What is domain #3 all about and why is it important?
Domain #3 is all about how to use different techniques with students in a way that gives them a deeper understanding of what they are learning. Teachers use communication, questions and discussion, engagement of students, assessment, and flexibility and responsiveness to help students gain a deeper understanding of what they are learning, and to see themselves if their students are gaining this deeper understanding of what they are learning. This is so important because every student learns a little differently. If a teacher has these different skills and an understanding of how important they can be, then they will be able to reach their students who may need a different approach to what is being taught.
3a: Communicating with students
Teachers convey to their students that teaching and learning are purposeful activities.
Provide clear directions for classroom activities.
Teachers present with accuracy, clarity, and imagination.
Link analogies and metaphors to students' interests and prior knowledge when expanding on a subject.
Withhold information to encourage students to think on their own.
Language is vivid, rich, and error free, helps students expand their own vocabulary.
By the end of each lesson students are clear on what they have been learning.
Students know what is expected of them.
3b: Questioning and Discussion Techniques
Have a central importance to teachers' practice.
Questions and discussion should be used to deepen students understanding.
Use questions to invite students to form their own hypotheses, make connections, or challenge previous held views.
Students responses to questions are values, teachers respond and build upon students responses and make use of their ideas.
High-quality questions encourage students to make connections to complex material.
Effective teachers pose questions that they themselves do not even have the answers to.
Even if a question has limited answers, it still causes the students to think.
Class discussions- engage all students with important issues, and in using their language to deepen and extend their understanding.
When beginning a topic a teacher may start with low cognitive questions for review, then move to higher cognitive (think, reflect, deepen understanding) later on.
Do not confuse discussion with explanation.
Use a range of techniques to ensure all students contribute to the conversation.
3c: Engaging Students in Learning
Student engagement is the center piece of the framework for teaching.
When a student is engaged in learning, they are intellectually active in learning important and challenging content.
An engaged student is developing their understanding through what they do.
They are engaged is discussing, debating, answering questions, and discovering patterns.
Students select their own work from a range of choices and important contributors to intellectual life of the class.
A beginning, a middle, and an end with scaffolding provided by the teacher or activities.
Organizes student tasks to provide cognitive challenge and encourages students to reflect on what they have done or learned.
In closure of the lesson, the student sees the important learning of their actions.
"What are the students being asked to do?"
Pay attention to what the students are doing during a lesson.
How students are grouped is an important decision that a teacher makes everyday.
No one likes to be bored or rushed in completing a task: well-defined structure.
3d: Using Assessment in Instructions
Assessment recognizes to be an integral part of instruction.
Assessment for learning is an important role in classroom practice.
To assess student learning for purpose of instruction, monitor student understanding, and feedback to students.
Monitor student learning. Look at what students are writing and what questions students are asking. Be alert to students misconceptions.
Use certain techniques to see the degree of understanding from every student (ex. exit slips).
Students knows criteria for assessment.
3e: Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness
Teacher's skill in making adjustments in a lesson to respond to changing conditions.
An experienced teacher may even have lessons not go as planned or a teachable moment has appeared.
Commitment to the learning of all students attempts to engage all students in learning, even if there are initial set backs.
Make minor or major adjustments to a lesson, mid-course correction. Depends on the teachers alternate instructional strategies and confidence to make the change.
Unexpected events may occur which can be a teachable moment.
Do not give up easily. Seek alternate approaches to help students.
*References* Danielson, Charlotte. (2011).The Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument: Domain 3: Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.danielsongroup.org/framework/