The purpose of the Instructional Delivery Standard is to ensure that Virginia’s public school teachers are employing exceptional instructional delivery strategies in their classrooms. The Instructional Delivery Standard is important because it affirms Virginia’s students receive an excellent education that is delivered with the best instructional delivery strategies that actively engage students. The Virginia Department of Education (2011) recommends the following three ways for teachers to meet the Instructional Delivery Standard:
1) Engage and Maintain Students in Active Learning
2) Use a Variety of Effective Instructional Strategies and Resources
3) Use Instructional Technology to Enhance Student Learning
1.) Engage and Maintain Students in Active Learning
During student teaching, I engaged my student’s in active learning by leading the
m in a reader’s theater of the play The Tricky Garden. The play, about a greedy bear and the coyote who teaches him a lesson about sharing, promoted excitement around reading. Students learned about sharing, the parts of a plant, increasing fluency with repeated readings and practice, and using an expressive voice while reading.
After working on phasing and expression for several days, students performed the reader’s theater of The Tricky Garden, about a greedy bear and a coyote, before the other second-grade class. The students enjoyed making crowns with their cut-out and colored characters glued on them. Reader’s theater kept them actively engaged in the content, and enthusiastic participants in their education.
2.) Use a Variety of Effective Instructional Strategies and Resources
An i
nstructional strategy I used during student teaching was the poetry cafe. It had been used in years past within the second grade. It was a very effective instructional strategy for engaging students in oral reading, an important SOL standard for second graders. Students chose a poem from a stack of poems appropriate to their reading level. They practiced reading the poem aloud throughout the week. Because they knew they had a final performance was before their peers and first graders, and because we made it a special event complete with lemonade and cookies and decorations, the students were excited and enthusiastic about practicing their poems.
The final performance on Friday was a real success, with the students reading with fluency and expression. This instructional strategy, a final special performance before a new audience, was an effective way to engage the students.
3.) Use Instructional Technology to Enhance Student Learning
During student teaching, the students video-conference with a college student in Minnesota, a cousin of a student in the class, about her study abroad experience in China. The students had just completed a unit on ancient China.
I often used the ActivBoard to teach. I used it to display Promethean Planet software for our math units. The software allowed me as the teacher and students to manipulate clocks, calendars, and fraction pieces. I also used the Activ Board to project YouTube Videos and for free-hand writing. It came in handy as well for our science units where we displayed diagrams of plant parts or Discovery Education videos.
The students also had access to two computers in the classroom. They used the computers primarily to take Accelerated Reading (AR) tests. I brought a small group over to the computers once to use Kiddle.com (Google’s search engine for children) to look up questions they had generated on their own.
The students also had access to IPADs within the classroom. They used the computer lab on Fridays to work on Splash Math. Both second grade teachers suggested a list of approved educational web sites for the students, as well.
References
Marzano, R.J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Virginia Department of Education. (2011). Guidelines for Uniform Performance Criteria for Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/regulations/2011_guidelines_uniform_performance_standards_evaluation_criteria.pdf