The NYC DOE Planning Interview Form is the pre-observation document you complete inside the Advance Web Application to describe the lesson your evaluator will watch. You fill it out by logging into the AWA, opening the form tied to your upcoming observation, and writing lesson-specific responses in each field: the standards and objectives you are teaching, the materials you will use, the accommodations built in for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners, and how you will assess learning and keep students engaged. What you write there becomes the agenda for your pre-observation conference and part of the permanent record your evaluator uses when scoring the lesson.
Why the Form Carries Weight
The form is where you show strength in Domain 1 of the Danielson Framework for Teaching before the evaluator sets foot in your room. Two of the eight Danielson components used in Advance sit in Domain 1 (Planning and Preparation): Component 1a, demonstrating knowledge of content and pedagogy, and Component 1e, designing coherent instruction.1UFT. Measures of Teacher Practice Your responses feed your Measure of Teacher Practice (MOTP) score, which combines with your Measure of Student Learning (MOSL) score to produce your annual rating.2UFT. Teacher Evaluation
One boundary worth knowing: no observation that counts toward your evaluation can happen until you and your evaluator have completed the Initial Planning Conference, a mandatory face-to-face meeting that typically takes place between early September and the last Friday in October.3UFT. The Rules Regarding Teacher Evaluations The Planning Interview Form is a separate, per-observation document. Don’t confuse the two.
What To Gather Before You Log In
The form asks for the thinking behind your lesson, not just the activities. Pull your materials together offline first. The writing goes faster and the submission gets stronger.
Standards and Objectives
Identify the specific New York State Next Generation Learning Standards your lesson targets, then translate them into measurable objectives: concrete statements about what students will know or be able to do by the end of the period. Evaluators look at whether your objectives align with grade-level expectations and whether they are clear enough that a visitor could tell, by watching students work, whether the objectives are being met.4The Danielson Group. The Framework for Teaching at a Glance
Materials and Resources
List the instructional tools you plan to use, whether digital media, physical manipulatives, primary-source documents, or graphic organizers, and explain how each connects to your stated objectives. Domain 1 evaluates how effectively you select and deploy resources, including technology and student supports.4The Danielson Group. The Framework for Teaching at a Glance A vague reference to “using a SmartBoard” does not do the work. Describe what appears on the screen and why it matters for the learning goal.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners
Describe, by name of accommodation, how you plan to reach the specific students in the room. For students with IEPs, note the modifications built into the lesson: extended time, scaffolded materials, alternative assessments, adjusted grouping. For ELLs, name the language supports you will use, such as bilingual glossaries, sentence frames, or strategic partner pairing. The rubric values evidence that you know your students as individuals, including their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and that your planning reflects that knowledge.5The Danielson Group. The Framework for Teaching WeTeachNYC publishes component-aligned guiding questions for teachers of ELLs that are useful during your planning, even though they are not part of the formal scoring.6WeTeachNYC. Specific Considerations for Teachers of English Language Learners
Assessment and Engagement
Plan how you will check for understanding during the lesson and how you will know at the end whether students met the objectives. The form asks you to describe your approach: exit tickets, questioning sequences, peer feedback, student work samples. Evaluators want to see assessment woven into the lesson rather than bolted on. If you plan to group students (whole class, partners, small teams), note why that grouping serves the learning goal.
Accessing the Advance Web Application
The Planning Interview Form lives inside the Advance Web Application (AWA), the DOE’s digital platform for observation and evaluation data. The AWA is at nycenet.edu/advance and uses the DOE’s Single Sign On, so if you are already logged into another DOE tool such as InfoHub, you will not need to enter credentials again.7NYC Department of Education. Advance Web Application Guide
Once you are in, navigate to the form for your current observation. The interface presents text fields organized around the planning areas above: standards, objectives, materials, student demographics, accommodations, and assessment strategies. Enter your responses in each field, drawing directly from the preparation you already did offline. Write in clear, specific language. The text you enter becomes the permanent record your evaluator reviews during the pre-observation discussion and references later when scoring the lesson.
Submitting and Locking the Form
Proofread before you submit. Once you do, the form locks and the data becomes part of your professional evaluation file. The AWA also handles the evaluator-side forms after observations and automatically calculates MOTP and MOSL scores, so everything you write here can be referenced at every later stage of the cycle.7NYC Department of Education. Advance Web Application Guide
How the Form Gets Used at the Pre-Observation Conference
After you submit, you and your evaluator meet to discuss the lesson before it is observed, and your Planning Interview Form serves as the agenda. The evaluator may ask you to elaborate on your choice of materials, explain how you plan to differentiate for specific students, or clarify what student success looks like for the lesson. You can also use the meeting to narrow the focus of the observation, for example by agreeing that the evaluator will pay particular attention to your questioning techniques or your transitions between activities.
A well-prepared form paired with a thoughtful conference conversation signals strong planning and professional judgment. A form filled with generic language forces you to do all the persuading in person, and evaluators notice the gap. Treat the conversation as professional dialogue rather than a defense; your evaluator is looking for evidence of intentional planning, not perfection.
Common Weak Spots
Three patterns tend to show up in weak submissions. The first is naming a standard without translating it into a measurable objective, which leaves the evaluator guessing at what success looks like. The second is listing materials without explaining how each one advances the objective, which is what Domain 1 actually asks you to demonstrate. The third is writing generic accommodations language (“supports for ELLs and SWDs”) that could be pasted into any lesson in any subject; specific student-facing supports are the point. If your responses could be dropped into a colleague’s form without editing, they need more detail before you submit.