What Drives Instruction

I came across a box of questions in a reading for a class. I really liked the simplicity of the questions and the title:

Questions to Drive My Instruction

Tovani (2004) p. 103

1.      What do the strategies look like as a student’s thinking becomes more sophisticated?

2.      How do strategies connect to real-world learning, and how do students use the strategies outside my class?

3.      How do I know when a student is ready to have a new strategy introduced?

4.      How do the strategies connect to other strategies?

These four questions neatly sum-up what I have been studying and applying in the classroom. This even appears to be the same over-arching objective that the TEAM lesson plan format and evaluation rubric seems to strive for. However, it is much more simply put in clear concise language in these four questions.

Here we have it all:

Objectives that progress through Bloom’s taxonomy (aligned with standards)

Real-world connection to authentic activities (that meet the objective)

Standards based assessment (that measure objective)

Cross-curricular connections.

Why do we have to have all these complicated templates and rubrics when all we need to do is just remember these four guiding principles? Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think simple, clear, concise language that communicates our guiding principles will serve us better in our everyday endeavor to reach students.

Good teachers have been using a variation of this strategy for as long as teaching has existed. It will continue to be recycled and repackaged for many years to come. I intend to post these questions in the front of my lesson plan book. The next time I become overwhelmed by the rubrics and evaluations I am subjected too, I will look over these questions and if I can answer them, I will rest easy that my job is well done.