Domain 3: Instruction

The domain of instruction comprises the actual process of teaching, putting into action all the plans you made in Domain 1.  It requires the skills of communicating clearly, stimulating thought, keeping students on-task and judging whether they're learning.  On top of that, the teacher has to be ready to make quick adjustments when things don't go quite right.

Domain 3a:  Communicating with students and Domain 3b:  Using questioning and discussion techniques

Filling in the worksheet demo.

Source 6.

Upon introducing an assignment, a teacher must make sure students know exactly what's expected of them.  While a good teacher may be able to describe an assignment verbally well enough that anyone can understand it, the most expedient method is to show them, and when possible use the "I do, we do, you do" method:  First the teacher demonstrates how to do a task, then the entire class practices, and finally students work individually or in groups to do the assigned work.  In this assignment, which I gave on November 15, 2023, I gave students packets containing the first worksheet and first five sources of a learning activity called CSI:  Gas Warfare.  I then explained the difference between primary and secondary sources.  Finally, I projected scans of the second worksheet and sixth source onto the Promethean  board (a giant touchscreen which allows the teacher to write/draw with a fingertip), and used them to demonstrate how to fill in the worksheet.

As I began filling it in, I asked students what information they could see in the title, date, headline and photograph.  I choose my questions to take the obvious information in front of students and stimulate inference which they can then follow up with further research.  For instance, what does the overall presentation look like?  (A newspaper.)  How long after the event was this source published?  (A few days, indicating that it's a primary source.)  If I told you that the publication was British, what would that suggest?  Over a few minutes' work, we pulled several pieces of useful information.  After students had given suggestions, I could confidently expect they'd be able to work on their own.

The other communication I always prioritize is to make sure students know how an assignment will be graded.  At my school, assignments are either graded as homework, classwork or exams (each worth a different percentage of the student's overall grade) or are ungraded exercises, and it's critical for students to know which assignment is which, as well as the points awarded for each assignment.  Students must also know the deadlines.  Concurrent with CSI:  Gas Warfare, I set a late submission deadline and lateness penalty for all future graded work.  As soon as I made this decision, I announced it during each class period and included it in my second letter to parents to make sure it didn't catch anyone by surprise.

"The Cultural Purge" questions

Domain 3c:  Engaging students in learning
In history classes, there's a danger of students feeling as though they're mindlessly recording and repeating names, dates and events.  I've noticed this risk especially when students are watching videos, so I try to rely as often as possible on lessons that require students to consider what they're hearing and seeing.  When I play a video, unless it's very short, I like to hand out slips of paper with questions for students to consider, at least one of which should involve some serious thinking.  When screening "The Cultural Purge - German Americans During WWI," I decided to ask one straightforward fact (how much the study of German in U.S. high schools declined), one that required a little consideration (why people were suspicious of German-Americans) and one that required choosing a position and defending it.  The ultimate goal, as I tell students, is not simply to load them with information but to have them do something with it — and I like to present them with a difficult situation, one that happened safely in the past but of a kind they may, unfortunately, find themselves obliged to consider in the future in real life.

If at all possible, when students are meant to be doing written work, I circulate and look for anyone who seems to be disengaged or having difficulty.  Students are always aware that they can ask me any questions to clarify what needs to be done.  They also know that they can't just ask me for the answers, though I try to give them the information needed to find the answers.  For instance, if a student is meant to classify a source as primary or secondary, I ask them questions about what the source is, when it was created, and by whom, or, if they have that information, I may need only to clarify what the difference between the two types is.  Lastly, I always find that allowing students to partner is a good motivator, though

Domain 3d:  Using assessment in instruction
A teacher who waits until the end of a lesson, uses a graded final (summative) assessment to find out whether students learned the material, and then moves on will very likely have let a lot of students down.  In other words, it's necessary throughout instruction to check whether students are learning using formative assessment, before it comes time to decide whether they pass, and to use what you learn to support students' understanding by setting aside time to re-teach.

A self-corrected quiz.
(Student's name redacted.)

In each class there will be a different number of students who are willing to speak out loud.  For this reason, I like to use total participation techniques that don't require spoken answers (raised hands or Yes/No cards, for instance) or written assessments.  The latter have an advantage of allowing students to assess themselves as we go over the answers, adding correction marks for future study, plus I can photocopy them and have a permanent reference for myself showing what students still need to work on.  It's important in formative assessment to provide immediate feedback; in ungraded assignments, I do this by going over the answers, giving the correct ones after students have had the opportunity to volunteer theirs, and clarifying as needed.

For example, halfway through my academic unit on the First World War, I administered a short True/False quiz reviewing the first two sections.  After crunching the numbers, I found that two questions stood out far from the rest by how many students had answered them incorrectly:  One asked whether the U.S. economy had boomed during the war and the other whether many Mexican-Americans and African-Americans moved from the South to Northern cities.  The first one told me that the war's effect on the U.S. economy hadn't been adequately emphasized.  The second suggested to me that the subtle distinction between "many" and "most" (as in most Mexican immigration occurred from Mexico to the Southwestern U.S. but many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans also moved to the North) had proved confusing.  Both of these were in need of re-teaching.

Domain 3e:  Demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness

A period's lessons in development.

No day turns out exactly as you expected.  I design lessons with a certain amount of flexibility, especially when it's impossible to predict the amount of time that something will take.  A lesson should have a set of components that are necessary, but also others that are there to enrich and reinforce learning instead of being the main vehicle for it, and can therefore be omitted without causing much harm.  For instance, while designing lessons on days that students gave their presentations on World War I, I deliberately included several activities which could either be shunted to the next day or left out.  This allowance is most important on such days, but it's still pretty important every day.  Lastly, I find one of the most essential traits of a classroom from the teacher's perspective is to always have a line of sight to the clock and know what's coming up that can safely be cut.

Making sure that students understand all points is a moment-to-moment challenge, but over the course of the day and from one day to the next I fine-tune my sense of what works and what doesn't so that I have a jump on problems that occur.  A tip I picked up from my mentor teacher is to keep an eye out for unfamiliar words both in my own speech and in any materials presented to the class.  When I notice something that probably won't be in the average 8th-grader's vocabulary, I immediately provide (without substituting) a more familiar word, a definition, or an additional explanation.