Here are some edTPA myths that I want to clear up. I've been working with students and looking at portfolios since 2013 and I am familiar with all handbooks. There are some urban legends that students get caught up in believing and you need to be aware of these fallacies. It's like nasty gossip - it gets started and it is hard turn it around. So here are the FACTS and also some FAQs:
edTPA was written by SCALE (Stanford University), not Pearson. Pearson trains the scorers and administers the tests. I'm not taking up for Pearson but you've go to get your facts straight before your criticism is taken seriously.
You do NOT have to have IEP or 504 students in order to pass the edTPA. How could this be enforced? I have had students that are doing their student teaching in AP classrooms! The handbooks and Making Good Choices are clear about this. If you do not have an IEP or 504 student then you should focus on a struggling reader, someone with academic gaps, someone who misses too much school, an unmotivated learner, a gifted student, etc. What you can't do is plan for every child to be exactly the same. They aren't gingerbread kids!!! Look at your rubrics. There is no benefit to lying that you have an IEP or 504 student. (Note: California does have specific requirements for an English Language Learner that Californians need to be aware of.)
If you do have IEP and 504 students, be absolutely sure that you address those legal requirements in your Prompt 3 and your Prompt 5 of Task One. For example, if you have a student whose IEP says that they are supposed to have blah blah then be absolutely sure that you discuss that student and how you are going to make sure there is blah blah for them.
Stop worrying about citations. Look at your rubrics. Do you see anything about citations? Look at the condition codes. Do you see anything about citations? Nope and nope!! Unless it is in the rubrics and unless it is in the conditions codes, then there's no need to stress about it. (It would be like me being worrying about where to dock the yacht that I'm never going to own!) Your professors may be starry-eyed about citations because... well, that is what academics do. But no one checks your citations. No one looks at them. Instead, focus on writing a good argument and base it on someone like Piaget, Vygotsky, Erickson, etc. STOP WORRYING ABOUT CITATIONS.
The professional obligations for citations have only to do with the use of someone else's instructional materials. These should go at the end of the Planning Commentary. There is no reason to put citations at the end of any other commentary. Look at the Professional Obligations section of your handbook for more information. But, remember, there is no rubric or condition code associated with citations.
If you're not writing enough then you are unlikely to score well. Always think: CLAIM, EVIDENCE, REASONING. Give examples. Be specific. Don't say anything without proving it. Please stop asking if 5 pages is enough. It isn't.
The reason you feel like you are repeating yourself is because you are talking about the same things from different perspectives. You look at it through the perspective of planning. Then you look at it from the perspective of how things went when you did your instruction. Then you talk about it through an analysis of the assessment. Your always talking about the same students, the same lessons, the same supports and strategies. If you believe that all of the questions are pretty much the same, then that means you didn't understand the question.
Your Context for Learning should accurately reflect the number of students in your class even if you only plan to record the minimum of four in Task Two. Everyone in the universe knows that kids get sick. This isn't new with COVID! If you have 22 kids in your class and decide to record 4 - do not change your Context for Learning to four! If you do that then you lose all the rich stuff you can talk about in the Planning Commentary when you describe your learners in prompts 2 and 3! And you need a larger group to assess in order to have good stuff to analyze for the Assessment Task. If you have 5 kids absent and you couldn't give them an assessment, then just say so in your Task Three commentary. That's all! When you're writing your analysis in 1b and 1c, just say, "I had 5 kids that couldn't take the assessment because they were absent." edTPA permits you to record a small group instead of whole class due to the fact that you might not receive permission to record everyone. See my entire post about this.
Caveat to Number 8: If you and your mentor decide it is a better idea for you to only teach a small group and only give your assessment to a small group, then you will treat your small group "as your class" when completing the Context for Learning. You'll have to have a minimum of 4 students in your Task Two videos. I would only recommend teaching a small group when you have a classroom full of behavior problems.
You should video record every single lesson. You just never know what you are going to get and when! You should be sure that your face is seen in one of the Task Two video clips that you submit. It helps to have your face be shown often during your video.
When edTPA says, "unedited clips," they mean that you are not taking a snippet here and a snippet there and putting it altogether like a quilt! They want continual minutes, so no splicing! You will edit it by clipping your continual minutes (the amount of time for your handbook is in the Evidence chart). You may blur faces of students who you don't have permission for recording. You may put captions if you'd like but it is easier to transcribe the inaudible portions and to put those transcriptions in your responses to the commentary prompts or to include them at the end of your commentary.
If you recorded on Google Meet or Zoom, edTPA encourages you to blur names but, no, you won't get a condition code if you can't get it done in time.
The use of first names in your recordings is fine. You may also use first names in your commentary but it is often just as easy to say, "the boy in the red sweater," "the girl in the front," "you'll hear one of my students say..." If you have kids with the same name then it is okay to call them by their first and last names, just like you always do.
Yes! Other teachers may be in the video. Most of you will be in someone else's classroom so it is perfectly fine to have host teachers and paraprofessionals in the room. Guidelines say to get their permission for video recording. However, you do not have to turn permission slips in to Pearson when they score.
A lot of folks worry about whether to put something in the Instructional Materials file or the Assessments file. It might help you to know that these files are not scored. They are used as pieces of evidence. They are there for you to be able to write, "As you can see in my Instructional Materials on page 5, I …" or "As you can see in my Assessments file, I gave an exit slip that addressed..." So … they are are reference. I wrote a separate post about this!
Your lesson plans are also for reference and for supporting evidence. They are not scored by themselves. You should refer to your plans when you write. For example: "As you can see from my lesson plans on Day 2, I will be providing..."
Myth - You have to be a good writer to pass edTPA. This is actually not true. What you have to be able to do to pass the edTPA is understand the prompts and the directions. TIP: Take the prompts and make several questions out of them. For example: Identify and explain why an elephant is on the menu, why it is so hard to eat, how to eat it, and what to do with the evidence of the meal. (Whew!) If you break that down into itty bitty parts, you can address every part of the prompt.
Did you know that when a scorer scores your edTPA, they score one task at a time? When they are scoring one task they cannot go back and review the evidence from a previous task. They also cannot go back to a previous task and change your score.
Task One in the edTPA should be written in future tense. Task Two should be written in past tense. Task Three should be written in past tense except for question 2c and 4. These two MAY be written in either past or future tense.
You should write your edTPA in first person (I, me, my).
FAQ: Do I have to have video of my students saying the language function? NO. You should try to get students on video PERFORMING the language function. For example, if the language function is JUSTIFY, try to get video of them JUSTIFYING.
I disagree with having one language function for the entire learning segment. That does not fit with best practices which would encourage teachers to move up in Blooms Taxonomy throughout the learning segment. There is no need to choose a language function before you write prompt 4 in Task One.
No, there is not a specific lesson plan template that edTPA requires. Most handbooks ask that you include standards, objectives, assessments, strategies, tasks, and resources in your lesson plan. If you need a good template, then I have one that you can purchase here: Mamaw Yates edTPA Lesson Plan Template.
Stay calm. Get help. READ YOUR HANDBOOK. Keep reading it!
Love,
Mamaw Yates
P.S. Recommended Product: Ultimate Guide to edTPA Evidence Chart
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