What if My School Requires That I Teach a Specific Curriculum?

What if my school requires that I teach in a prescribed way or if there's a required curriculum?

(This question is mostly asked by candidates who are planning Task One for Elementary Literacy.)

First of all, edTPA does not require that you write original lesson plans or use original instructional materials or assessments. It's important to clear that up because there are lots of edTPA Newbies who believe everything has to be original. The things that must be original are your commentaries, video recordings, and student artifacts.

Second, it isn't the problem that you believe it to be.

Why not? It isn't that much of a problem because you are only writing about how you have are planning 3-5 lessons on ONE comprehension or composition essential literacy strategy. You are NOT going to try and describe your whole ELA block which typically includes tons of stuff.

Your language arts block probably covers a couple of hours of instruction but your edTPA is only asking you to describe and analyze one piece of it.

Published curriculums often contain units or modules that will cover comprehension, composition, decoding, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other skills all in one week, usually connected with a theme, topic, or piece of literature. Although this may be the way your run your ELA block, edTPA is only requiring you to talk about how you taught one little piece of it.

First, you will narrow down your edTPA to either comprehension OR composition. That means that you may not use decoding, phonetics, grammar, usage, parts of speech, punctuation, or any other isolated skill for your edTPA.
Next, you will use Appendix A (from the back of your URLP) to help you choose ONE Essential Literacy Strategy.
Examples of Essential Literacy Strategies for Comprehension:
- Comprehending Main Idea
- Drawing Conclusions
- Retelling
Examples of Essential Literacy Strategies for Composition:
- Writing a Narrative
- Supporting an Argument
There are sooooo many more examples in Appendix A!!
After you have chosen your Essential Literacy Strategy, now you will choose 1 or 2 related skills.
For example, if you chose Comprehension, accomplished with the Essential Literacy Strategy (ELS) of Drawing Conclusions, you might choose to teach these two Related Skills (think "daily skills) that will be used by the students to help them perform the ELS:
- Use prior knowledge to connect with the text.
- Use specific textual references.

If you still have an issue, there's a path forward.

If you still find the curriculum to be too constricting, you can ask your host teacher if you can work with a small group (no fewer than 4 students) instead of the whole class.
However enticing the idea of working with a small group sounds, it is not your best option because it gives you less to discuss and analyze in your commentaries. However, it is doable. If you decide to do this, then your Context for Learning will treat your small group as the "whole class." That means that instead of putting that you have 20 students, you will put that you have 5.

What if My School Requires That I Teach a Specific Curriculum?

What if my school requires that I teach in a prescribed way or if there's a required curriculum?

If you still have an issue, there's a path forward.

Read more about finding your Central Focus, Essential Literacy Strategy, and Related Skills by clicking here.

Check out all of Mamaw Yates edTPA Resources on TpT!

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