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 Lave & Wenger (1990) Situated Learning Theory The Theory of Situated Learning asserts that the acquisition of knowledge is a result of the activity, the context, and the culture in which it occurs. Make sure that learning materials have engaging content, are relevant to student's lives, and reflect students’ cultures

 Gardner (1983) Multiple Intelligence Theory Multiple Intelligences Theory (MI) contends that different people have different ways of thinking and processing. As a teacher, I recognize that there is not a single way for students to learn and need to provide a wide variety of visual, auditory, and tactile learning materials.  

 Research by Marzano (2011) suggests that teachers carefully plan and execute instructional strategies that engage students in cognitively complex tasks to stimulate a connection of real-world applications to help students make a link between instructional goals and personal goals. With this in mind, when designing this lesson, I incorporated Marzano’s strategies to appropriately use learning tasks that fit the needs of my students. My decision to begin the lesson with this activity was informed by Constructivist theory, which suggests that students should be given time to explore materials and make discoveries on their own.  The student groups were purposefully organized to have a variety of learning levels within each group. Research says that cooperative learning works better than many other types of learning (Pressley & McCormick, 2007). 

Accommodations provide different ways for students to take in information (the lesson) or communicate their knowledge back to you (the assessment). The changes basically don’t alter or lower the standards or expectations for a subject or test. Preferred seating in the front of the class for a child with attention issues is an example of an accommodation. Through the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 Plan, classroom accommodations may be formally developed. Here is the part where we struggle, "what if they don't have an IEP/504?".  You can make accommodations for students in your classes that you know need them. Accommodations also  offer a way for students with Learning Disabilities to demonstrate what they’ve learned . For example, a child with poor writing and spelling skills may use  assistive technology  – a tape recorder or computer – rather than struggle with pencil and paper to do her report about a famous person in history. ...

Create a time each day to work on edTPA.  The worst thing you can do for your sanity and your edTPA score is to wait until the last minute. 

This week's theorist is Benjamin Bloom.  You would recognize him for Bloom's Taxonomy. The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These “action words” describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge: Remember Recognizing Recalling Understand Interpreting Exemplifying Classifying Summarizing Inferring Comparing Explaining Apply Executing Implementing Analyze Differentiating Organizing Attributing Evaluate Checking Critiquing Create Generating Planning Producing In the revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these six cognitive processes, but its authors created a separate taxonomy of the types of knowledge used in cognition: Factual Knowledge Knowledge of terminology Knowledge of specific details and elements Conceptual Knowledge Knowledge of classifi...

Differentiation is key when developing effective lesson plans.  As you create your Context for Learning you will need to know your students and their abilities.  Just as you are not the same as your classmate, each student is not the same.   Task 2 prompts you to engage and challenge students, this is the why of why you need to differentiate.   Good teachers differentiate and edTPA wants to see good teaching in action.   Talk to your teacher about students with IEPs and 504s.  These plans are specific to each child and will tell you what modifications you need to make with these students.   Next, talk with your teacher about the students who struggle with literacy and other subjects that you will be teaching.   Now, think about the gifted learner in your classroom and how you might engage them in each lesson.   Finally, ask about ELL and personalities that might need to be considered when you are deve...

I know you might think I am going to explain each and every thing that the handbook says, but I am sure I will forget something.  The best way to understand what to do is to read the handbook yourself and make notes.  Tag things that you feel are important, find those parts in the rubric that say AND and highlight them. Find the highlighted items that edTPA highlighted and recognize that these are really important to edTPA, so they should be important to you.  Look for footnotes and textboxes, these give you details about what should be in the commentary.

Schema theory is an explanation of how readers use prior knowledge to comprehend and learn from text (Rumelhart, 1980).  Mastery level teaching requires planning.  Implementation of Schema Theory is a way to provide beneficial learning experiences for all students.  Activating prior knowledge and frontloading any necessary knowledge is essential in creating a successful lesson.  Literacy and Schema Theory Students need to learn in concrete ways to form knowledge they will need to later see things more abstractly.  Some reading strategies that can be used for the schema theory are the Language Experience Approach and items like K-W-L charts.  Presenting unknown materials and establishing a schema will help children to see that print carries meaning when using the LEA approach.  Using a K-W-L chart or other graphic organizer helps students to put into words what they know, what they want to know, and then what they have learned.  Building on ...

There are a lot of words that edTPA has included in the assessment piece that you may not be familiar with, so here is the first one: Requisite Skills-These are skills that your students will be practicing and strengthening while learning. These skills are skills that students should develop during the lesson.  Here is a great table that I found on this website  https://elementaryeducation.buffalostate.edu/sites/elementaryeducation.buffalostate.edu/files/uploads/Student%20Teaching/Helping%20Mentor%20Teachers%20understand%20the%20edTPA.pdf

Prerequisite skills are also important to your teaching and edTPA.  These are the skills that a learner must have before they begin the lesson in order to acquire any benefit from the lesson and meet the required objectives. Prerequisite skills can be anything your students have learned that will help them to acquire the new information that you are presenting in the lesson, such as: - Print Concepts - Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page-by-page - Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters. - Understand that words are separated by spaces in print. - Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet - Phonological Awareness - Count, pronounce, blend and segment syllables in spoken word. - Blend and segment onset and rimes of single-syllable spoken words. - Phonics and Word Recognition - Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound...

According to Garner (1993),  “The theory of multiple intelligences differentiates intelligence into specific (primarily sensory) ‘modalities’, rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. Howard Gardner proposed this model in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. According to Gardner, an intelligence must fulfill eight criteria: potential for brain isolation by brain damage, place in evolutionary history, presence of core operations, susceptibility to encoding (symbolic expression), a distinct developmental progression, the existence of savants, prodigies and other exceptional people, and support from experimental psychology and psychometric findings. Gardner chose eight abilities that he held to meet these criteria: musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.” So what does this mean to you as a teacher?  What...

So what is an Essential Literacy Strategy?  It  is the specific  strategy  for comprehending or composing text that you will teach across your learning segment lessons. You need to clearly tie this to your segment's central focus and stem from that big, overarching idea for student learning in  literacy . Students should be able to approach reading or writing and select deliberately a strategy that enables them to comprehend or compose text. When students are able to select and use strategies automatically, they have achieved independence in using the strategy to accomplish reading and writing goals. Essential Literacy Strategy Examples :      summarizing or retelling, comparing and contrasting firsthand and secondhand accounts of the same event, using evidence to predict, interpreting a character’s feelings, or drawing conclusions from informational text.   Making connections, visualizing, inferring, questioning, determining impo...