What is InTASC Standard #8: Instructional Strategies
Effective teachers employ a wide variety of instructional strategies to connect content knowledge with their overarching concepts. InTASC Standard #8 emphasizes the importance of using instructional strategies to build connections between ideas and to provide students with multiple methods of thinking. To demonstrate InTASC Standard #8 in the classroom, my artifacts include a reading comprehension activity on the Civil War, a research project on The Scarlet Stockings Spy, and a graphic organizer for measurements in math.
Artifacts for InTASC Standard #8:
Causes of the Civil War
In the Civil War unit I designed for Mrs. Morgan’s 4th grade class, students explored the causes of the Civil War with a reading passage. In this independent work activity, students worked with partners to read a selected paragraph and identify important information. Then, each pair shared the main idea of the paragraph they read while students listened and took notes. This instructional activity represents InTASC Standard #8 because it promotes deeper understanding of the topic. The activity is meaningful because it involves collaboration, active listening, and reading skills. Students learn more about the causes of the Civil War because they need to seek the information for themselves, rather than relying on direct teaching.
Two students work in pairs, highlighting important information about the causes of the Civil War as they read their section of the passage.
The Scarlet Stockings Spy and the Revolutionary War
Lincoln Terrace uses a reading curriculum called Wit and Wisdom, which blends reading and writing instruction with 4th grade Virginia Studies standards. In one of their reading units, the students read a book called The Scarlet Stockings Spy. After learning about the historical fiction genre, students were challenged to determine which parts of the book were factual and which were fictional. To do this, they generated several questions about the Revolutionary War and set off on small group research. At the end of the lesson, students shared their questions, their results, and their sources with the class. This lesson embodies InTASC Standard #8 because students gain ideas and skills that they can translate into any content area. Practicing research skills introduces students to responsible uses of technology and how technology can be a tool for expanding knowledge. Further, this activity also aligned with our Virginia Studies unit on the Revolutionary War and equipped students with additional context to bring to their understanding of the topic.
This photo shows the ideas about the Revolutionary War that interested the students and the information they found through research.
All Summer in a Day and Narrative Writing
Throughout their whole group reading instruction, students gain exposure to a variety of texts and experiment with different types of writing. In the most recent unit, students read Ray Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day to explore characters and settings in narrative texts. The students’ favorite lesson in this unit included a tableau activity in which small groups of students acted out scenes and characters from All Summer in a Day. First, they completed graphic organizers of the character’s feelings and actions in each setting of the story. Then, the groups presented their tableau to the class and the observers discussed the feelings and actions of the characters in the scene. This lesson aligns with InTASC Standard #8 because it presents reading lessons in an unconventional and engaging way. The tableau method helped students learn about characters and setting through movement. Students not only had fun creating their tableaus, but they also participated frequently in discussions about each scene. As an instructional strategy, this lesson taught students about the connection between characters and settings, which they can apply to any narrative text that they will read.
This student is working with his group to complete the graphic organizer in this activity, which they will use to plan their tableaus later in the lesson.