THE ARCHITECTURE OF ACCOMPLISHED TEACHING

At the October meeting, Taryl introduced a double-helix graphic called the Architecture of Accomplished Teaching (AAT). This represents an architecturally sound structure for planning and implementing instruction and is based on the FIVE CORE PROPOSITIONS. Follow the numbers along the helix and note that there is some overlap toward the Propositions:

1. #1: Your Students: Proposition 1: Teachers are committed to students and their learning.
2. #2: Goals for these students, at this time, in this setting: Proposition 1: Teachers are committed to students and their learning.
3. #3: Implement instruction designed to attain those goals: Proposition 2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects.
4. #4: Evaluate student learning in light of the goals and the instruction: Proposition 3: Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.
5. #5: Reflect on student learning, the effectiveness of the instructional design, particular concerns and issues: Proposition 4: Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
6. #6: Set new and worthwhile goals that are appropriate for these students, at this time, in this setting: Propositon 3: Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning.

Note: Proposition 5 is not part of this instructional structure.

In a nutshell, these can be stated as:

• Know your students>Set your goals>Plan and implement your instruction>Plan and implement your assessment>Reflect on the assessment and lesson>Set new goals to start the cycle over again.

The architecture needs to be evident no matter what topic, goals, and strategies are selected for instruction. Picture a multi-story brick building. For this analogy, the bricks represent the knowledge and skills of the experienced teacher. The floors represent the levels of learning students experience through effective instructional sequences (units and lessons). The Five Core Propositions are the blueprint that guides the teacher's thinking processes from planning, to instruction, to assessment.

Your job in the written commentary is to show how you incorporate the Standards in your teaching by revealing your own instructional architecture. The prompts roughly follow the steps of the AAT and cue you to show evidence of the Proposition. Here is how that plays out:

• INSTRUCTIONAL CONTEXT: Largely addresses Proposition 1
• PLANNING: Largely addresses Proposition 2
• VIDEO ANALYSIS: Largely addresses Proposition 3
• REFLECTION: Largely addresses Proposition 4

Note that there is some overlap between sections and Propositions.

Seeing the connection between the AAT and the prompts in the entry will help you respond to the prompts with sufficient detail and precision to provide evidence that you are teaching to the Standards for your certificate area and are demonstrating the AAT through the alignment of your lesson components.

The good news is that most of you already do most, if not all of this. What you may not have done before is to analyze what have become automatic behaviors. At the October meeting someone said, "I do these things, but I just never stopped to think of all I do because it has become so automatic." NB is asking you to stop and analyze what you do and then write about it. So doing these steps likely isn't really new to you. What is new is purposely analyzing the steps and why you do them. You are stretching your thinking. You are fishing in the deeper waters of your teaching practice. And if you find a step that needs attention, then you can actively seek ways to strengthen that step.

So what questions or comments do you have on the Architecture, the Five Core Propositons and the role they plan in planning instruction, or the prompts? If you have a question, several others probably have the same one...so please...post a question or comment. It's one way you can collaborate with each other without having to be at a meeting!

References: National Board for Professtional Teaching Standards; Arizona K-12 Center; Accomplished Teaching: The Key to National Board Certification by Bess A. Jennings and MaryAnn D. Joseph; What Works! Successful Stragegies to Guide Your Journey to National Board Certification (manuscript) by Bobbie Faulkner

ANATOMY OF THE TAKE ONE! ENTRY

The Take One! Entry is either Entry 2 or Entry 3 depending on the certificate. But ALL Take One! Entries are VIDEO ENTRIES because the area of focus is TEACHER PERFORMANCE. In these entries, the National Board asks teachers to show some aspect of their teaching practice and demonstrate how it impacts student learning. Entries are divided into the following sections:

1) The TITLE of the entry and a short overview of the focus of the entry.

2) STANDARDS measured by the entry followed by examples from the standards of accomplished teaching practice.

3) What Do I Need to Do? This section details the objective of the entry and lists the three items you must submit for scoring"

• Written Commentary: (followed by the maximum page length)
• Video Recording(s): ONE or TWO depending on the certificate (followed by the min.)
• Instructional Materials: (followed by the maximum number of pages)

4) Composing Written Commentary is divided into sections that contain the prompts you will respond to. You need to follow the order given and answer all prompts in each section. The sections are:

• Instructional Context: a largely descriptive passage that gives the assessors a snapshot of your class and teaching context. This is discussed below in the previous post.
• Planning and Instruction/Teaching: Here you answer questions regarding how you plan lessons and/or units of instruction and implement the instruction with your students. The focus in this section varies among certificates. Sometimes the emphasis is on a single lesson. In other certificates it is on a "lesson sequence", or unit of study. Read your own instructions carefully to learn what your certificate asks for.
• Analysis of the Video Recording: This section focuses on your description and anlysis of the learning experience shown in the video.
• Reflection: The final part asks you to look back and evaluate and reflect on the success of the lesson.

5) Recording Your Video Entry: It is extremely important to have a clear understanding of WHAT your video needs to show. Read and re-read this section multiple times. Each certificate is different, so what a friend working on another certificate does may not apply to you at all. This part gives many hints as to how to video successfuly, how to select groups/students to feature, and how to select the video segment you want to submit. You will likely make numerous videos before finding a segment that shows YOU putting into practice as many of your standards as possible. That is what the video is about - showing that you practice the standards in your teaching.

The video recording you submit is of a single lesson, but you need to read your entry carefully to find out in what context the lesson must be. In some certificates the recorded lesson is a lesson that appears within a unit of study. In others it may be in a different context - so once again, read your directions carefully.

