Domain 3: Instruction

Effective teachers must effectively communicate with their students. While we are teaching, we must clearly communicate our content matter, and we must check that students understand before we move on. I frequently ask if anyone has any questions while I am teaching, and I ask questions to check students' understanding. Sometimes, I will have students solve math problems on small, individual whiteboards and hold up their answers to see how they are doing. I will also work with students who need extra help individually, but frequent many students will have the same question, and occasionally students will ask an interesting question that will lead to a teachable moment. For this reason, it is important to be flexible and make a mid-lesson adjustments.

It is also important to get out students engaged in the day's lesson. I usually begin class with an interesting question that will get students thinking about the topic we are going to explore. I closely monitor students while I'm teaching to determine when they have finished writing their notes and thinking about the idea being presented, so that I know when to move on.

I frequently formatively assess students by giving them exit tickets asking them to apply what they learned in class that day. For example, I gave students this exit ticket about Coulomb's law, and then differentiated my instruction the next day by working with small groups of students who struggled on the the exit ticket. Here is a short paper about my exit ticket on Coulomb's law, but this is not the only exit ticket I have used to differentiate my instruction. I have also given my students exit tickets I created about function notation and electric fields.