MTLE Pedagogy-Instruction and Assessment

Identify six procedural steps for teaching that follow direct instruction principles.

(1) Introduction and review: get student attention to introduce new information, or review or build on previously learned information. Identify the lesson's learning goal and relevance or significance. (2) Development: model the skill, knowledge, or behavior students Will nee( to demonstrate. Clearly explain and give sufficient examples of material to be learned. Check for understanding by asking key questions or otherwise eliciting student questions. Use visual aids, multimedia presentations, or other prompts to facilitate successful student information processing. (3) Guided practice: once students respond positively to modeling, explanations, and examples, assign tasks for student practice and monitor them closely. Offer help and additional direct instruction (repeating the second step) to students not having mastered the material yet. (4) Closure: conclude the lesson, recapping what it covered; remind students of the learning goal; prepare them for the next step: (5) Independent practice: assign tasks or activities to students who demonstrated proficiency and competency in step (3) to eliminate any teacher prompts and assess degrees of student mastery. This can include homework. (6) Evaluation: assess progress formatively through classroom assignments, worksheets, etc.; and/or summatively through projects, tests, etc. Determine if learning goals are met or need revisiting in future lessons through evaluation feedback.

Summarize some of the characteristics and advantages of brainstorming, cooperative learning groups, interviews, discussions, peer practice, and debates as interactive instructional strategies.

All interactive strategies promote interpersonal and social skills. Brainstorming eliminates or minimizes student inhibitions and promotes self-expression, originality, and creativity by asking students to generate and express as many different ideas as possible without teacher or classmate criticism, censure, or rejection. Quantity supersedes quality. Students acquire more ideas from classmates than they could produce alone. Cooperative learning groups promote both collective and individual accountability, responsibility, and teamwork. They access and utilize the cooperative, noncompetitive orientations of students from collectivist cultures; and enable ELL and LEP students to ask classmates questions their cultural backgrounds might inhibit their asking teachers. Interviews help students learn about one another, show them they can serve as helpful resources for one another, and develop student communication skills. Discussions let students exchange ideas, information, and opinions; ask and answer questions; consider problems, questions, or ideas classmates propose that did not occur to them; use evidence to support their arguments; learn to disagree civilly; and consider differing perspectives. Peer practice affords classmate support, interaction, and greater comfort levels and identification than individual or teacher-led practice. Debates teach students to apply logic, support arguments with evidence, attend and respond to opponent arguments, take turns, follow rules, and interact formally.

What are some ways to avoid the possible distractions of using social media in the classroom?

Although there are a number of great benefits of social media in the classroom learning environment, these benefits do not come without the possibility of distractions. Students may try to tweet or snapchat with friends during class time. Teachers can always use less common social media tools to provide an opportunity for technologically empowered student engagement without the distraction associated with the most popular social networking platforms. For example, Edmodo enables educators to communicate with students, share materials, and distribute assessments in an efficient and non-distracting manner. Teachers and students can share work and gain efficient feedback through shared Google Docs that allow limitations on who contributes to social interactions. Edublogs allow teachers to share materials, encourage student contributions, incorporate videos, and facilitate online discussions.

Discuss some of the characteristics, applications, advantages, and disadvantages of cooperative learning groups, collaborative groups, heterogeneous and homogeneous grouping, multi-age grouping, and grouping by gender.

Cooperative learning groups are very structured, typically containing three or four students working several days or weeks. Teachers clearly define assignments, goals, and plan of operation, and spend time teaching member roles, e.g., questioner, reporter, recorder, etc. Within designated roles, team members share leadership. All must contribute for team progress: group interdependence dictates groups win or lose together. End products represent whole teams. Cooperation, goal achievement, task completion, and group process awareness are equally important. Highly individualistic or creative students may chafe at restrictions and students preferring whole-class anonymity feel pressured, but learn cooperative teamwork skills. Collaborative groups feature three to six students working days, weeks, or months on open-ended problems or tasks which can cover much content. Flexible student roles can change throughout assignments and projects. Students help others, observing, evaluating, critiquing, explaining, and suggesting improvements. Team goals, product, and collaborative communication process awareness is constant; meeting goals justifies changing direction. Students honestly discuss ideas, information, resources, procedures, results, their own and/or others' work; multiple approaches and open communication are important. Students needing structure may prefer cooperative teams, but collaborative groups learn flexibility and communication. Homogeneous groups may feel more comfort and commonality than heterogeneous, gender-inclusive and multi-age groups, but lack their exposure to diverse perspectives expanding experience. Multi-age grouping can facilitate helping and mentoring relationships.

