Applying concepts from human development and learning theories, the effective educator consistently:

1. Aligns instruction with state-adopted standards at the appropriate level of rigor;
2. Sequences lessons and concepts to ensure coherence and required prior knowledge;
3. Designs instruction for students to achieve mastery;
4. Selects appropriate formative assessments to monitor learning;
5. Uses diagnostic student data to plan lessons; and,
6. Develops learning experiences that require students to demonstrate a variety of applicable skills and competencies.

Effective teachers align their instruction with standards at the appropriate level of rigor. It makes sense that effective teachers ensure that their lessons are not too easy or too hard; they need to be appropriate for the students to make certain that the students will succeed. Otherwise, the students will be bored, not be engaged, or give up because they do not understand what is being taught. Sequencing lessons allows the concepts to be taught in an understanding normal fashion, allowing the students to scaffold information. If the lessons are not sequenced correctly, it will lead to the students having gaps in knowledge and misconceptions by trying to fill them in themselves. An effective teacher will ensure that this would not happen because they sequenced their lessons correctly to ensure student understanding.

Designing the instruction for students to achieve mastery is a key concept that all teachers must have. The intent of teaching a concept is that students will eventually master it, be able to improve upon it and link one concept to another. Effective teachers will design their lessons so that this will happen and their concepts overlap.

Selecting appropriate formative assessments to monitor learning is just as important as any other component. If the students are not assessed appropriately, it does not have much standing when it comes to the data. The lessons, instruction, and assessments all need to be appropriate and related to each other so the students achieve mastery.

Effective teachers also use student data to plan lessons for many reasons. The most important is that student data should be what drives the lessons. If the students understand the material, the data will show that the teacher is able to move on in the lesson. On the other hand, if the data shows that they are not understanding the teacher will be able to prove so and be able to change their instructional sequences to allow for more time on the concept. It all leads to mastery in the end.

All of the previous factors lead to allowing the students to have learning experiences where they are able to demonstrate all of their applicable skills and competencies to show mastery. Effective teacher integrates different types of learning experiences throughout their lessons to allow the students to have many different ways to lea a concept. The intent is that the learning experiences will allow students with different learning styles many ways to understand the concept which will lead to greater understanding and mastery of the subject matter.

I chose to use these lesson plans for this artifact because it shows that my planning in the lesson would lead to student mastery in the concept. I aligned the instruction with state standards at the appropriate level of rigor and sequenced the lesson so that it ensure mastery even though these classes are all very different classes. All of the learning experiences provided in the lessons lead to mastery, as the data collected during the lesson as well as the data collected as formal tests.