Running Head: PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION, AND ASSESSMENT

Planning, Preparation, Instruction, and Assessment

Anna Gillette

Regent University

In Partial Fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio Spring 2018

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Introduction

Planning, preparation, instruction, and assessment are all crucial things teachers must do.

In order to give effective instruction teachers must plan what to teach and how to teach it; this

should grounded in their understanding of what a specific group of students already knows and is

ready to learn as well as the teacher’s philosophy of how students learn, among other things. This

is them followed by preparing for instruction by gathering necessary materials and reviewing the

lesson plan. When a teacher is properly prepared they may begin to instruct students, which is

followed by an assessment to measure student progress and the effectiveness of the lesson. This

gives the teacher information to use in planning further instruction. Knowing where students are

coming from before planning instruction gives teachers an idea of how they can best use their

time by telling them what students already know and still need to learn, as well as whether they

need to teach the lesson to the whole class or just a small group of students. With this data,

teachers can best plan instruction for their students, leading to the best preparation for, delivery

of, and and assessment of instruction.

Rational

The artifacts I chose to show my competency at planning, preparing, delivering, and

assessing instruction work together. The first is a pre and post-assessment I gave to a group of

kindergarteners before and after a lesson, along with the data it produced, and the second is the

lesson plan I made based on the pre-assessment and delivered before the post-assessment.

Before I wrote lesson plans to teach the -og family words, I gave students a

pre-assessment to see what they knew. This drove my decision to teach the word family as a

whole class lesson, as it told me that the majority of students would benefit either from learning

how to use the -og ending or from learning to correct other spelling errors they were making with
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-og family words. It also showed me that I should make sure to teach words with consonant

blends and point out the blends directly to the students, as the students seemed to struggle most

with the word which used a consonant blend, and it confirmed my suspicion that I would not

have to spend any time teaching the word dog. I then used this information to write my lesson

plans.

In my lesson plans I chose to use the word dog as my example of a -og family word; I

knew it would be a good foundation to start from since I knew all but one students could spell it

correctly. I also chose to make note of a couple of consonant blend -og words to use with the

students, since I saw that students had the most trouble spelling frog. I taught the same lesson to

the whole class, knowing that most of the students would benefit from it. I made the lesson

interactive and had the students practice the words by writing them on their own whiteboards,

allowing me to formatively assess the whole class at the same time and redirect students that

made a mistake without having to come to each student individually.

The day after the lesson I assessed the students again, so see what they had retained form

it. I found that 95% of the students either improved their spelling of the words on the

pre-assessment, or else spelled all of the words right in the first place. I also fond that 95% of the

class used the -og ending in every word on the post-assessment. Students who had previously

used -og but misspelled words in other ways spelled more if not all words correctly, showing that

students who had previously known how to use the -og ending still benefited from the lesson.

The post-assessment also gave me some insight as to what students were ready to learn

next. I found that there were still a number of students struggling with the word using a

consonant blend, leading me to believe that the students could benefit from direct instruction to

blends as well as more exposure to them in other lessons.

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Reflection

My time as a student teacher has taught me that good teaching comes in part from

knowing your students and planning instruction with them in mind. This means knowing their

academic levels, but also their dispositions,. Interests, and learning styles. While some of these

things can be discovered by assessments, others are only uncovered by getting to know them. It

is important for teachers to get to know their students personally almost as much as it is for them

to get to know their academic abilities. Both are important to teaching a good lesson and having

a productive school year. It has also taught me that, while formal pre and post-assessments can

be useful, as one was in the cause of my artifact, a previous assessment can serve well in the

place of a pre-assessment; students do not have to take the same assessment twice to have an

effective measure of their growth. Often teachers find out that they have no need to teach again

some of the things on the first assessment, and so they do not need to measure students’ abilities

on those things. This is a great thing, because it means that teachers can keep changing their

assessments to measure only those things which are most relevant to students at the tame, saving

time and maintaining flexibility.

I have also learned about planning, preparation, instruction, and assessment in my classes

at Regent University. Almost all of my program-specific classes touched on this area, although

some spent more time it than others. One of the most important things these classes taught me

about this area is that engaging, effective instruction is a part of good classroom management.

When a lesson is interesting to students and planned around meeting their needs, students will

remain active participants in learning and have little need to act out.