Describe some benefits and a caveat regarding independent instruction. Define some student activities associated with learning contracts, research projects, learning centers, computer-mediated instruction, and distance learning as independent instructional activities.

Independent instruction promotes individual student autonomy, initiative, self-determination, self-direction, self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Students can pursue individual interests using individual styles and paces. Its applications are highly flexible and adaptable. One caveat is that teachers must ensure students have acquired the skills necessary before beginning. In learning contracts, students agree to complete specified tasks within designated conditions and schedules and sign them, promoting accountability and responsibility. [n research projects, students independently develop research questions; locate, access, and consult multiple information sources; use the information to answer research questions; and write reports or papers organizing and communicating results (with teacher guidance as needed). Learning centers are self-contained areas within classrooms containing easily accessible, varied learning materials where students independently engage in self-directed learning activities. They include skill development centers, exploratory and interest centers, and enrichment centers. In computer-mediated instruction, students interact with software programs rather than teachers or classmates, working more autonomously at their own paces. In distance learning, students access information remotely, eliminating restrictions from geographic locations.

Give a description of some indirect instruction strategies, including inquiry learning, problem-solving, using case studies, concept mapping, reading for meaning, cloze procedures, and some of their learning benefits.

Indirect instruction is student-centered. Students actively discover or construct knowledge through inquiry, hands-on exploration, experimentation, and problem-solving activities. Teachers are facilitators assigning and guiding student activity selection, supervising and supporting work. In inquiry learning, students formulate, ask, and answer questions and solve problems rather than teachers' giving answers or solutions. Students apply content knowledge and skills analyzing and explaining teacher-supplied case studies detailed, in-depth histories and observations of individual real-life persons, families, groups, schools, communities, etc. Concept mapping facilitates students' visualizing, organizing, and applying learned concepts. Teachers guide student project and assignment preparation, identifying focus, participants, schedules, etc.; idea generation and listing; idea sorting and rating for structure; developing maps using software for multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, etc.; interpreting; and applying maps. Reading for meaning involves active reading, previewing and predicting before, seeking relevant information during, and reflecting after reading. Students identify explicit textual messages; make logical inferences; identify main themes and ideas; analyze development, connection, interaction of people and characters, events and plot, and ideas; evaluate purpose or viewpoint influences on text content and style; differentiate objective and subjective; integrate and evaluate visual and numerical as well as verbal content; comparatively analyze multiple text topics, themes, approaches, and information. Cloze procedures requiring student meaning determination from context to supply missing words—teach sequencing awareness, linguistic relationships, searching, prediction, and reconstruction.

How does new classroom technology provide a unique growth opportunity for modern students? How do classroom electronics relate to student-centered classroom pedagogies?

Many technologies (e.g., calculators and iPads) are student-centered. They were developed to provide a one-on-one interactive experience with some form of learning. Research has shown that learning technologies act as cognitive amplifiers. Students can learn more efficiently and effectively with technology. Technology, however, is not a silver bullet. Simple access to technology will not empower students to learn better. Teachers will require training to learn how to properly implement classroom technology (in coordination with pedagogy) and students will have to learn to appropriately and responsibly use technology. In coordination with technology and new pedagogical innovations (e.g., flipped classrooms, collaborative problem solving, or inquiry-based learning), teachers are able to provide their students with engagement opportunities previously unavailable. Students who have access to technology are able to directly engage with concepts and contexts any time of day or night. No longer are teachers the sole facilitators of quality learning. With traditional pedagogies (e.g., lecture), technology may be more distracting and less helpful. Technology is not best utilized as a replacement for old modes of knowledge transfer (e.g., note-taking or board presentation). A professional educator can adapt to both the new devices and new modes of thinking that empower student learning at trajectories not previously attainable.

Describe some activities and benefits associated with instructional strategies of modeling, developing self-regulation skills, scaffolding, differentiating instruction, guided practice, and coaching.

