Effective Teaching Practices (Elementary Education)

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 (Elementary)

The graduate identifies and teaches the basic language concepts important for young students to learn.
The graduate understands the role of comprehension in learning to read and teaches comprehension skills.
The graduate provides systematic and explicit instruction in writing.
The graduate provides systematic and explicit instruction in spelling.
The graduate provides systematic and explicit instruction in handwriting.
The graduate provides effective, research-based mathematics curriculum instruction.
The graduate identifies and analyzes student responses to mathematical problems to detect misunderstandings and misconceptions.
The graduate provides effective, research-based science instruction.
The graduate identifies and analyzes student responses to science problems to detect misunderstandings and misconceptions.
The graduate provides effective, research-based social science instruction.
The graduate integrates health and fitness content into the elementary curriculum.
The graduate integrates visual arts and music into the elementary curriculum.
The graduate understands the nature of concepts about print and how parents can work with children at home to help develop that skill.
The graduate understands and teaches phonemic awareness skills.
The graduate understands the role that phonics plays in learning to read and provides effective research-based phonics instruction.
The graduate understands the nature of oral reading fluency, describes its role in reading comprehension and demonstrates effective research-based teaching practices that promote fluency.
The graduate understands the relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension and teaches vocabulary in isolation and in context.
The graduate understands the differences in type and genre; and can analyze texts for structural devices, perspective, bias, stereotyping, and grade-level appropriateness.
The graduate describes, evaluates, selects, and uses children’s literature for a variety of purposes across curriculum areas.

Teaching Methods: Literacy and Elementary Reading

The graduate applies knowledge and skills that promote reading comprehension and teaches comprehension skills.
The graduate articulates principles and incorporates practices of emergent literacy that help children develop pre-reading and pre-writing skills.
The graduate designs activities that promote the development of phonological and phonemic awareness.
The graduate explains reading principles and designs instruction that promotes word identification.
The graduate describes the role of oral reading fluency in reading comprehension and demonstrates effective research-based teaching practices that promote fluency.
The graduate designs and presents instruction that focuses on vocabulary in isolation and in context, based on a correct understanding of the relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension.
The graduate analyzes genres, bias, stereotyping, and grade-level appropriateness in texts and designs instruction that will help students analyze texts.
The graduate evaluates, selects, and incorporates children’s literature across curriculum areas for a variety of instructional purposes.

Teaching Methods: Literacy, Elementary Language Arts and Handwriting

The graduate provides systematic and explicit writing instruction.
The graduate provides systematic and explicit spelling instruction.
The graduate designs instruction that promotes the development of effective speaking and listening skills.
The graduate demonstrates accurate handwriting and designs effective handwriting instruction.
The graduate applies knowledge and skills for the purpose of promoting classroom culture that motivates students to engage with high-quality literature, develop skills, construct products, and use oral language to appreciate and analyze, and perform language arts.
The graduate selects, creates, and administers developmentally appropriate assessments and interprets results to plan or modify instruction.