CA-10 Teacher Work SamplePage 1 of 9

CA10 - Teacher Work Sample-Rationale

The Teacher Work Sample provides the teacher education candidate the opportunity to demonstrate his or her ability to plan, implement, and evaluate a standards-based unit of instruction for a specific class of students and to facilitate learning for all students (West, Rudden, n.d.). This is no different than what will be expected of you when you are a certified teacher.

Put differently, throughout your teacher education program, you have learned about curriculum and learning theory and have attempted to put it into practice in classes and internships. The Teacher Work Sample is considered a culminating experience requireing you to synthesize what you were expected to learn and apply in your classes and internships and to provide evidence of that learning. The knowledge and skills that you developed prior to student teaching are put into practice as you actually use the knowledge and skills in functioning classrooms with children who are attempting to learn age-appropriate concepts. You then provide concrete evidence of student learning by collecting examples of the work they did as they learned the skills and concepts you planned and taught. The major assignment for ED488 requires identifying a unit of instruction (1-2 weeks in length), providing the context for learning, plan and deliver the unit and align it with local, state, and national standards (not necessarily all), create formative and summative assessments that will enable you to modify your planning, or reflect on what students have learned, analyze student learning, and to reflect on the teaching/learning related to that unit.

A very important part of the assignment is your reflective analysis that will describe how you made curriculum and pedagogical decisions, how and why you chose specific standards, how and why you planned the assessments you used, and how the student work showed, or failed to show, meaningful learning. You will begin by selecting a topic that will lend itself to developing an instructional unit of one to two weeks. Develop a unit plan with goals and objectives, and daily lesson plans based on specific objectives derived from the appropriate Illinois Learning Goals. Develop formal and informal assessments that address the selected goals and objectives. Talk with your cooperating teacher as soon as possible so that s/he will be aware of the expectations for Sr. Seminar. You may have the opportunity to utilize a unit that you developed for ED 405 (elementary), ED425 (secondary). You will teach the unit at an appropriate time during student teaching. Then you will collect examples of student work at particular points in the unit. Analyze the student work for evidence of achieving the objectives you chose. Discuss how your curricular decisions and instructional implementation affected student learning, both positively and negatively. Enter appropriate documents and reflections on LiveText.

Context of Learning

In this section you will either cut and paste or type information regarding the community and school district in which you are working. Also, you will need to include information about your specific school (i.e., how many students attend; basic demographic information), class (i.e., number of students, demographic breakdown [do not forget the children considered "special" learners), and classroom (i.e., what does the space look like, what resources are available). This should be done before you create the instructional unit, as contextual information will affect what and how you think about the content to be delivered.
  • This should be done during weeks 1 and 2 of your student teaching.

Learning Goals

Learning Goals 1

In this section you will select learning goals for your unit. These should be based upon the curriculum (so, talk to your cooperating teacher) and the contextual factors discussed above. Be mindful to include learning goals that consider different modalities of learning, higher and lower order thinking skills. Additionally, make sure your unit includes interdisciplinary connections and an emphasis uponinstructionthat emphasizes literacy within and between content areas. Do not limit your learning goals to only instructional objectives, also include affective objectives.
  • This should be done no later than the fourth week of teaching. Your learning goals must be shared with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor.

Learning Goals 2

In this Section, you must select all relevant standards that align with your learning goal.

Learning Goals 3

In this section, please provide statements of justification for the alignment between the learning goals and relevant standards. Please use the following form:
Learning Goal 'x', which states 'y' was created because in this unit students will complete the following experiences...... This aligns with the following standard(s) because...... (create one statement of justification for every standard selected.)
  • This should be done no later than the fourth week of teaching. Your learning goals must be shared with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor.

Assessment Plan

In this section you will provide both the rationale for using your specific assessments and examples of the assessments (either attach or scan in documents). The assessments should be completed before the unit is taught (although there may be small modifications). Furthermore, you must assess students individually and collect data on their formative and summative assessment results. To be clear, a "KWL" chart is not acceptable, the data you collect needs to be in a form that allows for quantitative comparison. Of course, data collected throughout the unit should be a balance of informal process sorts of assessment (i.e., worksheets, drawings, narratives...), and more formal sorts of assessment (i.e., quizzes and tests). Keep in mind that the goal of the Teacher Work Sample is to provide evidence of individual student growth and there are numerous ways to show this.
  • This should be done no later than the fourth week of teaching. Your assessments must be shared with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor.

Design for Instruction

In this section you will use the information gleaned from the learning goals, formative assessments, and contextual factors to create:
  1. A unit plan which identifies the scope and sequence of your unit and includes alignment with your learning goals and standards
  2. Individual lesson plans (one for each lesson) that have clearly identified objectives and are aligned with learning goals and standards
  3. Modification for all learners/special learners/gifted learners - THESE MUST BE SPECIFIC TO THE STUDENT. In other words, you may not write, "for those children that have trouble reading, I place them with a reading buddy." This is ambiguous and could potentially be of little benefit to the student. Through the construction of your contextual factors you should have an idea about children and their specific learning "struggles." Further, depending upon what you are teaching specific students may have difficulty when they ordinarily would not.
  • This should be done no later than the fifth/sixth week of teaching. Your Design for Instruction must be shared with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor.
Instructional Decision Making
In this section you will take your plans from the previous section and keep a journal in which you reflect daily upon the correspondence (or lack thereof) between what you wrote and how these ideas were altered in the delivery of instruction. Be particularly mindful of modification of instructional techniques with both groups and specific students. These field-notes will serve as the centerpiece for both your student teaching reflection and your reflection on the Teacher Work Sample. You may either type them directly into this space or cut and paste them.
  • This should be done daily during your teaching. You may wish to share this information with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor to help with your continued development as a teacher.

Analysis of Student Learning

After you complete your teaching of your unit, you must analyze the data you have collected to ensure that student have learned because of your instructional choices. Thus:
  1. You will need to compare formative and summative assessments. This will need to be done for individual students, whole class, and various subgroups (i.e., by gender, ethnicity, special education (both sides of the spectrum).
  2. You will need to describe how individual students, the whole class, and various subgroups have met learning goals and standards. You will need to be specific and provide evidence to support your claims.
  • This should be completed no later than 1 week after you finished teaching. Your analysis must be shared with your cooperating teacher and university supervisor.

Reflection and Self-Evaluation

In this section you will reflect upon the relationship between your instructional decision making and student learning. This should include:
  1. Identification of your strengths and weakness as a teacher (support with evidence)
  2. Anecdotal evidence from your teacher, university supervisor relating to you teaching
  3. POSSIBLY, anecdotal evidence from your students (kids do say the most amazing things)
  4. A professional development plan that focuses upon enhancing your perceived strengths and areas in need of improvement.
  • This should be done after you have completed all other steps. Remember to use your field notes in the instructional design section as evidence.

Portfolio Reflection

Using your candidate assessment as a guide, please reflectupon the following prompt:
Think about the following four organizing themes that are the cornerstone of the Millikin University Teacher Education Program:
1. The professional educator engages in active learning.
2. The professional educator creates communities of learning.
3. The professional educator facilitates learning for others.
4. The professional educator collaborates with others.
Considering these themes and the standards selected, how has this assessment impacted your growth and development as a teacher? More specifically, reflect upon this artifact and address both how the standards identified are illustrated within the artifact, and how the artifact relates toone or moreof the four organizing themes.
After you have completed your reflection, please cut and paste it into theappropriate section of your portfolio.