I haven't been thinking as much about the TPA as I probably should be. So far I've been focusing on getting into the routine and starting to take over more and more responsibilities in the classroom. I know I have the first pieces due next Wednesday, so I will try to talk to Diane about this tomorrow.
I am still trying to decide whether to do math or literacy for my TPA, I have more background in literacy from St. Kate's and MN Reading Corps, but I still don't have a very clear understanding of how reader's workshop will work in our room. the math curriculum is easier to follow and implement in the classroom so far. Anyway, I'm still thinking about it...
Maybe you remember when I gave this advice about the TPA--but maybe you don't, so I'm writing it again.
ReplyDeleteTo help guide your decision about focusing on math or literacy, and then within either of those subjects, what to explore with your TPA project, start at the end. Think about an assessment you'll use to measure kids' learning progress. If you're confident that the assessment will allow you to determine whether or not your students mastered the skill/strategy you taught, then you're ready to move forward with your planning.
For example, last year, I had a student do her TPA with a literacy focus. She was going to teach her students the structure of tall tales, and then have them write their own. To begin her sequence of 5 lessons, she gave the students a prompt and asked them to write a tall tale using the idea she presented. This was in an attempt to get some baseline data about how well her students understand the "guts" of the genre. She spent the next 3 lessons unpacking the tall tale genre, using tall tales as "mentor texts" while having students craft their own, building a new tall tale. By day 5, the students had each written a tall tale (different from their pre-teaching story); the teacher candidate collected them, then using a rubric for evaluating which stories included the components of a true tall tale, she grouped the stories into "understood it", "kind of understood it", and "didn't understand it" (or something like that). From here, she was ready to report out the results in her TPA write up, including how she'd follow up with kids in the last 2 categories to make sure her re-teaching helped them achieve the learning goals.
So, start with what your assessment of learning will be, and move forward from there. That's my tip for the day. I can offer a math TPA example, too, if you're interested.
I would be interested in math TPA example if you have one!!
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