Whether through experience, licenses, certifications, or awards, most professionals have a means by which to demonstrate proficiency in their careers. How might teachers or instructors demonstrate their proficiency and effectiveness in the teaching profession? A teaching portfolio provides a way to demonstrate your teaching ability to current colleagues and/or future employers. It includes documents and materials that collectively suggest the scope and quality of your teaching proficiency. In this course, you will be developing a series of documents that will begin your teaching portfolio. Your first document for the Teaching Portfolio is an instruction plan. An instruction plan is a common document found in a teaching portfolio because it represents how you develop, organize, and deliver your teaching materials in an effective manner. It also contributes to the assessment strategies you might use to assess student learning. This week you will develop an instruction plan for a class lecture or a discussion. What factors must you consider to develop an effective instruction plan?
For this first Teaching Portfolio Assignment, review the Learning Resources, including the Improving Student Engagement video from last week and Griggs’s Psychology: A Concise Introduction textbook, to help in the selection and development of your assignment topic. Select either a lecture or discussion topic that will be the basis of your instruction plan for a 1-hour, in-person lecture or discussion and a planned activity. For the lecture instruction plan, the activity should be one that a class of 200 students can complete during the lecture in an introductory psychology course. If you choose to have a discussion-based class, plan your activity for 25 students. What elements do you think are important to address in terms of content and activities? What class atmosphere are you trying to develop, and how will this discussion or lecture add to that development? You also create a PowerPoint presentation that will accompany your discussion or lecture.
Using the SafeAssign submission link labeled “Assignment Part 1 – Week 4,” submit an 5- to 6-page instruction plan using the template provided. Your 5- to 6-page document should include a 2- to 3-page, APA-formatted paper explaining the rationale for your instruction plan. For more information, please refer to the Instruction Plan Example and the Instruction Plan Template documents for more details. Your rationale paper should include the following:
- A rationale of the active learning methods, strategies, and theories you incorporated in your instruction plan
- An explanation of the class atmosphere you are trying to achieve and how your instruction plan might contribute to that atmosphere
- A reference to at least three resources in addition to any course readings that support the learning methods, strategies, and theories you selected