Effective Instruction Analysis

The Characteristics and Universal Constructs help educators decide how to effectively teach students in their classrooms. The goal of both of these plans is to create a higher level of learning for the students. Five main concepts make up the Characteristics of Effective Instruction: student-centered classrooms, teaching for understanding, assessment for learning, rigorous and relevant curriculum, and teaching for learner differences. Student-centered classrooms are classrooms where students are directly involved in their own learning processes and learn through collaboration. Educators who teach for understanding lead students in exciting activities that make them think and eases them applying their new knowledge in different situations. Formative …show more content…
The teacher had given the students articles and a topic the class before. She encouraged each student to talk at least once and to reflect on their own thinking and then sat back and watched the class discuss. She commented a few times during the class period, referencing another class’s discussion or giving advice on where the discussion could go. Otherwise, the class was completely student-led. She was helping the students to become independent and achieve metacognition which fulfils the first characteristic of student-centered classrooms.
Another educator I observed achieved the assessment for learning characteristic by having her students complete self-evaluations on their finished projects. She then asked them to complete peer-evaluations. This helped the students think metacognitively about their project. Only after both the self- and peer-evaluations were complete would she grade them herself. When she graded the projects, she explained her reasoning behind each …show more content…
If the students had difficulty understanding a concept, the teachers connected that concept with an example that was easier for the students to understand. I found one example of this in a Language Arts class. The class had been reading and discussing a historical fiction book about the Civil War for the past week. When they discussed the chapter in class, the teacher connected the fictional people and events of the book to the real events of the Civil War. The students could then understand why the characters acted the way they