Corinna Sech

February 13, 2018

SCED 499

Professor Gjoni

InTASC 1 Reflection

The first Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC)

standard focuses on learner development. The standard is, “the teacher understands how learners

grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually

within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and

implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.”1 This standard

reminds me that as a teacher, it is important that I understand the development of my students in

order to create suitable, informative, and challenging lessons. In order to do this, I need to know

their interests and strengths and weaknesses. For example, I could not assign a 7th grade class a

thirty-page article to read on ancient Egypt. At that moment in development, they would not be

able to focus for that long of a time on a reading. Instead, I could give them a shortened version

of the reading that includes the same information but is shorter in length.

I think it is important to identify the level of cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and

physical development to create lessons that are engaging for all students. This will help me

determine how to differentiate instruction and on what weaknesses I need to focus on as their

teacher to help those weaknesses become strengths.

1Council of Chief State School Officers. (2011, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and
Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards: A Resource for State Dialogue.
Washington, DC: Author.