INST6213AUM

This module has helped me think about using standards, CFQs, or 21st-century skills in the following ways... Using standards is inevitable in today's educational world. As a teacher, I have to make sure to meet all of the standards listed in my curriculum in the given school year. I also have to produce lesson plans that incorporate at least one standard from the Alabama Course of Study. This is not new to me. What is new, however, are the definitions of what exactly an essential question is compared to a unit question or a CFQ. What I have always been told is the essential question encompasses the standard/unit you are teaching, which would actually be today's definition of a unit question. CFQs are not necessarily a new thing, but they are relatively new to me. Last school year, we had to make sure that we listed an essential question and a student-friendly objective - among many other things - on our board for any visitors and our students to see. What I used for the stu...

This article has made me think about my role as an instructional designer in the following ways... I create lesson plans to align with what I want to do and what administration requires, but not necessarily with my students. Being in my second year of teaching, I understand a little more about differentiation and how to plan lessons to (hopefully) appeal to all students, but when I have 100 history students and 55 human geography students, it is not always the easiest task to find out what works and what doesn't for each individual student. I plan in a way that will appeal to most students and allow them to learn in their own way at their own pace (as much as possible). However, I do not have 4 different lesson plans for each of my history classes. I have a blanket lesson plan that will encompass all of what I plan to do, and I differentiate based on the class' abilities. I do not necessarily agree 100% with the section titled "But This Kind of Planning Does Not Descri...