Task 4: What does a quality edTPA lesson plan look like? (Essential Question D).
An important component of your edTPA is planning for instruction. One aspect of the planning for instruction component of your edTPA is your actual lesson plans. To help guide all candidates to think about and address all the required elements required by the edTPA the MSU, Mankato College of Education has developed a lesson plan template. You are required to use the edTPA template for this course and student teaching.
Pre-Posting: To help give a visual of what is expected in terms of content, quality, sophistication and overall general length, please view the example lesson plan.
To view the example lesson plan click on the link below.
Posting - What stands out to you? What do you see cutting across all of the resources you have read/seen on this topic so far? What are the cautions needed or “hints” for making this a quality product? How will you approach the edTPA lesson plan format now that you have seen this example? What will you do differently than you have done in the past? What questions do you still have?
Response Postings:
By Sunday, November 10: 11:59 PM. Response postings
Overall, looking through this sample edTPA Lesson Plan was extremely helpful. As we struggled through our TPAs in our previous field experiences, we only had explanations of each section to go by rather than a concrete example. THANK YOU for the example. The following are some sections where I noted differences between my previous edTPAs and this example, in addition to comments on the hints provided.
ReplyDeleteContent Learning Objectives: My cooperating teacher suggested I really concentrate on only one or two content objectives . These are some of the questions she posed when I included several objectives in my lesson plans: Can we really accomplish 6 objectives in one 50 minute lesson? What is the context of the lesson? What did they learn yesterday? Are some of these objectives carrying over from yesterday’s lesson? Are they objectives you hope to achieve within this unit as opposed to this lesson?
Language Demand Objectives: I was surprised that the objectives in this section weren’t more specific. Should we include specifically what academic vocabulary will the need to be able to compare and contrast?
• Prior Academic Language Development clears this up a little!
Prior Academic Language Development: I like how you not only said what they have done previously, but also how they did it (ex. “…through questioning and pairing activities in past lessons”). Also, you wrote down the language frames you provided the students to help in their contrasts. This is a great idea! (ex. “Building up on this frame I will do …”)
Syntax or Discourse: I have a much better understanding of what should go here. This example was really helpful! In my pronunciation and discourse ESL class right now we are discussing these concepts in language so I also have better background knowledge about what specifically syntax and discourse is.
Evaluation Criteria column: This was really helpful. I hardly wrote any explanations in my previous edTPAs for lower level field experiences. I noticed this was an area of focus in the edTPA Handbook so this part will be really important. I am glad to have a thorough example.
Knowledge of Students to Inform Teaching: The entire column on the right-hand side (How will you use this information in this lesson?) was completely full and elaborately explained. I can see this is where I was lacking in my previous field experiences. I will have to reflect and apply my knowledge much more than I did before. I think it was nearly impossible to go in-depth with this knowledge in prior field experiences, though, because we spent so little time with the students and hardly got to know them. Therefore, it is hard to think deeply about their individual situations and how the teacher can best accommodate them if you hardly know them. This problem will be remedied in our full-time student teaching experiences.
Research-based Practices or Theories: This is the section with which I had the most trouble in my previous field experiences. I am glad to see and example—now I know not only to list theorists, but also how to explain how their theories are evident in the lesson.
Rachael,
DeleteI had similar ideas as you when looking at the EdTPA. I like the questions that your cooperating teacher provided you when thinking about the content learning objectives. Did these help you when you were planning your lessons? for the knowledge of students to inform teaching is an area that I didn't have as much detail as well. knowing their prior knowledge can really help you plan your lesson. One thing I also hadn't taken note on was the students interests. We will be having a lot of students, do you have any ideas on how we could keep all the students interests straight/organize them?
Rachael,
DeleteYou included so many pieces that I neglected to include in my post! I failed to comment on the research theories and syntax/discourse. These areas were so helpful in understanding what will be expected of us. I also included how extensive "knowledge of students to informed teaching" was. I remember after my first observation, one comment that was given to me was to include more information on this section. It was very nice to see a nice example of this section.
Thanks for the detailed observations!
Rachael,
DeleteI’m glad that you brought up not having to focus on every objective in every lesson. This is something that I learned during my Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages courses here. I think the standards (objectives) should be taken as more of an overarching goal for the whole unit or course rather than as a list of requirements for each individual lesson.
It’s also interesting that you noticed that the sample described how different concepts were taught in previous lessons as well. I hadn’t noticed that originally. Thank you.