6) Instructional Materials: This last section directs you to include a certain number of materials that will help the assessors understand the content of your video; materials you used during the lesson featured on the video or before or after the video lesson. Again, the amount specified varies by certificate so be sure to read YOUR instructions carefully.

The remainder of the entry has to do with correct formatting of writing, the video, and all materials submitted. It contains very specific information that must be followed exactly. The NB receives tens of thousands of entries each year and this consistency helps assessors do their job better. Submissions that do not follow the formats will not be scored.

GETTING STARTED:

There are t wo things you can do early on - long before you start to video:

1) Set up your computer with the format for the written commentary. Read the formatting section(s) and set your margins, get your candidate ID# and page numbers set up.

2) Type in the names of the sections in the written commentary and under each type in ALL of the prompts. I typed mine in a color in the 12 point font they recommend. Then as I wrote more and more, and got closer to being finished, I made the prompts smaller and smaller. As I finshed, I deleted them. By doing this, you won't forget to answer any part of the prompts. An unanswered prompt will NOT earn points!

My best advice is to READ THE ENTRY OVER AND OVER. READ YOUR STANDARDS OVER AND OVER. TALK WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES about the prompts. If you are the only one working on a certificate, you can still meet with others to discuss the entry. There are enough similarities that you'll still be able to help each other.

THE INSTRUCTIONAL CONTEXT

Your Take One! entry begins with a section called the Instructional Context. The purpose of this section is to give the assessor a "snapshot" look at your class and teaching situation. This is where you start to build the evidence that you know your students and their learning needs. You will demonstrate your knowledge of students through examples of your responsiveness to a few featured individuals or groups of students who present teaching issues. In later sections, you will use the information in the Instructional Context to show how it guides your teaching decisions. The assessor who later reads your entry will look for a direct connection between the information in the Instructional Context and your selected goals and strategies.

A word used frequently in the prompts of this and other sections is RELEVANT. Since you can't possibly include everything you know about your class, you need to make choices about what information to include in the limited space available. National Board considers a feature to be RELEVANT if it impacts the teaching choices you make. Your specific teaching context has a direct impact on how you teach. The choices you make for your students, at this time, in this place, are very different that the choices you might make if you taught in a different school in another part of the district. You make many teaching choices for your students that are different than decisions teachers at Cochise, Kiva, or Copper Ridge would make for thier population of students.

The Instructional Context is essentially the same for all certificates (but read your own carefully - there are minor differences), so let's examine the Instructional Context prompts for content and writing style:

• What are the number, ages, and grades of the students in the class featured in this entry and the subject matter of the class? This is straightforward description, similar to what you would write about your Target Group in a SPAR if you have written one of those: just the facts, please (yes, in sentence form).

• What are the relevant features of this class that influenced your instructional strategies for this sequence of instruction [unit or series of lessons]: ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity: range of abilities of the students, personality of the class? This is mostly description [just the facts] with some analysis implied. You are asked to make a judgement as to which features have an impact on your teaching decisions.

• What are the relevant characteristics of the students with exceptional needs and abilities that influenced your planning for this period of instruction (for example range of abilities,cognitive, social/behavioral, attentional, sensory, and/or physical challenges)? This is a combination of description and implied analysis like above.

• What are the relevant features of your teaching context that influenced the selection of this instructional sequence? (available resources, scheduling classes,room allocation [own room, shared room, itinerate space], whole class, small group, 1-1, pull out, inclusion, etc.) Here you are making decisions about the aspects of your teaching context (analysis) that influenced your teaching of the unit or series of lessons used for this entry, then describing them.

Your planning and analysis later in the entry will refer back to this context, so be sure to respond clearly to each question. It is also important to identify specific students, their learning characteristics and needs. Note that exceptional needs may not refer only to students with special education needs. It can also refer to the unique qualities/needs of individual students that you will demonstrate your understanding of and response to throughout the entry.

Writing the Instructional Context is a good way to just get started writing. You may revise it several times before considering it finished, but writing it out will get you thinking about your students' needs and your own teaching context.

AUGUST RAH RAH! SEPTEMBER PREPARATION

Thank you, everyone for great participation today. You are going to be a great staff to work with. Here is a summary of what to do by the September meeting:



1) Choose a certificate.



2) Download certificate standards. Go to http://www.nbpts.org/. In the tabs at the top find STANDARDS, then in the drop down menu find STANDARDS BY CERTIFICATE. Use the drop down menus to indicate your subject area and developement area. Once the standards document is on the screen, you will need to download the entire document. It will be long - sorry! Print according to your principal's directions.



3) Download the Take One! Entry. In the tabs at the top of the homepage again, go to FOR CANDIDATES, then THE PORTFOLIO. Again, using the drop down menu indicate the subject area and development area. When the portfolio pages appear, find the entry that is designated for Take One! It will be Entry 3 or Entry 2. Download and print only the Take One! entry. We don't want to kill any more trees than necessary.



4) Register as a candidate. In the tabs across the top, find PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, then Take One! Follow the prompts here to register. Give your candidate number to your principal.



The very best way you can spend your time preparing at this point is to

• read your standards a number of times. At the front of the entry is a list of standards that are particularly important to that entry. Spend a little extra time on those standards.


• read theEntry overview, questions/prompts several times to try and get an idea of what the entry is asking you to do. Try to get a sense of some lessons you already have or may need to plan in order to show the evidence they are asking for.


• talk with someone else doing the same certificate about what you have read. If you are the only one doing a certificate, contact me...I can put you in touch with someone who has already done the certificate or is doing it this year.


• post on this blog and/or email questions and I'll try to clarify.

I'm wishing you a wonderful back to school opening!