TPA Planning

So, we have 2 Math TPAs and 1 Literacy TPA in the works. As you move forward, here are some tips and tricks, and I apologize now for the repetition. 1. Writing up the whole TPA will be more satisfying, productive, and successful if you pick away at each part over time rather than trying to get the whole report written up in the time between your student teaching ending and the round table presentations at the end of the semester. I know you all have a lot on your plates, but if you can set aside time each week to accomplish a TPA task, you'll be a happier teacher, and one who understands the value of this requirement for helping you become a more knowledgeable, confident, intentional teacher. Consider making your "free choice" blog day a time you devote to TPA planning and preparation. Write to us about what you've accomplished. 2. Start lesson-sequence planning with your assessment in mind. The key to writing up your 3-5 lesson sequence is having learning objectives in mind, and measuring the outcomes based on the objectives. Having pre- and post-test data practically guarantee a successful TPA. You can see where kids were before you did your teaching, and what they learned as a result by examining work samples after. I think I told you about a TPA project last year in 5th grade, but I'll tell it again: One of my student teachers decided to teach a 5-lesson sequence on writing tall tales. On day one, she talked to the class about tall tales, trying to elicit their understanding of this literary genre. Then she asked them each to write a tall tale--she gave them about 30 minutes for this task. She collected the tall tales, and read each one, comparing the features of each story to the rubric she had developed that listed the characteristics of a well-written tall tale. She figured out that her students all understood that tall tales included some element of exaggeration, but they didn't set up the problem in their tales clearly, and very few of them included a magical element in their stories, which is a key feature of tall tales. From there, my student teacher had a tighter focus on what she needed to teach (and what she didn't). She spent the next three days reading lots of tall tales, and "unpacking" the characteristics of the genre that seemed less well-understood to her students. The kids used planning sheets to either revise the tall tales they'd written or to start fresh with a new story idea. At the end of the week (or maybe the kids had until Monday to write final drafts), the teacher collected their new versions and evaluated them again. She had plenty of data to see how well her teaching had "worked" based on who wrote tall tales that included few-some-all of the features of the genre. 3. Talk, talk, talk to people about your plans. I'll make sure that whenever I visit you at school from now on, we talk about your TPA progress. If you've had me for any classes, you know that I'm a big believer in talk as part of the writing process. When you have someone willing to listen to you talk about your thinking, your writing is positively influenced. But talk to your student teaching peers, too, and talk in Current Issues about the insights and challenges you're facing. The whole point of the TPA is to nurture your reflective practitioner habits of thinking, so flex those muscles whenever you can to prove that you're the most reflective teachers in existence! That's it for now. Keep up the good work. Dr. K