Effective Teaching Practices (Social Science)

Subdomains

Click on the subdomain titles to examine the range of skills and concepts a student can expect to demonstrate for assessment of this Domain:

Instructional Planning and Design

The graduate understands the importance of aligning curriculum, teaching resources, materials and strategies to accepted academic, district and state standards, goals, and priorities as part of a curriculum evaluation and selection process to achieve instructional purposes.
The graduate prepares appropriate lesson plans.
The graduate generates clear, relevant, measurable learning objectives to meet student needs and achieve program goals.
The graduate creates appropriate instructional materials.
The graduate adapts instruction for individual and group student needs.

Instructional Presentation and Follow-Up

The graduate conducts a brief review of previously taught information before beginning instruction on new content.
The graduate maximizes instructional time in the school day and within lessons.
The graduate adjusts lesson procedures and content during instruction in response to student performance.
The graduate understands and uses reteaching purposes and methods.
The graduate is able to lead discussions that engage all students in exploring important questions and connections among content and ideas.
The graduate connects: concepts within and across subjects; to student characteristics; and student experiences.
The graduate explains the features and functions of guided practice and uses guided practice procedures within lessons.
The graduate provides opportunities for students to practice skills independently after determining that they have mastered the new skills during guided practice.
The graduate provides periodic reviews of lesson knowledge, skills and concepts.
The graduate maintains records of student performance on academic and behavioral measures.
The graduate analyzes student work to determine mastery.
The graduate introduces a lesson and goals to students.
The graduate administers a variety of assessments to measure student achievement and to evaluate instructional effectiveness.
The graduate interprets the information from assessments to understand student performance and disseminates the results to students’ parents and school staff.
The graduate uses strategies for oral language development and the teaching of reading, comprehension, writing, and numeracy within all content areas.
The graduate activates students’ prior knowledge before presenting new, related lesson content.
The graduate provides explicit explanations and demonstrations of the knowledge, skills, concepts, attributes, and/or thinking processes of the lesson.
The graduate structures lesson content appropriately using organizers to help students organize lesson skills and information.
The graduate provides illustrations and concrete examples.
The graduate knows how to use instructional curriculum, materials, and resources to meet instructional objectives and improve learning.
The graduate explains effective questioning and feedback and provides students with information about their behavior and learning progress.
The graduate explains the importance of actively monitoring student performance and uses a variety of monitoring procedures to identify student performance on tasks presented during teacher-directed and independent work.

Instructional Strategies and Approaches

The graduate understands, selects, and implements appropriate grouping strategies for instruction.
The graduate explains the features of research-based instructional approaches, identifies characteristics of effective instructional strategies, and demonstrates how to use them.
The graduate teaches students strategies to manage their own learning and behavior including goal setting, monitoring performance, and making appropriate decisions based on data.
The graduate understands the strategies students use to organize, retain, and recall information; and teaches study skills to students.

Subject-Specific Teaching Methods (Social Science)

The graduate provides effective, research-based social science instruction.
The graduate can outline the correct sequence for teaching map skills.
The graduate can correlate teaching strategies for social sciences to a unit of instruction.
The graduate can describe four instructional strategies that could be employed in teaching current events.