Modeling: many students learn better from witnessing demonstration than only hearing or reading verbal description, particularly when learning procedures they must execute physically. Modeling also allows teachers to demonstrate correct techniques and sequences. Additionally, modeling helps students develop self-regulation skills including managing emotions, overcoming discomfort, taking turns, listening, demonstrating, and communicating. Teachers modeling appropriate behaviors show students how to perform tasks, and use self-regulation to complete them. They also teach self-regulation through hints, cues, and scaffolding: temporary support students need to complete tasks that are gradually removed as students gain skills. Differentiating instruction: teachers recognize diverse student experience and expertise levels in content knowledge, thinking, problem-solving, listening, speaking, reading, and writing; through ongoing assessments, develop differentiated lessons to meet each student's needs. Having students learn in pairs or small groups promotes meaningful discussion, observation, and learning from each other. Differentiation focuses on concepts and issues, not chapters or books, encouraging students to expand concept understanding and explore so-called "big ideas." Choices of experiences and tasks or projects motivate students. Guided practice: after modeling, explaining, and examples, assign tasks or activities, monitoring closely; offer assistance as needed. Coaching: helps students understand impacts of time management, organization, and disorganization on studies; examine and strengthen study skills, problem-solving, strategic thinking, and effective interaction and collaboration.

Define three phases of self-regulated learning according to one model, including student activities and how teachers help in each phase. Also state how these phases are interrelated.

One popular model of self-regulated learning defines three phases. (1) Forethought and planning: students analyze learning tasks, setting specific goals for completion. Students learning new or unfamiliar material may not recognize appropriate goals, best task approaches; teachers instruct them about these. (2) Performance monitoring: students apply strategies for task progress, monitoring strategy effectiveness and their motivation to continue. Students may react to discomfort with new strategies by falling back on more familiar, less effective strategies. Teachers help students overcome frustration and gain fluency with new strategies through close monitoring and specific feedback. They also support self-monitoring by having students keep records of how many times they worked on specific tasks, amounts of time working, and strategies they used, enabling students to visualize progress and make needed changes. (3) Reflections on performance: students evaluate strategy effectiveness, their task performance, and manage emotions regarding outcomes. Self-reflections influence subsequent planning and goals. Encouraging setting short-term goals helps students track progress. Goal-setting and planning are complementary: planning includes and supports establishing goals. Teaching students to approach tasks with plans promotes self-regulation and learning. Self-monitoring involves goal-setting and planning. Instructional strategies promoting self-regulation include direct instruction, guided and independent practice, reflective practice, social support, and feedback.

Why might a teacher want to incorporate social media in the classroom? What are some examples of how social media can be used positively in the classroom?

Social media is virtually ubiquitous in 21st century America. Our students are immersed in a society dominated by social media and this offers teachers an opportunity to model asynchronous (i.e., outside the time and vicinity constraints of standard class periods) learning processes that help students become lifelong learners. Examples of positive classroom social media outlets include YouTube where students can view or develop podcasts directly applicable to classroom topics. Teachers can use Twitter to post updates about assignments or deadlines. Teachers and students can blog about classroom experiences and practice academic writing skills. Students can receive more immediate feedback on academic pursuits with Facebook. Through all of these social media interactions, teachers can monitor students and model appropriate etiquette for online interactions as they help students become responsible and respectful citizens in a digital world.

Explain how the experimental and virtual instruction strategies of field trips, experiments, simulations, role-plays, games, and observations benefit student learning.

Students generally love field trips for getting them out of classrooms and providing real-world adventures, experiences, and materials. However, they also benefit from applying knowledge and skills acquired in classrooms to real-life situations for authentic, hands-on learning experiences. For example, in a geology lab, rock samples are usually distributed equally; but on field trips, students discover some rock types (e.g., quartz) are far more plentiful; find samples with mixed types; and enjoy independence and excitement in seeking and procuring samples—while additionally interacting with nature. In experiments, instead of reading or hearing about scientific concepts and procedures, students practice these, encountering and solving involved problems and challenges first-hand. They experience direct ownership of their learning. Instead of abstractions, concepts become real to them. Simulations, while not real, are realistic, enabling students to engage in activities not experienced in real life, e.g., developing military strategies, planning battles, and fighting wars; working in various occupations; marrying, raising families; building and managing cities, farms, corporations, etc. Technology makes simulations increasingly accessible, interactive, and vivid. Role-plays enable students to envision different perspectives, developing understanding, empathy, and social interactions. Games apply skills and knowledge in entertaining contexts, structured by rules. Observations develop student perception, detail-orientation, and objectivity.

