What Is a Work Sample, Anyway? --- Useful Tips to Create an Excellent Work Sample

1. What Is a Work Sample, Anyway?--- Useful Tips to Create an Excellent Work Sample Adapted from a presentation by Xiaoqin Sun-Irminger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Graduate School of Education

2. A Work Sample is NOT • A case of total perfection.. • A state of “stability” where lesson plans are iron-clad and no changes are allowed. • A compilation of perfectly written lesson plans. • JUST a requirement for TSPC and the GTEP program

3. A Work Sample IS: • Challenging: How come some students just don’t get it? • Unpredictable: Not everything goes the way I hoped. • Time Consuming: Don’t procrastinate • Difficult: What should I include and exclude in this work sample? BUT: A well-thought out work sample can be pivotal in career development.

4. A Good Work Sample Documents • Your students’ achievement • Your skill in working with students of various abilities. • Your constant reflection and modification to meet the needs of different students, such as LEP, IEP, ADHD, TAG, etc. • Your skills in curriculum design, instructional delivery, and appropriate and relevant assessment. AND WORK SAMPLES HELP A GREAT DEAL IN JOB INTERVIEWS!

5. Focus of the Work Sample • Demonstration of your learning and students’ learning gains in this process. • Integrated, theme-based unit plan and lessons that tie to state and district standards. • Appropriate and relevant pre- and post-assessment, and insightful analysis/interpretation of student data • Reflections, and possible ways of using student learning data.

6. 2) Format of the worksample: • Tab 1) Learning Context: community, school, and class • Tab 2) Unit Goals and rationale • Tab 3) Instructional Plans (Lesson objectives) • Tab 4) Data –including Pre-Instruction Assessment & Post-Instruction Assessment: Tool and analysis • Tab 5) Interpretation, on student learning data • Tab 6) Use and reflection • Tab 7) Applications to literacy • Tab 8) Personal reflection on unit experiences.

7. Tab 1) Learning Context: community, school, and class • All learning is situated. Therefore, community, school, and class characteristics are important in designing any curriculum. • Things to include: • 1) Demographic, linguistic, cultural, economic, and academic data. • 2) Tie these data to your rationale and goals of the unit. • 3) Reflect on how the context impacts your teaching, from types of presentations, to access to libraries and computers.

8. Tab 1) Learning ContextCommunity • General statistics on demographics breakdown, education and income range, census data, size of community, • Neighborhood walk-getting an anthropological feel for the community.

9. Tab 1) Learning Context School • Again, numbers on size of school, student demographics, goals of school • Number of faculty and support services, including Special Ed, and ELL for number of students. • Walking around, what is the anthropological feel of the school, to you, an adult?

10. Tab 1) Learning Contextclass • You can write this section of tab 1 once your CT and you have agreed on which class you’ll be teaching for your worksample. • establishes the learning context of the class: number of students, ages, physical space, classroom staffing* It includes important student demographics (gender, disabilities, socio-economic status, cultural/linguistic diversity, as well as students with diagnosed or undiagnosed learning problems. • It displays general and specific understanding of students' skills and prior knowledge that may affect learning.

11. Tab 2) Unit Goals and rationale Unit goals, rationale, and objectives: • Unit goals and rationale need to be connected to: 1) Your big idea (Essential Question) 2) State and district standards and benchmarks. • 3) Unit goals and objectives need to be able to encompass the goals and objectives of ALL lesson plans in the unit. 4) Rationale explains where this lesson is situated from what students have learned and what they will learn. Show your understanding of the unit’s significance.

12. Pre-Instruction Assessment: • Design Pre-Instruction Assessment tool to reflect accurately ALL UNIT objectives. • Include both closed, and open questions. • Include a scoring rubric so that students’ data can be consistently analyzed. • Make sure that you include information about how you are going to score/ grade open-ended questions and drawings (if any). • Address similar questions/skills on pre-post assessment. Use a variety of assessment formats.

13. Tab 3) Instructional Plans (Lesson objectives) • Lesson Plan Format in Worksample: • Substitute form from summer CI519 in your notes, or on TK20. • It can be helpful to make a draft calender, for what you are planning. • Reflections (It is very useful to write down reflections after each lesson because memory is still fresh.) • NOTE: You’ll make changes to your lesson to reflect what happened in this lesson!

14. Tab 4) Data –including Pre-Instruction Assessment & Post-Instruction Assessment Tool 1) Comparison of copies of blank pre- and post-assessment data making explicit who has made what level of progress in relation to unit goals and objectives..Also use charts to make this clear. • 2) Disagregation and comparison of learning data for specific students, e.g. TAG, IEP, ESL, new comers, etc. • 3) Summary of data to provide evidence of individual students’ learning gains and whole class performance. • 4) REMOVE STUDENTS NAMES from samples and tests you include in your work sample.

15. Tab 5) Interpretation or Explanation on student learning data shows. • Why the data shows what trends, especially in connection to unit goals and objectives, but also to standards and benchmarks. Refer back to these. • Have you provided a comprehensive profile of student learning? • Are conclusions supported by data?

16. Tab 6) Use of student learning data • Explain student learning in relation to the learning context in Tab 1 • Describe how you could use data on learning gains in subsequent instruction and in reporting progress to students, parents

17. Tab 7) Applications to literacy. • List elements of lessons that addressed literacy. Lists ok.

18. Tab 8) Personal reflection on unit experiences (end, yeah!) • Reflections on the whole unit experience. • Unit outcomes • Insights into students • New understandings for teaching this unit in the future. • Consideration of your strengths and challenges. What did you learn about your teaching? What are you better at, what have you growth still to make?

19. Assessments – why and when • What is summative assessment? • What is formative assessment?

20. CI519 Tuesday October 28, 2008 • Greetings • Overview • Decide who is presenting which pages next week. • Looking at classroom drawings • P>A>CE> looking with meaning • Assessment-see following slides • Designing from objectives back • Presenting a song-Context-pairs and a trio

21. How might teachers use formative assessment? • Jot down your thoughts

22. How might teachers use formative assessment? • To pretest before deciding what to teacher • To analyze whether to give more practice or go on • To help students identify their own learning • To share examples of on point and not yet on point work, for students to learn evaluating.

23. How might students use formative assessment? • To manage their own learning • To figure out ‘Where am I now, what can I do, write say… • Where am I trying to get?’ • What do I need to do between here and there?

24. How might students use formative assessment?

25. Feedback • What are qualities of effective FL feedback?

26. Types of Assessment • Oral Interviews, writing tasks • Performance Assessment • Students apply what they have learned and construct their own understanding Integrated Performance Assessments (IPA) involves integrated Interpersonal, Presentation and or Interpretive tasks.

27. What level of learning are you going for? • Bloom’s • K • U • C • A • A • E • S

28. How does it fit in a worksample?

29. Objectives and EQ Pre Test Post Test Data Analysis How you figure out if and what your students learned! Inter-relationship among… See attached sheet