Planning and Teaching Essay

Teaching is a complex task that necessitates a lot of skills and knowledge to make it successful or rather to achieve stipulated teaching and learning goals. Planning is a very crucial aspect in the teaching field as it allows practices to work out in an efficient and effective manner that facilitates success in the learning process.

The teachers should, therefore, plan their work in a manner that is likely to foster learning among students with different learning capabilities. This piece of work looks at the issue of planning and teaching. Some strategies and their effectiveness will be discussed.

Planning Instruction to Achieve Results

There are various strategies that have been identified in teaching. In linking assessment and instructions to achieve results, some of the strategies involve making instructional decisions in light of assessment and planning instructions to achieving the objectives embodied in an assessment.

These strategies are unique in their application, but they are all aimed at making the learning process easier for all the parties involved to achieve good performance of individual students, a class and the entire school. Although the strategies mentioned earlier have both achieved success in their application, I consider the second option, that of redirecting instructions to achieve an assessment’s objectives to be the most applicable in my work.

This is because I think the purposes of an appraisal to be directly related to the overall objectives of learning and hence when the instructions are planned in a manner that facilitates the attainment of the assessment’s goals, there are high chances of achieving overall success.

To ensure student success, I would make sure that the assessment’s goals are in line with the learning objectives and expected results such that the planned instructions enhance the achievement of a smooth and fruitful learning process. The challenges encountered in implementing this process include matching the assessment objectives with that of the entire learning process and also streamlining the instructions to allow for success (Thousand, Villa and Nevin, 2007).

Teaching to the Test

According to Thousand, Villa, and Nevin (2007), teaching to test is a teaching practice in which the curriculum focuses chiefly around a standardized test or assessment. It usually aims at giving student specific knowledge and skills that are thought to help enhance their performance in different tests.

There are various arguments that have been put in place regarding the issue of teaching to test. Generally teaching to the test is considered to be ineffective because its main aim is to raise the students’ scores. My take is that the author’s discussion about teaching to test is not justified in my school.

This is because teaching to test does not add value to the knowledge attained by the students. It does not in any way prepare the students to handle different life situations through the provision of general knowledge and skills. It is also unethical.

All in all, there should be a separation between test preparation and cheating, an aspect that has been deemed difficult. Teaching to test is an aspect that fosters dishonesty since the students are aware of what to expect in the tests. To avoid these, teachers should put up strategic measures to shun cheating. This could, however, be difficult as some teachers encourage cheating to get rewards for good performance of their students.

Reference List

Thousand, S.J., Villa, A.R. and Nevin, A. (2007). Differentiating Instruction: Collaborative Planning And Teaching For Universally Designed Learning. London: Corwin Press