3. Planning for Differentiated Instruction

The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement.

The IPTS standard states that the competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement.

Sketch notes provide students the freedom to create work that enhances their learning experience. Sketch notes allow the students to use their own learning style and personality. This strategy keeps helps students to stay focused focused as well as makes their thinking visible. Sketch notes also provide an opportunity for gifted students to go above and beyond by targeting higher level thinking.

By using sketch notes in science class I was able to give the students the opportunity to take ownership of their learning and their learning outcome. The sketch notes were used as a studying strategy for our science class where students learned about the life cycle of the plant as well as the functions of the different parts of a plant. The students were able to use their sketch notes as a study tool as well as a resource for them to look back at while taking the science test at the end of the plant unit.

The UbD framework helps to focus curriculum and teaching on the development and deepening of student understanding and transfer of learning. In this Ubd lesson template I explore the theme of friendship in the Novel Charolette's Web written by E.B. White with 4th grade students. In stage one, I emphasis the big ideas that the class will learn as well as the knowledge and skills that the students will talk away from this lesson. In stage two, I listed assessments that would be used for the unit and I included the GRAPS model to further explain the "podcast" assessment for the students. Lastly, in stage three I listed 10 learning experiences and linked them to resources that further explain or support the learning experience. Creating a lesson while using the UbD framework taught me how to be organized and how to prioritize the students learning.

Through creating this UbD lesson template, I was able to see the importance of backward design in the classroom. Understanding backward design is important for many reasons, backward design allows the teacher to reflect on "why" as well as "what" they are teaching and backwards design can also help students build the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish necessary learning goals. This UbD lesson template is connected to knowledge indicator 3A which states that the competent teacher "understands the Illinois Learning Standards, curriculum development process, content, learning theory, assessment, and student development and knows how to incorporate this knowledge in planning differentiated instruction". Creating a lesson using the UbD stages allowed me to use a standard and connect it to the students learning by focusing in on a big idea and exploring that more in depth by using different learning experiences and grasps assessments.

While creating a Ubd lesson template I learned that focusing on the "why" and "what" I am teaching is extremely important when it comes to the students education. Using the UbD template was intimidating at first but I quickly realized how beneficial it was to both me as a teacher and the students. I enjoyed working with the Ubd template and I plan on using this method in the future when I have my own classroom.