layers of instructional planning, I am able to bring a strong conceptualization of the content student will need to master in order to succeed. These methods of planning have allowed me to provide high quality instruction for each student in my classroom.
