Science MAT
Work Sample Outline
Prepared by Kip
Ault
2006-2007
§ Indent paragraphs in the narrative sections (no left-justified first lines).
§ Include page numbers!
§ References (other work samples, readings from courses, published research or professional literature) cited at the end of the narrative and before the appendices using APA format.
§ Major section headings centered and in bold with tabs attached to the first page of the section.
§ Sub-section headings left-justified and underlined.
§ Sub-sub-section headings indented with paragraph, underlined and followed by a colon.
§ Neighborhood (SES, diversity, immigrant populations, % of students on federally subsized meals program)
§ School (organization, philosophy)
§ Department (structure, programs)
§ Course (purpose, content)
§ Class (who are the members, what has been their level of performance?)
5. The Teaching Plan. Please share this plan with your mentor teacher, presumably after it has been critiqued in class.
§ What are you teaching? Description of the course of study in narrative form illustrated with a concept map. Identify the course aims.
§ Who are your students? Discuss the individual needs of your students (IEPs, cultural dimensions, language minority status, attendance problems, disruptive behavior, homework habits, motivation levels). Forecast of how you plan to differentiate instruction and assessment.
§ What are your students trying to figure out? Author one or two unit or “essential” questions to frame daily lessons and objectives.
§ What understandings are important? Compose a small number of goals that connect the objectives for individual lessons into a coherent framework. Think about the thinking: what principles will guide thinking? What concepts are central to the organization of this thinking? These concepts will appear in the goals, in the lesson title, the lesson objectives, the focus questions, and the concept map.
§ What evidence will you use to judge whether studens have achieved good understanding? See Sections 6 and 7 below for an outline of the assessment procedure. Your “Teaching Plan” should provide an overview and rationale for your “Assessment Plan” and link it to important understandings.
§ What does the district expect? Prepare a chart or outline with state benchmarks and national standards. Correlate these items with the your unit goals (“important understandings”) and daily lesson objectives.
§ How will you sequence instruction? Show your daily lesson topics on a calendar and include a “Focus Question” for the lesson.
§
What are
your daily lesson plans, at least tentatively? Attach an appendix of 10 one hour lesson
plans, or their rough equivalent, to your
(a) What
do students already know that is relevant to the new topic of study? What do they “bring to the table”?
In this aspect of the pre-assessment summarize the relevant background knowledge that you believe your students possess in terms of existing skills, useful everyday thinking. Consider common misconceptions and recognize previous struggles with similar material. Note any anticipated difficulties based upon IEPs, language skills, cultural factors, behavioral profiles.
(b) How will you judge learning? From the design of your pre-teaching assessment expect to obtain data to use as a baseline of student understanding. This understanding should pertain to the important understandings or goals enumerated in your Teaching Plan. Plan to assess understanding of at least two goals according to the criteria of your “Scoring Guide.” Assess each student in the class. Keep in mind that each goal subsumes multiple objectives. You may even think of some goals as superordinate to others.
Include in an appendix 2 examples of student work (the “evidence”) representing each level of understanding as defined by the Scoring Guide.
For your comparison of pre-teaching knowledge with post-teaching level of understanding you need to:
i. Create a Scoring Guide or “rubric” for the 2 most important goals (e.g., “Student Understanding of Mendelian Ideas about Inheritance” or “Levels of Data Analysis Skills for Plant Experiments” or “Success in Designing an Experiment”). Include an abridged form of your Scoring Guide on your graphs (described below).
§ The Scoring Guide defines approximately 4 levels of understanding or skill.
§ “Understanding” should be a composite of several objectives (i.e., a goal).
§ Descriptors for each level must provide a basis for judging student work.
§ Descriptors refer to tangible, specific items of thought or performance.
§ Do not use generic descriptors (e.g., “accurate knowledge, complete work”).
§ Show phrases from the benchmarks or standards in italics as part of the phrasing of the scoring rubric.
ii. Depict prior knowledge on a Bar Graph (a figure in the body of the report). You may use one figure for both the pre- and post-teaching assessments and refer to it in section 5 (Assessment of Prior Knowledge). Use one bar for the pre-teaching assessment level of understanding and a second bar for the post-teaching assessment level for each student. However, you may wish to amend your Scoring Guide and redefine its levels of understanding after you have the post-teaching assessment results.
Be certain that the Bar Graph has a conceptual title. For example: “Student Grasp of the Process of Cell Division.” A key concept or two will appear in a proper title.
iii. Create a second figure: a graphical portrait (or visual representation) of the entire class. For example, you can use a pie chart to indicate the percentage of students having low, moderate, high, and even exceptional levels of prior knowledge. In your discussion of this figure within the narrative, address which students seem to fall into which categories and how instruction might need to differentiate to accommodate these initial differences.
