Danielle Ruff

InTASC Standard 8: Instructional Strategies

For this particular InTASC standard, the teacher must implement a variety of instructional
strategies in the classroom that meet the needs of the students, help students understand the
material, and challenge them to apply their knowledge. As a teacher instruction should always be
designed based off of the needs of the students. For example during my middle school rotation at
Magnolia, it was appropriate for me to model to the students certain activities before allowing
them to complete the activity on their own. However, in my high school rotation, it was not as
necessary to always model an activity before allowing my students to complete it. Students in
middle school usually need more instruction and modeling because of their developmental needs,
so it was appropriate for me to give more guidance towards the students in middle school. When
planning for instructional strategies in the classroom, it is also important to consider challenging
students and using higher order thinking. A tool to use when planning for instructional strategies
is the Blooms Taxonomy framework. This framework is designed on a hierarchy system, where
teacher can ask questions or design activities from lower level thinking gradually to the highest
order of thinking. Using this framework will help me design instructional strategies that
gradually challenge students and make learning applicable and more meaningful then just
recalling information needed to pass an assessment.
The artifact using demonstrating this standard is my microteaching lesson. I designed a
lesson and taught the lesson to some of my colleagues. My colleagues had the opportunity to
critique both my skills as a teacher in the classroom as well as the instructional strategies I used
for the lesson. This lesson is designed for a seventh grade life science class on the topic of food
chains and trophic levels. I used specific instructional strategies for this lesson to introduce new
vocabulary and then an activity to apply their knowledge using the new vocabulary. The

instructional strategy that was specific for this lesson was to introduce vocabulary in a way
where students define the vocabulary terms based on their prior knowledge before delivering
them the actual definition. This strategy provided for a more student-centered and meaningful
activity because the students had to be active thinkers rather than just passively copying down in
their notes vocabulary terms and definitions. This strategy also helped me assess the students
background knowledge and any misconceptions the students have before delivering the content.