I found this very helpful. When I made my lesson plans in the past, I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do or if what I did was really correct. I also had a lot of spots blank or little information in them.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking over the lesson plan, the language demand objective is something that stuck out to me. I thought it would have been more specific or had more objectives. I would have thought we needed to state what the adjectives or academic vocabulary would be.
I liked that from the prior academic language, it was specific and I liked how there is a language frame posted on the wall. This helps the students reference back if they forgot how to do it. It also states why the language frame is important and how the teacher is helping the students use the precise adjectives and academic vocabulary.
One question I had was for the content specific vocab, the vocab is listed, do we need to provide the definitions for those words? Do we also include vocab that the students have learned before but are used in this lesson or is it just new vocab words?
For the Discourse and syntax, I thought we would only have one, so was nice to see how we could have both.
I noticed for the informal assessment of walking around the room and the formal assessments didn't have modifications, is it okay if we don't have modifications?
For the prior learning/thinking/experiences, the how will you use this information was very specific and talked about what the prior learning meant to the teacher and how they were going to use that to start the lesson and why it helps.
I was surprised to see the common errors or misunderstandings blank. I feel this is really important in planning our lesson plan. Especially in math and if we want a substitute teacher to use this. This section would help the sub to look for those common errors and then giving leading questions on how to correct the errors would be very helpful.
In my past lessons, my family/community/cultural assess, social/emotiona/mental health have been blank. I wasn't able to get to know the students well enough to fill these parts out. So knowing I need to have information in this part, I will pay extra attention in this area when I am in the classroom. I also liked that in the other section, it discusses interests of the students. This will help us know how we could engage those students.
I also didn't do anything for the research-based practices or theories, this will be something that I will need to improve on. The lesson segments were very specific.
I think I need to make sure I am very specific on my lesson plans. I also thought I saw on the edTPA that we have a page limit, I thought it said 6, this one is 10 pages. How would we know what to get rid of to get to that page limit?
Sara,
DeleteAs far as content-specific vocab goes, I don't think we need to provide the exact definitions of the words. That can probably happen in our teaching and, perhaps, we can list it in our detailed bulletpoint list of what we're doing during our lessons. I also wouldn't worry about defining words we discuss in previous classes in the content-specific vocab section because we can put that in the section about prior academic knowledge.
Sara,
DeleteYou asked some of the same questions that are floating around in my head. What is the policy on leaving sections blank, such as the modifications for assessment? I noticed the author of this TPA left numerous sections blank, but in class I thought I heard this wasn't allowed?? Also, I think I would agree with Rachael about the content-specific vocabulary. I would maybe define this vocabulary exactly if I were leaving the lesson for a sub, but I'm not sure if this is needed on the EdTPA? Again, these are just my opinions. Finally, does anyone have an answer about the page limit?
Thanks!
Sara,
DeleteI was also confused by the language demand objective. Thank you for commenting on that. I also like that you ask about the sections that are left blank in the sample. I also had many of the same questions as you.
I don’t think it would be realistic for it to be expected of us to include the prior vocab that students have learned before. Not specifically, anyway. I think that that would be consume too much of the focus of the edTPA. Hopefully we are only expected to include vocal that is crucial to that day’s (or unit’s) lesson(s).
Having a sample edTPA lesson plan to look through is very helpful for visualizing what ours will look like. There was not very much in this lesson plan that surprised me because of the amount that we have talked about them already. I do like seeing examples, though, of how each content area can be specifically and concisely answered.
ReplyDeleteI was a little bit surprised not to see a “The students will be able to understand..” section under Content Learning Objectives, but that had already been outlined in the Central Focus section at the top of the document.
Some of the formatting in this document surprised me. For example, I thought that it said in the video that the required font was Arial, yet this example has a different font than that.
I’m not sure that I understand the way Language Function is to be answered here, but it will be more clear once we fill out our own TPAs using the guide that has been provided for us.
The syntax section seems to be quite complex for this not being a language course. Will we be learning more about this in this course?
It stood out to me that not all of the Modifications under Monitoring Student Learning were filled in. I’m glad to know that we do not have to try and fill boxes in areas where it doesn’t seem necessary. Also, it seems odd that the Common Errors or Misunderstandings section has been left blank. Another oddity is that is says that “Students likely know each other.” … Do they or do they not?
I did not expect the Knowledge of Students section to be filled out quite as extensively as it was. I wouldn’t have anticipated that much detail about student’s personal lives to be added into the submitted lesson plans. It makes sense, but it did take me by surprise.
