Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kirstie Robison
Regent University
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
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
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
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
References
Differentiated Instruction. (2007, July 7). Retrieved October 14, 2017, from
http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=736.html
Johnson, B. (2009, March 02). Differentiated Instruction Allows Students to Succeed. Retrieved
success