Running Head: PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 1

Planning, Preparation, Instruction and Assessments

Laura Fisher Seay

Regent University

In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Spring 2017

 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 2

Introduction

One of the major components of teaching is planning, preparing, instructing and

assessing. This is very time consuming and if it is not done properly, can result in low student

excellence. Planning is an essential part of teaching. Without a solid and well-thought plan for

each day, the room will result in chaos and a low learning efficiency. Preparation is making sure

that your plans are ready to be carried out. Without the assurance that you have all the materials

and are able to access them easily and quickly, the lesson will not run smoothly. Instruction is

another important aspect in the classroom. Carrying out lesson plans can be difficult if you are

unsure of what to do. Well thought out plans can fail if the instruction and knowledge of the

content being taught is lacking. Every teacher has their own areas of strengths and weaknesses

when it comes to instructing the most effective ways. My strength is working with small groups.

This is the best way to give individualized instruction and to assess where the student is with the

concept being taught. I will implement centers for all subjects in order to instruct with

individualized attention. Finally, all teachers must assess. Assessments can be informal,

formative and summative. All three are important to be aware of because it indicates where and

when a student understood a concept. Teaching has many different parts that must work together

in order to create the best and most efficient learning environment for the students.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

The first artifact that I included was a unit plan for a four-week unit about non-fiction.

The students in this class have already done this unit two times (in quarter one and two) and they

will do it a final time in quarter three. This unit was broken up into different Standards of

Learning in different weeks. The first week was non-fiction text features and structures. The

students have already learned about text features and structures, but still needed much more
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 3

instruction. The second week was main idea and details in non-fiction texts. This is still difficult

for many of the students, because it is sometimes difficult on the SOL test questions to choose

the best answer. The third week consisted of inferencing, which is an even harder SOL to teach,

because it is such an abstract concept. The final week of the unit is cause and effect. The students

did a great job finding their own cause and effects in passages, but struggled when given a cause

and choosing and effect and vice versa. I included this artifact to demonstrate the amount of time

and work that is put into teaching an entire unit. I planned this unit weekly, therefore, instead of

choosing an activity for each day, activities were chosen for the entire week. The students do

rotations daily, so what they do not finish on the first day, they will finish the following day. This

means that some students will finish a lot of the work provided, while others who work at a

slower pace will only finish the first assignment. The assignments are student-centered and the

students finish the assignments at their pace and their academic level. This is why I decided to

plan based on each week, not each day. Having the unit planned out, aided me while I was

teaching in order to know what the next concept. This helped me to ask more critical questions

for the higher groups that will lead into the following week. This planning and preparation

helped tremendously with instruction. Without the planning that occurs daily and weekly, the

quality of instruction would not be as high. When I knew exactly what I would be teaching each

day, it allowed me to instruct more effectively allowing for the essential questions to be asked in

the correct order and the correct day. It helped pace the instruction of each day, but also the

instruction of each week throughout the unit. Without planning and preparation, the daily

instruction and lessons would fail tremendously. It is important to put in the time and effort at the

beginning in order to correctly drive instruction and planning and ultimately assessments.
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 4

It is important to assess students before, during and after teaching a concept. The pre and

post-assessment that I have provided was based on their vocabulary for the week. The pre-

assessments were higher than I anticipated since throughout the entire year, the students have

been learning suffixes and prefixes weekly. They understand how to figure out definitions based

on the root word, prefixes and suffixes. This is exactly what is supposed to happen. The skill for

many of the students has already been learned, which is awesome. Even knowing those tricks

and skills, some students were still not able to understand until the words were taught.

Throughout the week, the students were determined to beat their previous score on the pre-

assessment, which created incentive to do well and to study the words. After taking the pre-

assessment, many of the students were much more engaged throughout the week to do better and

create a better understanding. There were many students who, after the pre-assessment, finally

understood how to put the word parts together to understand the meaning. The pre-assessment

was a great learning tool, as well as data to use while moving forward. Noticing that most

students missed the vocabulary words rather than the word study words (suffixes), the emphasis

that week was the vocabulary words. The instruction was altered to include more activities with

those words. When reviewing daily, I allowed the students to use those words in sentences more

often than the words that they already knew. I also began to create opportunities for those

students who struggled on the pre-assessment to participate more often throughout the whole

group review, but also in small groups. Instruction was altered, after reviewing the scores and

seeing which students needed more assistance in understanding the words. Vocabulary is an

essential part of the SOL tests and students need to know words to do well on the test, which is

why it is important to emphasize how important it is to the students. It is also important to allow

ample time to review words that are tough to read and understand in everyday reading. Overall,
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 5

the students improved by 7-8% (from 88%- about 96%), which is a great increase, especially for

individuals who did not do well initially. I included each individual students scores to show how

many students who did poorly on the pre-assessment did much better on the post assessment.