I would like to know what rating this student was given. Is this an example of a 2, 3, 4 or 5? Also, why is the pacing section left blank? Is it not required? After seeing the number of sections that have been left blank in this document, I’m drawn to think that they were deleted for the purposes of using the lesson as a sample. Still, I do not understand why those sections would be deleted.
Overall, a consistent emphasis seems to be that our lesson plans need to be extremely detailed and that the wording of goals for the students needs to be unambiguously concise and clear. The hints that I would suggest for completing this learning segment are that one should start early and use as many examples and explanations as possible. This cannot be done with anything less than full effort and planning. Clearly I will need to be much more thorough when completing the edTPA than I have ever been when making lesson plans in the past.
David,
DeleteI also noticed that the font wasn't arial. I also noticed that in the edTPA, the length should be 4 or 6 pages maximum. This lesson plan is 10 pages. How can we be detailed enough but also meet all the requirements. I also noticed that the common errors was missing. I was really surprised by this. I feel that this is really important because it helps you look out for those misconceptions. They also say a sub should be able to pick up the lesson and teach it. The common errors would help the subs know as well. I think it would also be important to keep adding to this part of the lesson each time you teach and you find a new common error.
I had the same thought when reading through the Knowledge about our Students section, David. A lot of that information can come from our context for learning assignment we have to complete for the edTPA, but this example also included a lot of hypotheticals about these contexts. The part that really surprised me was the not about how one of the students is sensitive about his weight and is afraid of being teased about it. It's a good thing that teachers are aware of these kinds of feels students have, but I never would have thought to include this type of thing in an edTPA that is more focused on the lesson and lesson planning process.
DeleteI agree that it was very helpful to see examples of each section of the EdTPA. I do also agree that it would be nice to see what grade this student receive from Pearson. I didn't notice the font wasn't correct, and I think it's funny that the four of us all took this font requirement from the EdTPA video!
DeleteExtending your question, how specific should we be in the Knowledge about our Students section, especially in regards to the total page limit? Also, do we include students' names or use Student A, B, C, etc.? Finally, do we follow this example and include personal observations such as being sensitive about weight, etc.? There are so many questions that arise from this EdTPA task, and I think this uncertainty is what makes it semi-daunting.
This resource seems extremely helpful. It's always nice to have an example to refer to when putting together a long piece of work like this. One question I had right off the bat was how important is grammar and punctuation in an EdTPA lesson plan? I just noticed that this lesson plan had numerous spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. I'm assuming as long as the lesson plan could be understood by a substitute teacher, etc. it would be alright? Correct me if I'm wrong.
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect of this lesson plan that I noticed was the comment that stated "this space should not be blank!". Should we always try to make sure to include something in each and every blank? I know Teresa mentioned something like this at the end of last class about making sure each blank is filled.
The final comment about this EdTPA I wanted to make was how extensive this teacher went into individual details about his/her students: ELL, gifted/talented, IEPs, 504s, individual interests, etc. I thought this information could be very helpful to this individual teacher, as well as substitute teachers, administration and any other person that walks into the classroom. This part of the TPA from last semester was the most difficult. I struggled to find information for each of the different sections. I'm assuming next semester in student teaching, it will be a bit easier when we are with our students each and every day.
Again, this is a great resource as we begin our EdTPA lesson plans. Thanks!
Seeing this example in the Getting to Know your Students section was really helpful-- I agree, Dani. In our previous field experiences it was difficult to go beyond the surface level data on our students that we could gather from our context for learning assignments. I think you're right on, though, that this type of information is really important to inform teachers themselves about differentiating for their students and for substitute teachers who walk into a classroom blind. It will be so much easier to figure this stuff out during our full-time student teaching in Level IV because only by spending time with students and observing their behavior and work patterns can we note how to best work with and differentiate for them.
DeleteHey Dani,
DeleteThank you for asking about the sections left blank. We all seem to be asking that question.
I doubt that they will be spend much of their focus on our spelling and punctuation when we submit this. After all, they may receive edTPA’s from a variety of teachers from varying proficiency levels in English. (Either way, I think you write quite well and would have no problems!)
I look forward to having many of these questions addressed in class this week.
Dani,
ReplyDeleteI think we should try to have correct grammar and punctuation, especially since we will be graded on it by Pearson. I'm sure there are going to be times when we have incorrect grammar or punctuation, but someone who looked at it, would probably be able to figure out what we meant. I was assuming that we shouldn't leave any spots blank, but I noticed some parts are blank on this TPA, so I also was wondering if we could leave some blank for the EdTPA that we turn into Pearson. I also saw how in detail the teacher went about the students, this is an area that I will need to work on.