Domain I: Designing Instruction and Assessment to Promote Student Learning
TEA weights Domain I at about 34% of the PPR EC–12 exam. Its four competencies cover human development (001), the variety of students including English learners and students with disabilities (002), designing coherent instruction and assessment from the TEKS (003), and how students learn (004). Questions describe a class and ask which plan fits these students best. For worked examples, named traps and full explanations, see the PrepPass TExES PPR EC–12 Study Guide.
Development from early childhood to grade 12
Young children think concretely and learn through direct, hands-on experience and play; middle-level students are in transition between concrete and abstract thinking and care intensely about peers; older students can reason abstractly, though not all do. Development in one domain — physical, cognitive, social, emotional — affects the others, so a sudden change in a student calls for finding the cause first.
Responding to every student
Differentiate content, process, product and environment while keeping the same grade-level goal. Implement IEP and Section 504 accommodations as written. For emergent bilingual students, provide linguistically accommodated instruction (communicated, sequenced and scaffolded) matched to their proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Planning and assessment
Start from the TEKS and students' prerequisite skills; write clear, measurable objectives; decide how learning will be assessed before choosing activities; sequence logically; and protect time for closure. Read data by skill and by student using mean, median, mode and spread, and know the difference between criterion- and norm-referenced results.
How students learn
Connect new ideas to prior knowledge, teach within the zone of proximal development with scaffolds that fade, and use evidence-based practices: spacing review over weeks, alternating worked examples with problems, combining words with graphics, connecting concrete and abstract representations, quizzing, and deep why-questions. Build intrinsic motivation and hold high expectations for every student.
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