Instructional Strategies and Delivery
Instructional Strategies and Delivery tests whether you can select and execute a strategy that makes the objective attainable for every student, not just the most engaging activity in the building. Items present a lesson goal and ask what the teacher should do next, or describe a lesson and ask why it failed.
Core rules
- Gradual release of responsibility: modeled instruction (I do, with a think-aloud), guided practice (we do), collaborative practice, independent practice (you do). Release only after checking for understanding.
- Question strategically. Plan higher-order questions in advance, allow three to five seconds of wait time, and use think-pair-share before cold calling so every student rehearses an answer.
- Check for understanding every five to ten minutes with whiteboards, hinge questions, or exit tickets, and change the plan when the data says so. A hinge question separates students who can proceed from those who need reteaching.
- Cooperative learning requires individual accountability, defined roles, and a group product no one can coast on.
- Apply cognitive science: chunk new material, pair words with visuals, use worked examples for novices then fade them, and build in retrieval and spaced review.
Worked example
Seventh graders must write a claim-evidence-reasoning paragraph. The teacher models one paragraph aloud with a mentor text, annotating decisions; pairs annotate a second text; the class co-constructs a paragraph on the board; students write independently while the teacher circulates and pulls three students who missed the hinge question. Reasoning: the cognitive demand stays constant while support fades, and the check for understanding happens before students are asked to work alone.
Traps that cost marks
- Group work with a single group grade and no individual accountability.
- Hands-on activity with no minds-on thinking about the objective.
- Calling only on volunteers and concluding the class understands.
- Scaffolding so heavily that no thinking is left for the student.