How to Pass edTPA (1): Sample Middle School Activity-Based Lesson Plan with Video Link

This is the first of three Huffington Posts on how to pass the teacher certification exam known as edTPA. This article provides background information on edTPA and sample middle school activity-based lesson plans with a video link on the Hofstra University web page and on YouTube. The second article, which also contains links, provides activity sheets for the lessons. The third article offers tips for successfully completing edTPA. New York State requires that teacher certification candidates complete four exams either created or administered by Pearson. Three written exams have a combination of multiple-choice and essay questions. The fourth is a complex sixty-page portfolio submission known as edTPA. edTPA was created at Stanford University by a sub-division called SCALE and is administered and graded by Pearson. Essentially SCALE, Pearson, and New York State decided to replace student teacher evaluations by university field supervisors and cooperating teachers with an electronic portfolio, supposedly to ensure higher standards. As of September 1, 2017 edTPA will also be required in New Jersey. The SCALE/Pearson edTPA electronic portfolio includes lesson planning, a discussion of student teaching placement sites, videos of candidates interacting with K-12 students, their personal assessment of the lesson, and documentation of student learning. While each piece by itself makes sense, the package, which focuses on just three lessons, takes so much time to complete that it detracts from the ability of student teachers to learn what they are supposed to learn, which is how to be effective beginning teachers who connect with students and help students achieve. The official SCALE edTPA guide called Making Good Choices is available online. An April 2016 Kappan article written by SCALE officials claims that “since it became operational in 2014, over 54,000 students have taken edTPA. Among the nearly 800 campuses using edTPA in 40 states, some use the assessment in the absence of policy, others are using it for local evaluation or state/national accreditation, and many others are implementing edTPA under high-stakes conditions as the result of regulatory requirements.” Although it is being used to evaluate student teachers for certification, the TPA in edTPA stands for Teacher Performance Assessment and it was originally designed to evaluate experienced teachers. Student teachers in my seminar suggested a better title would is “Torturous Preposterous Abomination,” although “Toxic Pearson Affliction” was a close runner-up in the voting. To help prepare teacher education students for edTPA, students in my social studies methods class at Hofstra University and I created a sample two-day middle school edTPA activity-based lesson plan then videoed the lesson with edTPA instructions in our university classroom. Activity sheets follow with my next post. Click here for the lesson’s PowerPoint and view the video on the Hofstra University webpage or on Youtube. As activity-based lessons, these lessons are organized so that based on material provided students can answer the aim question at the end of the lesson. We hope pre-service teachers preparing to complete edTPA or something similar find them useful. As part of the edTPA process student teachers […]

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