Planning+and+Preparation

===**Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy Demonstrating - Knowledge of Students - Setting Instructional Outcomes - Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources - Designing Coherent Instruction - Designing Student Assessments**===

====**Knowing students well**, is a task that starts before the first day of school. One way I begin to know my students is to get their permanent folder and gather data into a spreadsheet. Below is a spreadsheet I use to get to know the students' strength, weakness, or normality. It helps me to understand who they are as readers, mathematicians, and how they behave. The names have been symbolized to protect identities.====

**Lesson planning** in advance allows me to consider components of a backwards design.

 * First, there is weekly planning with the team. I created a planning grid to track specific details during meetings. Long term goals, instructional outcomes, and assessments are discussed at this time.
 * Then, I create my own weekly classroom plans which are a lot more specific and include the standards and anchors.
 * Finally, I keep a daily plan attached to a folder with all of the papers and materials needed for each day.

**Coherent instruction** includes proper delivery of content and expectations.

 * Delivering instruction using PowerPoint helps maintain students' attention.
 * Creating rubrics is one way to let students know exactly what is expected of them. This rubric was created to help prepare fifth grade students for the Writing PSSA.
 * This rubric was created to help third grade students become proficient in writing a sentence correctly and writing a complete paragraph.During the daily writing workshop, a formal assessment by conferencing helps me determine the strengths and weakness of my students. Then I know who is lacking in what specific skills. I explicitly teach these skills and them use the rubric to assess them.

**Resources** are plentiful at my school, but some of my favorites can be found online.

 * Storytown, our reading basal, has numerous sites. A site with [|teacher-made resources] and a site with [|publisher-made resources].
 * [| Florida Center for Reading Research] is excellent for instructional material to assist with reading. I utilize their graphic organizers a lot.