Components of Domain 1 :: Planning and Preparation
A. Selecting Instructional Goals - The teacher selects instructional goals that are aligned with the Montana Content and Common Core Standards and the district’s curricula. Goals are appropriate for the learners and reflect high expectations for all students, consistent with state and district assessment levels of performance.
B. Designing Coherent Instruction - The teacher plans for learning activities that align with the instructional goals and support student learning. Instructional planning shows a structure and selection of materials and activities that support student learning relative to the district curricula.
C. Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy - The teacher shows his or her knowledge of content and how to teach it to a variety of learners. The teacher’s plans include natural connections among content areas that deepen student learning. The content that he or she teaches is aligned to the district curricula.
D. Demonstrating Knowledge of Students - The teacher shows his or her knowledge of student developmental characteristics, approaches to learning, knowledge, skills, interests, cultural heritage, and state and district assessment performance levels.
E. Designing Student Assessments - The teacher demonstrates the ability to create and/or select assessments that are congruent with instructional goals, criteria, and standards and to plan for the use of formative and summative assessments of his or her students.
The Importance of Domain One
Sometimes referred to as the “hidden domain,” this domain actually defines how a teacher selects and organizes the content to be taught. Teachers command a deep understanding of both the content and pedagogy related to the subject matter. In planning, teachers are expected to consider and understand the skills and knowledge that students bring to a lesson and build upon that understanding. Knowledge of content alone is not enough to move students toward meeting Montana Content and Common Core Standards, district standards, or teacher-defined standards. All elements of instruction—activities, strategies, and materials— must be appropriate to both the content and students. As it is designed, content is broken into sequences of activities and experiences aligned to the standards that enable students to learn. Further, the teacher selects or designs and implements assessment techniques, both formative and summative, to document student progress throughout the learning experience, to inform future instruction, to guide student improvement, and uses technology when and where appropriate.
Examples of Evidence for Domain One
- Detailed lesson and unit plans
- Goals that reflect district content standards
- Interest surveys for students
- Learning style or Multiple Intelligence surveys
- Parent surveys regarding the interests and strengths of his or her child
- Explanations of resources to be used for the unit or lesson
- Descriptions of activities to be used and how the activities will align to instruction
- Descriptions of strategies to be used to construct the classroom environment
- Descriptions of strategies to be used to instruct students with diverse needs
- Formative and summative assessments
- Lesson and/or unit plans
- Do Now activities
- Communication with families (conferences, phone logs, progress reports, report card, class contracts, email, website, connect‐ed messages, letters, class newsletters)
- Communication with counselors/administrators/resource room teachers/special area teachers/support staff (phone logs, emails, meeting logs, progress/weekly reports)
- Project descriptions
- Learning style inventories
- Parent/student surveys
- Readings from professional journals, educational publishing/online resources
- Peer observations (as observer and/or as observed)
- Curriculum writing
- Grant writing (proposed and/or awarded)
- Self‐reflections
- Syllabus
- Observation meetings with supervisor
- Teacher‐created resources
- Grade level meetings notes
- Complete and/or read IEP forms
- Team meetings
- Mock exams
- Artifacts of technology use (PowerPoint presentations, pod casts, teacher‐developed websites or use of educational websites or programs such as Discovery Science or use of educational software programs such as Inspiration)
- Reflection/analysis of yearly goals