Assessments are a daily part of school, but it is imperative to use the data from those assessments

to drive instruction and focusing on each individual score. That is the most beneficial way to see

growth, individually. Learning what each students strengths and weaknesses are imperative in

order to improve scores.

Reflection

Planning, preparation, instruction and assessments are a staple in a teachers repertoire of

competencies. These four concepts of teaching have a great impact on the students and how they

learn. Having student-centered instruction and plans engage the students and as a result of the

engagement, they produce their best work. Many of the activities that my students did throughout

the unit were student-centered and engaging. Since the students all have one-to-one devices it is

easier to engage and encourage them to go farther and do more quality work. Much of their work

is on the computer, so the students love to work harder and create something amazing. The

choice board given many weeks allow for students to increase their learning to their own

individual potential. According to Williams (2009), It [instruction] must be a creative exchange

of reflection and experience with flexible structures and routines. Instead of having unbendable,

mindless structures and routines that treat students like robots, we need structures and routines

that help students develop strategies for exploring, wondering and uncovering. Instruction must

be student-centered, otherwise, the students will not be engaged in learning. Planning involves

teachers to understand this concept and allow the students to have time to explore and engage in

what they are learning, not just the facts. By allowing the students to choose how they want to
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 6

display their knowledge on certain concepts by using a choice board, allows the students to

engage more effectively with the content and learn much more. They take ownership of their

work, rather than working on a worksheet. This all starts in the planning and preparation process.

Those decisions to allow the students to explore and engage begin when the teachers plan the

lessons. Although, not all great learning comes directly from the lesson plan. It is important for

teachers to be flexible during the day with the students. According to Yinger, Recently, it has

become popular to describe teachers as problem-solvers and decision makers. Indeed, many

educational researchers have contended that the most important teaching skill is decision-

making. Decision-making is what separates the great teachers from the good teachers. When an

activity does not go well, even when you thought it was going to go perfectly, then it is important

to change the activity or come up with a way on the spot to fix the problem. This is easy for

veteran teachers, because they have had practice at it, but as a pre-service teacher, it can be

difficult to change a plan on the spot because students are moving too quickly or just not getting

the concept. Flexibility is a teachers best friend when it comes to lesson planning. As a new

teacher, in the beginning I would go by the lesson plan exactly, but as I became more confident

and experienced, I understood that when needed, it is okay to move away from the plan to cater

to the needs of the students. This can be difficult when you spent hours planning, but then did not

even use it, but it is necessary to see the growth you need to see in students.

For the pre-assessment and post-assessment, I created a Kahoot to assess the students.

Kahoot is a game that is on the computer where the students compete to find the best answer. The

students love using the game Kahoot, so I thought it would be a great way to assess them on their

word study and vocabulary. It is an unconventional way to assess students, but very effective.

Since the students are putting in their answers and trying to win the game, then they try their
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 7

best. From the pre-assessment to the post assessment, the students were engaged and trying to

answer the questions to the best of their ability. They were still given unlimited amount of time

in order to answer them correctly, but they were still competing with their classmates. This is a

very student-centered approach to instruction as well as assessment. Hammerman (2009) says

the shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction and assessment puts more

emphasis on developing understanding and responding to student needs and interests. Changing

the teachers role from one of provider of information to one of facilitator of learning requires

them to have a strong commitment to teaching and learning. For this particular assessment, I

was just the facilitator and allowed the students to do the teaching. If anyone got an answer

wrong, I chose another student to explain why the right answer is correct, but the one who got

the answer wrong is still unknown to the class. This type of teaching and assessments are very

effective, because the students are engaged and challenged more than a paper and pencil test or

even a google form on the computer. They want to do well in order to win the game. It is a new

way to assess and gauge how well the students have learned the information. Overall, teaching

consists of many different concepts to master, but arguably the most important concepts are

planning, preparation, instruction and assessment. It is important to put in the time and effort to

make the lessons to fit the classroom that is being taught and include each individuals needs.
 PLANNING, PREPARATION, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENTS 8

References

Hammerman, E. L. (2009). Formative assessment strategies for enhanced learning in science,

K-8. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Williams, K. C. (2009). Elementary Classroom Management : A Student-Centered Approach to

Leading and Learning. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Yinger, R. J. (n.d.). A Study of Teacher Planning. The Elementary School Journal,80(3).

Retrieved March 4, 2017, from

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/461181