InTASC Standard #8: Instructional Strategies
- The teachers understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
To best show my competence in InTASC standard #8 (instructional strategies) I will show how I use a variety of strategies to help my students grasp the content. I will also show how I have them apply their knowledge in meaningful ways.
My first artifact is a project I designed that helps to develop a deep understanding of the content areas and their connections. Standard #8 asks the teacher to use a variety of strategies to encourage learners to gain deep understanding of differing content. I chose the “types of evolution: mini-project” because it connects not only multiple portions of the biology course, but incorporates many different areas and requires the students to make deep connections. The “mini-project” as I called it, is an appropriate representation of the standard because it contains a variety of strategies and content areas. The students are tasked to create a species which they must draw and color (art/visual learning strategy). They must also give the species three unique alleles so they can evolve through time. They are then randomly assigned two ways in which their species will evolve. They must connect these two modes of evolution into a comprehensive story (writing/storytelling strategy). The connections must make sense together through the story as the point is to show that many types of evolution can be happening at once in one species. All these pieces combine in a project that took two in-class days. It combines multiple different types of learning and use pieces from other contents like art and language in order to be completed. This is an excellent project for those students who learn through visualization. The pictures they draw help those learners make connections between their project and the topic of evolution.
My second artifact is a student created bacteria "wanted poster.” I tasked the class with researching a bacteria strain and the disease it causes. They then had to make a PSA type wanted poster that explained the dangers of the disease and how the bacteria can affect the human body. This type of research helps to foster deep understanding of the content by connecting the content to meaningful out of class projects. This is a good project for the kinesthetic learners, as they get a chance to create a product that shows that they can connect different portions of the content into one comprehensive work.
This artifact helped me to grow as a teacher because it is the first project that I have created without some kind of backbone to start with. I noticed a hole in the learning of some of my students so I had to come up with something to help fill it. This was important for me to do as a teacher to ensure my students could make sense of the information. The first run through was not perfect, but as I went through it with the classes I was able to fine tune many pieces and make a very effective learning tool. The second artifact helped me to learn that students are great at teaching themselves when the content is applied in an instructional strategy that makes sense to them.
My first artifact is a project I designed that helps to develop a deep understanding of the content areas and their connections. Standard #8 asks the teacher to use a variety of strategies to encourage learners to gain deep understanding of differing content. I chose the “types of evolution: mini-project” because it connects not only multiple portions of the biology course, but incorporates many different areas and requires the students to make deep connections. The “mini-project” as I called it, is an appropriate representation of the standard because it contains a variety of strategies and content areas. The students are tasked to create a species which they must draw and color (art/visual learning strategy). They must also give the species three unique alleles so they can evolve through time. They are then randomly assigned two ways in which their species will evolve. They must connect these two modes of evolution into a comprehensive story (writing/storytelling strategy). The connections must make sense together through the story as the point is to show that many types of evolution can be happening at once in one species. All these pieces combine in a project that took two in-class days. It combines multiple different types of learning and use pieces from other contents like art and language in order to be completed. This is an excellent project for those students who learn through visualization. The pictures they draw help those learners make connections between their project and the topic of evolution.
My second artifact is a student created bacteria "wanted poster.” I tasked the class with researching a bacteria strain and the disease it causes. They then had to make a PSA type wanted poster that explained the dangers of the disease and how the bacteria can affect the human body. This type of research helps to foster deep understanding of the content by connecting the content to meaningful out of class projects. This is a good project for the kinesthetic learners, as they get a chance to create a product that shows that they can connect different portions of the content into one comprehensive work.
This artifact helped me to grow as a teacher because it is the first project that I have created without some kind of backbone to start with. I noticed a hole in the learning of some of my students so I had to come up with something to help fill it. This was important for me to do as a teacher to ensure my students could make sense of the information. The first run through was not perfect, but as I went through it with the classes I was able to fine tune many pieces and make a very effective learning tool. The second artifact helped me to learn that students are great at teaching themselves when the content is applied in an instructional strategy that makes sense to them.