The edTPA: Elementary Literacy, Task 1Hunter College School of Education

References: edTPA Elementary Education Assessment Handbook and "Making Good Choices”: A Support Guide for edTPA Candidates

Overview of Elementary Literacy, Tasks 1-3

Task 1: Planning Task 2: Instruction Task 3: AssessmentPart A: Context for Learning Information (No more than 3 pages, including prompts)

Part B: Lesson Plans for Learning Segment (No more than 4 pages per lesson)

Part C: Instructional Materials (No more than 5 pages of KEY instructional materials per lesson plan)

Part D: Assessments (N/A)

Part E: Planning Commentary (No more than 9 pages, including prompts)

Part A: Video Clip(s)

Part B: Instruction Commentary

Part A: Student Work Samples

Part B: Evidence of Feedback

Part C: Assessment Commentary

Part D: Evaluation Criteria

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity, 2011

Overview of Task 1: Planning for Literacy Instruction & Assessment

You will describe your plans for a 3-5 lesson learning segment that focuses on teaching a literacy strategy that is essential to comprehending or composing text.

You will explain how and why your instruction is appropriate not only for the students you teach but for the content you teach, as well.

You will write: a description of your context for learning; lesson plans; and a commentary explaining your plans.

Quickwrite: Reflect on Your Students

What do my students know, what can they do, and what are they learning to do?

What do I want my students to learn? What are the important understandings and core concepts I want students to develop within the learning segment?

What instructional strategies, learning tasks, and assessments will I design to support student learning and their use of language?

How is the teacher I propose supported by research and theory about how students learn?

How is the teaching I propose informed by my knowledge of my students?

Reference: edTPA Elementary Education Assessment Handbook

Initial Steps

Select a class: If you teach more than one class, select a focus class for this assessment.

Provide contextual information: Using the Elementary Literacy Context for Learning template on Blackboard provide essential information about your students and your school/classroom.

Identify a learning segment to plan, teach, and analyze: Review the curriculum with your cooperating teacher and select a learning segment of 3-5 consecutive lessons.

Identify a central focus: Identify the central focus as well as the Common Core State Standards and content and language objectives you will address in the learning segment.

How Do I Select a Central Focus?

Your central focus should support students in developing a literacy strategy that is essential (aka essential literacy strategy) for comprehending or composing texts in meaningful contexts. Likewise, your central focus should also support students in developing the skills that are required (aka requisite skills) to use the essential literacy strategy. Choose either comprehension or composition as the central focus. Identify ONE strategy for student learning across 3-5 lessons. Keep it simple! See Common Core Standards for additional ideas. Choose requisite skills that directly support your students to develop and/or refine the

strategy. The skills should be appropriate to grade-level student readiness and scope of lesson in

learning segment. Consider ways that students can make reading and writing connections.

Examples of Possible Essential Literacy Strategies

Comprehension Composition

• Analyzing characters or arguments• Analyzing text structures• Summarizing plot or main ideas• Comparing characters or versions of stories• Comparing points of view• Arguing/persuading using textual evidence• Inferring meaning using textual evidence• Describing a process or a topic• Sequencing events• Supporting predictions using textual evidence• Interpreting a character’s actions or feelings• Drawing evidence• Retelling a story• Identifying story elements, character traits, or

themes• Identifying characteristics of informational texts

• Brainstorming (or gathering and organizing information for writing)

• Note taking from informational texts in order to support a writing topic

• Using graphic organizers for prewriting

• Revising a draft• Using a rubric to revise• Using a writing checklist to

edit

Examples of Possible Requisite Skills

Comprehension Composition

• Print concepts• Decoding/Phonics• Phonological awareness• Word recognition• Fluency• Miscue self correction• Fluency• Language conventions• Word analysis• Syllabic, structural, or morphological

analysis (affixes and roots)• Vocabulary meaning in context• Text structure features

• Language conventions (spelling, grammar, punctuation)

• Applying text structure features• Editing/Revising• Sentence fluency• Organization (topic sentences,

transitions, paragraph structure, etc.)• Attributes of genre• Using descriptive language• Word choice• Using active voice

Making Reading-Writing Connections

Examples of activities that promote Reading-Writing Connections: Reading and researching informational text to inform an essay Writing interpretations or analysis of informational text Journal writing: making predictions, making personal or text-text connections Note taking Writing book reviews Writing from the perspective of a character Writing alternative endings for a story Writing in a style that emulates a model or a mentor text Writing responses to persuasive essays that have been read Using “stop and jot” during a read aloud or shared reading engagement

Plan and Write Lesson Plans

Plan and write 3-5 consecutive lesson plans for teaching the central focus you have identified.

Use the Childhood Education template for planning your lesson plans.

Lesson plans should be complete and detailed enough so that a substitute or other teacher could understand them well enough to use them.

Include instructional resources and materials, as well as formal and informal assessments.

Each lesson plan cannot be longer than 4 pages in length.

Choosing Formal and Informal Assessments

Assessments and evaluation criteria should be aligned with the central focus and the standards and objectives.

