Instruction and Assessment: Planning, Delivery, and Evidence of Learning
What this domain tests
This is the largest content domain and the one where answers must connect planning, delivery, and evidence. Expect items on standards-based planning, instructional models, differentiation, and the design and interpretation of assessments.
Planning and delivery
- Backward design (Wiggins and McTighe): identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then plan learning experiences.
- Objectives should state observable behavior, conditions, and criterion-for example, "Given base-ten blocks, students will regroup two-digit numbers with 80% accuracy."
- Alignment: standard, objective, activity, and assessment must match in cognitive demand. A "create" or "analyze" standard assessed by recall items is misaligned.
- Gradual release (modeled, guided, collaborative, independent) and direct instruction suit procedural content; structured inquiry suits conceptual development.
- UDL offers multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression. Differentiation adjusts content, process, or product for readiness, interest, or profile-never the standard itself.
Assessment
- Formative assessment happens during learning and changes teaching; summative assessment reports achievement. Exit tickets, hinge questions, and running records are formative.
- Selection criteria: validity (measures the intended construct), reliability (consistency across raters and occasions), freedom from bias, and practicality.
- Analytic rubrics with described performance levels improve scoring consistency and should be shared with students before the task.
Worked example
A second-grade teacher wants to know whether students can apply place value to regrouping. She writes a matching objective, then a hinge question with base-ten blocks. Eight of 22 miss it, so she reteaches in a small group with concrete models while others work at a station; the summative is a short mixed problem set scored with the shared rubric. The item type matches the verb "apply," so the evidence is valid for the objective.
Traps
- Defining formative as "ungraded"; its defining feature is that instruction changes in response.
- Confusing the two: consistent scores on the wrong construct are reliable but not valid.
- Differentiating by lowering the standard or reducing the cognitive demand.