You are on page 1of 5

Running head: PLANNING, PREPARATION, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION OF LEARNERS 1

Planning, Preparation, Assessment, and Instruction of Learners

Kirstie Robison

Regent University

In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Fall 2017


PLANNING, PREPARATION, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION OF LEARNERS 2

Introduction

In order to be effective, a teacher has to be collecting data from the students. The teacher

needs to be paying attention to what the students understand and what they still need to learn.

Meeting the needs of all learners needs to be kept in mind when the teacher is both planning and

preparing for a lesson. A teacher needs to be constantly assessing where the students are in order

to see how effective his or her lessons are going. This helps the teacher know where to change

his or her lessons or when he or she may need to remediate.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

My first artifact is the pre-assessment I gave to my fourth grade students on planets.

There were three standards that I focused on for the planets topic. SCI. 4.1.2 Sequence the eight

planets in the solar system based on their position from the sun. SCI 4.1.3 Classify planets as

terrestrial or as gas giants. SCI 4.1.4 Sequence the eight planets in the solar system according to

relative size. For the pre-assessment I wanted to see how much my students understood. I wanted

to know if they knew the order of the planets both size and location from the sun. I also wanted

to see if they could give me both a terrestrial planet and a gas giant planet. After reviewing the

pre-assessments, I realized that many students could not remember planets. I had to start from

the basics. One common mistake was people classifying the moon and sun as a planet. This

information was used to guide my lessons. In one lesson, I had the students talk about how they

would define a planet. The class then had a discussion about what a planet is. The conclusion

was that a planet is almost a perfect sphere that revolves around the sun. Using that definition, I

asked the students to think whether or not the moon was a planet. Those that said it was were

instructed to come to the front of the room. Those that said it was not went to the back of the

room. Then I facilitated a class discussion as to whether or not the moon was a planet. I then
PLANNING, PREPARATION, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION OF LEARNERS 3

repeated the same process using the sun as a planet. This helped clarify the misconception that

the sun and moon are planets. I chose this artifact because as a teacher it is really important to

pre-assess where the students are. This way the teacher is starting where the students are. The

information is not too easy or too challenging. I would have expected the students to know the

planet names. However, after giving the pre-assessment I realized that was not the case.

The second artifact that I chose is a chart that I created combining the scores from both

the pre-assessment and post-assessment. After looking at the data, I noticed that all my students

had significantly improved their score. The students still have room to grow in their knowledge

of the planets, but they showed significant growth. As a teacher, it is important to remember that

many students will be able to get a perfect score on an assessment. However, it is important to

look at the growth that they showed. After seeing the growth, then it is important to see where

the misconceptions still are in order to help remediate the students that struggled. One thing I

noticed when grading the assessments is that many students needed more practice in organizing

the planets by size. They knew the order from the sun but not the order by size. As a teacher, it is

important to have data that shows the growth of the students as well as what the students are still

struggling with. I chose this artifact because it shows the improvement of the students. While

some students need some remediation, I saw that my teaching was effective and that I was able

to take data and apply it to my teaching.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

Proper lesson planning and preparation is vital to become an effective teacher. The key

to good teaching, purposeful class management and the achievement of sustained educational

progress lies in effective planning (Butt, 2008 p. 2). There is a lot of thought that goes into each

and every lesson that a teacher creates. A teacher should be constantly assessing the students in
PLANNING, PREPARATION, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION OF LEARNERS 4

order to see how effective his or her teaching is. This will then affect the teachers lesson plans

and preparation. A teacher will see who he or she needs to remediate and who he or she need to

stretch more and dive deeper with. All of this information should go into the teachers lesson

plans and preparation. This leads to the students assessment. A teacher cannot expect perfection

but a teacher should see growth in student learning.

An important part of planning and preparation is using lessons to meet the needs of all

learners (Johnson, 2009). Differentiation is an important part of lesson planning and effective

teaching. It is challenging to meet each child where he or she is, but it is vital to teaching. Each

child has different strengths and gifts. Teachers need to focus on those strengths. A struggling

child needs to be pulled aside and have remediation time while the students that understand the

material needs to be pushed to dive deeper. One big challenge is finding time to get information

taught on time as well as differentiate lessons so that every child feels challenged (Differentiated

Instruction, 2007). While it is hard and challenging, meeting the needs of all learners is vital to

become an effective teacher.


PLANNING, PREPARATION, ASSESSMENT, AND INSTRUCTION OF LEARNERS 5

References

Differentiated Instruction. (2007, July 7). Retrieved October 14, 2017, from

http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=736.html

Butt, G. (2008). Lesson planning. London: Continuum.

Johnson, B. (2009, March 02). Differentiated Instruction Allows Students to Succeed. Retrieved

October 14, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-student-

success

You might also like