Instruction

3a. Communicating with Students

Teachers convey that teaching and learning are purposeful activities; they make that purpose clear to students. They also provide clear directions for classroom activities so students know what to do; and when additional help is appropriate, teachers model these activities. When teachers present concepts and information, they make those presentations with accuracy, clarity, and imagination, using precise, academic language; where amplification is important to the lesson, skilled teachers embellish their explanations with analogies or metaphors, linking them to students’ interests and prior knowledge. Teachers occasionally withhold information from students to encourage them to think on their own, but what information they do convey is accurate and reflects deep understanding of the content. Teachers’ use of language is vivid, rich, and error free, affording the opportunity for students to hear language used well and to extend their own vocabularies. Teachers present complex concepts in ways that provide scaffolding and access to students.

The elements of component 3a:

• Expectations for learning
• Directions for activities
• Explanations of content
• Use of oral and written language​

3b. Using Good Questions and Discussion Techniques

It is important that questioning and discussion be used as techniques to deepen student understanding rather than serve as recitation, or a verbal “quiz.” Good teachers use divergent as well as convergent questions, framed in such a way that they invite students to formulate hypotheses, make connections, or challenge previously held views. Students’ responses to questions are valued; effective teachers are especially adept at responding to and building on student responses and making use of their ideas. High-quality questions encourage students to make connections among concepts or events previously believed to be unrelated and to arrive at new understandings of complex material. Effective teachers also pose questions for which they do not know the answers. Even when a question has a limited number of correct responses, the question, being nonformulatic, is likely to promote student thinking.

The elements of component 3b:

• Quality of questions/prompts
• Discussion techniques
• Student participation​

3c. Engaging Students in Learning

When students are engaged in learning, they are not merely “busy,” nor are they only “on task.” Rather, they are intellectually active in learning important and challenging content. The critical distinction between a classroom in which students are compliant and busy and one in which they are engaged is that in the latter, students are developing their understanding through what they do. That is, they are engaged in discussion, debate, answering “what if?” questions, discovering patterns, and the like. They may be selecting their work from a range of (teacher-arranged) choices, and making important contributions to the intellectual life of the class. Such activities don’t typically consume an entire lesson, but they are essential components of engagement. A lesson in which students are engaged usually has a discernible structure: a beginning, a middle, and an end, with scaffolding provided by the teacher or by the activities themselves.

The elements of component 3c:

• Activities and assignments
• Grouping of students
• Instructional materials and resources
• Structure and pacing​

3d. Using Assessment in Instruction

Assessment of student learning plays an important new role in teaching: no longer signaling the end of instruction, it is now recognized to be an integral part of instruction. While assessment of learning has always been and will continue to be an important aspect of teaching (it’s important for teachers to know whether students have learned what teachers intend), assessment for learning has increasingly come to play an important role in classroom practice. And in order to assess student learning for the purposes of instruction, teachers must have a “finger on the pulse” of a lesson, monitoring student understanding and, where feedback is appropriate, offering it to students. Indeed, for the purpose of monitoring, many teachers create questions specifically to elicit the extent of student understanding and use additional techniques (such as exit tickets) to determine the degree of understanding of every student in the class. Teachers at high levels of performance in this component, then, demonstrate the ability to encourage students and actually teach them the necessary skills of monitoring their own learning against clear standards. But as important as monitoring student learning and providing feedback to students are, however, they are greatly strengthened by a teacher’s skill in making mid-course corrections when needed, seizing on a “teachable moment,” or enlisting students’ particular interests to enrich an explanation.

The elements of component 3d:

• Assessment criteria
• Monitoring student learning
• Feedback to students
• Student self-assessment and monitoring of progress​

3e. Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness

“Flexibility and responsiveness” refer to a teacher’s skill in making adjustments in a lesson to respond to changing conditions. When a lesson is well planned, there may be no need for changes during the course of the lesson itself. Shifting the approach in midstream is not always necessary; in fact, with experience comes skill in accurately predicting how a lesson will go and being prepared for different possible scenarios. But even the most skilled, and best prepared, teachers will occasionally find either that a lesson is not proceeding as they would like or that a teachable moment has presented itself. They are ready for such situations. Furthermore, teachers who are committed to the learning of all students persist in their attempts to engage them in learning, even when confronted with initial setbacks.

The elements of component 3e:

• Lesson adjustment
• Response to students
• Persistence​