Ashley Campbell

October 31, 2009

Cohort 1

STANDARD 6 - Instructional Delivery

The competent teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to

encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance

skills.

My understanding of this standard is that the teacher is responsible for making sure that

lessons are scaffolded and that all students are able to gain useful information and a clear

understanding of the topic from them. All learning styles should be addressed when the teacher

plans a lesson. Students should be able to work in groups and independently during activities.

Students’ minds should be stimulated while they are learning. Critical thinking questions can be

helpful to get students thinking about the lesson and how it relates to their previous experiences.

Assessments should also be a big part of how the lesson plan is developed for the students.

Students’ comprehension, participation, and ability to work independently and in groups should

be taken into account.

The artifact I chose to use for this standard is a lesson plan. In this lesson plan there are

discrete demonstrations of ways to help students develop good critical thinking, problem solving,

and performance skills. For example students are required to work with partners to find

homophones, antonyms and synonyms. This activity requires the students to think about what

they need to do and to discuss their strategies for finding these objects. Then when the activity is

complete, students will be asked to report back to the entire class a few of their personal

findings. This activity allows individual and group work to take place so students can learn. It is

important for the teacher to take the lesson plan and use it to help implement different teaching
and learning strategies to the students. In the lesson the teacher also changes roles while students

are learning. First beginning with questions and small group discussions the teacher poses as the

instructor. Then by allowing students to work on a guided activity with others the teacher is then

able to be a facilitator. He or she would be able to walk around the classroom to make sure that

the students are working cooperatively and that they understand the activities.

In a diverse classroom I feel that these tactics are important because lesson plans should

be constructed to meet the needs of all students. Teachers should know the capabilities of all

their students and should plan individualized lessons to ensure that everyone is grasping the

material effectively. Diversity in the classroom is good for understanding. If there are things in

an activity that are more helpful for a student who has issues with reading or sitting still for long

periods of time, the teacher should have something incorporated in there so that they can learn

better. Drawing pictures or having students hold discussions are helpful in a case where a student

has different capabilities. Lesson plans are ways to tackle students of learning styles and

understandings.