Having done several lesson plans for other education courses, the “edTPA Lesson Plan Guidelines” document was fairly straightforward. I did find the section on learning tasks and strategies informational. In most of my lessons, I just put the list of learning tasks in this box. I hadn’t often thought about showing explicitly what the students will learn and how that form of teaching is beneficial for them. I also don’t often explain how I will use guided practice in my lessons. Guided practice is a great tool to use with students because it gives them the freedom to make mistakes while they are still forming their knowledge base without the fear of failing. I can show the students how to complete the assignment correctly by modeling for them on the projector.
In the edTPA Making Good Choices handbook, I found that the most informative section was Assessing Student Learning. Specifically providing feedback to students. While comments like “Good job” or “well done” can be reassuring to a student, it doesn’t actually explain what they did well on or what they still need to work on. If your student has written a paper, comments should be directed at exactly what the student has done well. Comments can look like “great word choice”, “you have stated your argument very clearly here”, or “effective conclusion”. While positive feedback is something that all students love seeing, giving feedback is also a time to help students grow. Your feedback should easily target the areas that need improvement. Simply marking errors in students work isn’t enough. Feedback should specifically show students what they need to work on and how you can help them get better. In the essay example, your feedback could look like “you need to use MLA format when using parenthetical citations. Check out Purdue OWL online” or “your thesis statement should be more refined. See me for help with this”. These types of feedback allow students to acknowledge that they need to improve while giving them an idea of where to start.
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