Planning for Instruction: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals

by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context. I met InTASC standard 7 through out my student teaching placements. The planning commentary that is located in TPA Task 1 shows that I was able to plan lessons that were full of necessary content, followed curriculum requirements and included skills that can be used across all content areas. Students learning goals and background and prior knowledge were also thought about during the planning of those lessons. All of the students in the first grade class were at all different levels. In order to make lessons accessible to all students I had to come up with different criteria for specific groups of students. In the planning of these lessons I had to think about specific students abilities and what I know that they could accomplish. I was also placed in a resource room for 4th and 5th graders. I had to teach these students the skills that were required in 4th and 5th grade. I also had to teach them basic reading and math skills. The students in this room were required to learn the skills and vocabulary from their particular grades. These students abilities were below grade level, in some cases by multiple years. When planning lessons I had to teach 4th and 5th grade skills using 1st-3rd grade-reading materials. I also had to plan for time to teach them the basic skills of reading including: sounds of phonemes and letter sounds. The same thing goes for math lessons. These students were required to learn their grade level skills but were also in need of assistance in lower grade level skills. Planning for 4th and 5th grade was not the only task that was asked of me at this school I also had to plan for almost every other grade because that is the levels that these students were at. Planning took more time and a lot of thought to figure out exactly what, how and when to teach specific skills and lessons. Another aspect of this placement was the scheduling. The students in this classroom came in and out at varied times. For example the time period for reading was from 10:00-11:30. During this time I had five 5th graders and two 4th graders. I had to be able to give both grade levels an hour of reading instruction mixed with fluency and word work at the same time. Since they were at different levels I was not able to teach them at the exact same time. I had to plan how I was going to keep students working on skills that needed to be learned and skills that needed to be improved. When planning these lessons I had to figure out work for the students to do on their own that required little to no assistance from myself. To improve and grow on this standard once I graduate I will need to continue creating thought out lessons. The lessons need to contain multiple aspects and different levels of guided work and independent work. Collaborating with other teachers is something that will benefit my planning because I will be able to get new ideas and bounce my ideas off of other teachers.