They should provide opportunities for students to show their understanding of the learning objectives.

Avoid assessments that only require students to parrot back information.

Choose/design assessments that measure how well students understand – not remember – what they are learning.

Respond to Commentary Prompts

In the Planning Commentary section of the edTPA Elementary Education Assessment Handbook, you will respond to a list of prompts before teaching your learning segment.

The prompts focus on the following areas: Your Central Focus Knowledge of Students That Informed Your Teaching Support for Students’ Literacy Learning Support for Literacy Development Through Language Use

(identifying language function and other language demands) Monitoring of Student Learning

Tips for Responding to the Commentary Prompts

Read each prompt carefully and be sure to respond to all parts of the questions using simple, straightforward prose.

Move beyond summarizing your lesson plans. Show you are able to understand how your students learn, what students’ needs are, challenges they might face in completing the learning tasks, support you will provide, and how you will monitor student learning throughout the learning segment.

Provide specific, concrete examples to support your assertions.

Identifying Language Demands

Language demands include receptive language skills (i.e., listening, reading), productive language skills (i.e., speaking, writing), and in some fields, representational language skills (i.e., symbols, notation, etc.) needed by the student in order to engage in and complete the learning task successfully.

Language demands are so embedded in instructional activity that we often take them for granted.

Identify language demands, including language function and essential academic vocabulary, as well as syntax and/or discourse.

The language demands you identify should be essential for understanding the central focus of the learning segment.

What is a language function?

A language function is the PURPOSE or reason for using language in a learning task.

Often the standards and/or objectives for the learning segment will include language function embedded in the content to be learned – look to the verbs used (i.e., explain, infer, compare, argue, justify) and choose the language function that all students will need to develop in order to deepen their learning.

You will identify one major language function for your learning segment.

Stop and Jot: Look at your learning task, respond to this question: What will students do with language in order to understand the essential literacy strategy being taught?

What are Additional Language Demands?

You are asked to identify additional language demands (i.e., vocabulary, syntax, and/or discourse).

You will need to identify vocabulary central to the outcomes of the learning segment that may pose a challenge for students.

Stop and Jot: Examine your instructional materials (e.g., texts, assessments, etc.) which content-specific words or concepts will you need to teach in order to ensure that your students are engaged and developing understanding during your learning segment?

What is Syntax?

You will need to identify also how syntax and discourse pose language demands for your students.

Syntax = the structure of a sentence (e.g., length, word order, grammar, arrangement of phrases, active/passive voice, etc.). If the syntax of a sentence is challenging to a reader, then it is clouding the sentence’s meaning.

Stop and Jot: Examine the texts of your lessons and your expectations for what you want students to write: Which symbolic conventions, grammatical structures, or sentence patterns might be unfamiliar or difficult for your students?

What is Discourse?

Discourse refers to how people who are members of a discipline talk and write. It is how they create and share knowledge. Discipline-specific discourse has distinctive features or ways of structure oral or written language that provide useful ways for the content to be communicated.

Scientists and historians both write texts to justify a position based on evidence. But the way they organize that text and present supporting evidence follow a different structure or discourse pattern.

Stop and Jot: Examine the texts of your lessons and your expectations for what you want students to write: Which discourse structures do you expect your students to understand or produce in your learning segment?

How Am I Assessed on Task 1?

Five Rubrics for Task 1 Planning for Literacy Learning Planning to Support Varied Student Learning Needs Using Knowledge of Students to Inform Teaching and Learning Identifying and Supporting Language Demands Planning Assessments to Monitor and Support Student Learning

Rubric 1: Planning for Literacy Learning

Your plans should: Build on each other Show alignment between standards, objectives, learning tasks

and materials Accurately teach literacy content Create a meaningful context for literacy learning Support the learning of requisite literacy skills Connect clearly and consistently to the essential literacy strategy

for comprehending or composing text.

Rubric 2: Supporting Student Learning Needs

Evidence of planned supports identified in your lesson plans.

Planned supports: Are strongly tied to learning objectives and the central focus Address the needs of specific individuals or groups with similar

needs as identified in your learning context Attend to requirements in IEPs and 504 plans.

Rubric 3: Knowledge of Students Informs Teaching and Learning

You can justify why learning tasks (or their adaptations) are appropriate using: Examples of students’ prior academic learning Examples of personal, cultural, and community assets Principles from research and/or theory

Rubric 4: Language Demands

You identify and provide evidence for how you support language demands associated with the key literacy learning task.

You identify vocabulary and additional language demands (syntax and/or discourse) associated with the language function for the learning task.

Your lesson plans included targeted support for using of vocabulary as well as additional language demands (syntax and/or discourse).

Rubric 5: Planning Assessments

You select formal and informal assessments that monitor students’ learning of the essential literacy strategy and requisite skills.

Your planned assessments provide multiple forms of evidence to monitor students’ use of the essential literacy strategy and skills throughout the learning segment.

Assessments are aligned with the central focus and standards/objectives for the learning segment.

Assessment adaptations required by IEP or 504 plans are made.