PTS Name: Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for All Students
Element: Drawing on and valuing students’ backgrounds, interests, and developmental learning needs
Indicators
As teachers develop, they may ask, “How do I…” or “Why do I…”:
- Incorporate students’ knowledge and experience in my curriculum and instructional planning?
- Use knowledge about students’ lives and their families and communities to inform my planning of curriculum and instruction?
- Recognize and incorporate student diversity as an integral part of my planning?
- Plan lessons and units that promote access to academic content for all students?
- Design lessons that promote subject matter knowledge and language development for second
language learners?
- Use what I know about cognitive and linguistic development to plan instruction that supports
student learning?
Descriptions
Examples may include, but are not limited to:
- Using the results of student interest surveys and learning inventories to determine which additional topics to include in a unit
- Incorporating resources from local community/neighborhoods into lessons to make learning
more meaningful
- Using a variety of texts and resources that reflect students’ cultural backgrounds
- Providing bilingual dictionaries and native language books to supplement the academic growth of English language learners
- Including a wide variety of high-interest books by authors of diverse in the classroom library and organizing them by reading level
- Scaffolding instruction for students by first purposefully modeling skills, then engaging them in guided practice, followed by independent practice and finally opportunity to exhibit mastery
Problems of Practice
Challenges with this element frequently include:
- Employing only resources and materials that are readily available and using them verbatim
- Believing that identifying how to support students’ cognitive and linguistic issues is solely the responsibility of ESL and Special Education teachers