(c) How ready were students to learn? Compose a narrative summary and interpretation of prior knowledge. Share your expectations for success and anticipations of confusion among students as they embark on their journey toward improved understanding. Remember to support any generalizations with data and examples. Keep in mind the aim of demonstrating that you know your students well.
i. Describe the evidence (diagrams, tests, problems, journal entries, concept maps, lab reports, scored presentations, project completion) to scored with the rubric. Different kinds of evidence may be judged in reference to the same goals; for example, a lab report and a test score may each reveal how well a student grasps the concept of mutation. Use the evidence and the scoring rubric to make a judgment about the level of understanding for each student. The aim is to use reliable criteria to make valid judgments about the level of understanding achieved by each student. Expect a colleague to make the same or very similar judgment given the same samples of student work and the Scoring Guide as a basis to evaluate them.
ii. Author a narrative description of student prior knowledge. Address both senses as described above, one being more qualitative and general regarding relevant prior knowledge, the other carefully assessed and specific to individuals (the “baseline”). In this narrative describe the results of scoring results and share examples as needed to justify your conclusions. Also discuss misconceptions, revealing conversations, serendipitous events that helped you know your students better as you began to teach this unit. How you organize this narrative is a decision for you to make.
7. Assessment of Learning. The assessment of student learning must include data and its analysis and interpretation. These two components encompass:
§ What will students do to demonstrate understanding? The post-teaching assessment tools and data must share:
i. The nature of the evidence collected. Think about the thinking required in the tasks you assign with the intent to assess as evidence of student learning. Avoid overemphasis on simple pre- and post-teaching, forced-choice, recall and definition measures. Place 2 examples of student work scored for the post-teaching assessment at each level of understanding in an appendix.
ii. A Bar Graph of understanding levels for individuals. Place an abridged version of the Scoring Guide on the graph as its key. Pre- and post-teaching assessment bars may appear on the same graph).
Be certain that the Bar Graph has a conceptual title. For example: “Student Grasp of the Process of Cell Division.” A key concept or two will appear in a proper title.
Be careful to show the correspondence of the Scoring Guide and lesson objectives with national standards and state benchmarks.
iii. A clear statement of the minimum achievement needed to earn a passing grade on the Bar Graph or in the Scoring Guide.
iv. A graphical portrait (or visual representation) of the entire class. For example, you can use a pie chart to indicate the percentage of students having low, moderate, high, and even exceptional levels of understanding. In your discussion of this figure within the narrative, address which students seemed to fall into which categories and how instruction accommodated this range.
§ What have students learned? In your narrative interpretation of student progress toward achieving important understandings:
i. Discuss any modification of the Scoring Guide from the pre-assessment.
ii. Develop conclusions and generalizations regarding each level of understanding and support these with evidence and examples. Tell how you applied the criteria of the Scoring Guide and refer to items (examples of student work and your scoring of them) in the appendix. Add excerpts from these items to round out the narrative.
iii. Make reference to your 2 graphs and the patterns they capture. Make a distinction between speculation and evidence when you account for these patterns. Speculation is fine when mstipulated as such.
iv. Identify special needs students and describe their performance as well as their struggles.
v. Tell the story of the students’ journeys. Carefully describe the understandings students have achieved and the pathways they took to get there.
8. Reflection on Teaching. This is perhaps the most important component of your work sample. My outline provides a few prompts.
Remember, in simplest terms, a work sample consists of a teaching plan, data on student learning, and an analysis of the interaction between teaching and learning. IEPs, bar graphs, rubrics, complicate, but do not alter, this basic 3 part approach—and the reflection at the end is crucial.
§
What have you
learned about student learning about __________?
§
What have
you learned about teaching students about _________?
§
To what
extent did your feel supported in your teaching?
§
In what
ways might you prepare better?
§
How did
you provide feedback to students? Was
this feedback effective? Why so, or why
not?
§
How have
your communicated with parents about their son or daughter’s achievement?
§
In what
ways did your adapt/differentiate your instruction in order to accommodate
IEPs, behavior, language minority status, cultural diversity, academic
readiness, TAG, learning styles, etc.?
What have your learned from these efforts?
§
In the
future, how might you modify your instruction for this or a similar unit?
§ [For the second work sample only: How did this unit embody your highest level aims for science literacy? End work sample two with a three or four page essay as assigned in the ED 564 Curriculum & Inquiry syllabus.]
9. Appendices. List these in the table of contents and include a locator tab for each one.
o Daily lesson plans with well-formed objectives and focus questions. See the Lesson Plan Format guidelines. You may simplify these and repeat sections from one lesson to another.
o Assessment materials (include the scoring rubrics, task descriptions, assignment guidelines, and blank exercises provided to students).
o Examples of prior knowledge (2 examples of each level scored according to the rubric)
o Examples of student learning (2 examples of each post-teaching assessment work scored according to the rubric)