EdTPA Introduction and Planning Task 1

Kira Kalepp                        Week 7                   ENGED 463

Introduction to EdTPA

Purpose-to measure teachers’ readiness to teach elementary literacy.  It is designed with a focus on student learning and principles from research and theory.  Successful teachers develop knowledge of subject matter, content standards and subject-specific pedagogy, develop and apply knowledge of varied students’ needs, consider research and theory about how students learn and reflect on and analyze evidence of the effects of instruction on student learning

Overview of Assessment-is composed of 3 tasks 1-planning for instruction and assessment 2-instructing and engaging students in learning 3-assessing student learning.  You plan 3-5 consecutive literacy lessons (or learning segments).  This learning segment should include learning tasks, which students have opportunities to develop an essential literacy strategy for comprehending or composing text and the related skills that support that strategy. Then you teach the learning segment, make a video-recording of interactions with the kids.  You then assess, informally and formally, the students’ learning throughout the learning segment.  Once complete, you submit artifacts from the tasks (lesson plans, clips from video, assessment materials, instructional materials, student work samples) and commentaries that you have written to explain and reflect on Planning, Instruction and Assessment.

– Artifacts represent authentic work completed by you and your students. These include lesson plans, copies of instructional and assessment materials, video clips of your teaching, and student work samples.

-Commentaries are your opportunity to describe your artifacts, explain the rationale behind their choice, and analyze what you have learned about your teaching practice and your students’ learning. Note that although your writing ability

Structure of Handbook– The following pages provide specific instructions on how to complete each of the three tasks of the edTPA Elementary Literacy assessment. After an overview of the tasks, the handbook provides instructions for each task organized into four sections:
1. What Do I Need to Think About? This section provides focus questions for you to think about when completing the task
2. What Do I Need to Do? This section provides specific, detailed directions for completing the task.
3. What Do I Need to Write? This section tells you what you need to write and also provides specific and detailed directions for writing the commentary for the task.
4. How Will the Evidence of My Teaching Practice Be Assessed? This section includes the rubrics that will be used to assess the evidence you provide for the task.

Additional requirements and resources are provided for you in this handbook. Professional Responsibilities: guidelines for the development of your evidence. Elementary Literacy Context for Learning Information: prompts used to collect information about your school/classroom context. Elementary Literacy Evidence Chart: specifications for electronic submission of evidence (artifacts and commentaries), including templates, supported file types, number of files, response length, and other important evidence specifications.

Tasks Overview

Planning Task 1: Planning for Instruction and Assessment

What Do I Need to Think About? – Describe your plans for the learning segment and explain how your instruction is appropriate for the students and the content you are teaching. As you develop your plans, you need to think about the following:

-What do your students know, what can they do, and what are they learning to do?
-What do you want your students to learn? What are the important understandings and core concepts you want students to develop within the learning segment?
-How will you use your knowledge of your students’ assets to inform your plans?
-What instructional strategies, learning tasks, and assessments will you design to support student learning and language use?
-How will your learning segment support students to develop and use language that deepens content understanding?
-How is the teaching you propose supported by research and theory about how students learn?

What Do I Need to Do? – Select a class (either a whole class but have a minimum of 4 students).  Provide context information (no more than 4 pages).  Identify a learning segment to plan, teach and analyze (select a learning segment of 3-5 consecutive lessons).  Identify a central focus for the learning segment (the central focus, ex. retelling, persuasive writing) should include, an essential literacy strategy for comprehending text and the related skills need to develop and apply the strategy (ex. decoding, recalling, sequencing, etc).  Determine the content standards and objective for students learning that the essential literacy strategy and related skills will address.  Identify and plan to support language demands.  Write a lesson plan for each lesson (no more than 4 pages).  Respond to the commentary prompts, prior to teaching the learning segment.  Submit your original lesson plans, key instructional material, all written assessments, and provide citations for sources of all materials.

What Do I Need to Write? – A description of your context for learning, lesson plans and a commentary explaining your plans.  Planning Commentary In Planning Task 1, you will write a commentary, responding to the prompts below (should be no more than 9 single-spaced pages, including the prompts).

How Will the Evidence of My Teaching Practice Be Assessed? – Using rubrics 1-5.  When preparing your artifacts and commentaries, refer to the rubrics frequently to guide your thinking, planning and writing!