Define the term "teachable moment" and give an example of one in a school setting. Explain an associate benefit and potential.

Teachable moments, unlike instruction teachers plan in advance, are unplanned situations arising in classrooms, offering teachers ideal opportunities to impart some understanding or insight to students regarding some concept or topic. Teachers cannot design or plan for teachable moments. They occur momentarily; therefore, teachers must be observant, notice them, and seize the opportunity to take advantage of them. Because they are unexpected, making use of teachable moments can insert temporary detours into a teacher's original lesson plan in order to explain some idea which has aroused collective student curiosity and/or captured their interest. As an example, a teacher describes a morning class meeting wherein one student asked why the previous day had been a school holiday to observe Veterans Day. The teacher took advantage of this question as a teachable moment to discuss military service personnel's historical and current sacrifices on behalf of our country. Students were so fascinated with this topic, they discussed neighbors, relatives, and friends serving and the meaning of the military to the country's future for 20 minutes. The benefit of following such tangents is their maximal impact on students through their natural timing. Teachable moments can ultimately develop into complete lesson plans or instructional units.

Describe some ways in which teachers and students can use various technology tools to communicate and publish information.

Teachers and students alike can use available technology productivity tools to organize, share, and present information in different formats. For example, in preparing a lesson plan, a teacher might create a PowerPoint slide presentation to project while delivering a lesson. By entering summary statements of main ideas, important concepts, major facts, etc. on each slide, teachers call student attention to the most significant aspects of the lesson, reinforcing these even as they provide additional information and details through lectures, discussions, textbooks, etc. Not only are slide presentations good for identifying main points, they also reinforce information presented in other ways (speech, textbooks, handouts), providing the redundancy students need to learn and retain it. In addition to PowerPoints, slide shows are good ways to illustrate lectures, lessons, and student presentations with visual imagery that engages viewers. Teachers can make videos of class for objective feedback and analysis; students can produce videos for class projects. Teachers can create multimedia presentations to access different student learning styles, helping all students benefit from instruction. Teachers can write parent newsletters, and students can create and publish classroom or school newsletters. Students, parents, and school personnel can view documents via websites and programs on monitor screens and/or print copies.

Discuss some considerations for assessing learning that students demonstrate through technological activities and projects, including some examples of programs and web resources for accessing or creating assessment rubrics of various specific student products.

Teachers newly integrating technology into student work often wonder how to grade it. Evaluating student processes and actions is the same as with traditional written work, though it differs with the divergent potentials and unique features of each medium. For example, a notebook contains handwritten notes and drawings; a blog can contain hypertext, interactive imagery, embedded video, etc. Teachers must distinguish a technology tool's capabilities from the performance of the student using it. For example, iMovie has built-in, user-friendly professional effects enabling anybody to produce visually impressive video presentations. Hence teachers cannot grade the end product but the process, i.e., the student's research, writing, image selection, and other activities. In this sense, assessment must be more formative than summative to avoid focusing only on flashy end products and observe learning activities throughout the project. Teachers can create assessment rubrics using online generators like Rubistar, Digital Media Scoring Guides, Matrix Rubric with Points, PBL Checklists, Scholastic Rubric Maker, and Common Core Rubric Creator; or use available rubrics designed for general assessment; student blogs, wikis, websites, digital portfolios, social media, effective technology use, videos, digital storytelling, podcasts, graphic organizers, programming, coding, and gaming.

Discuss how teachers can support individual students and student groups in problem-solving learning tasks and learning project activities by applying technology tools and procedures appropriate to the tasks or activities.

Technology is an enormous asset to both teachers and students. For example, word processing programs, e.g., Microsoft Word, streamline teachers' work creating instructional documents like learning units, lesson plans, student handouts, worksheets, rubrics, checklists, progress reports, written parent communications, etc. Students can write essays, research reports, papers, short stories, plays, poetry, books, etc. They can type and save preliminary notes and outlines, then easily copy and paste portions into compositions. Students benefit from being able to delete and restore text paragraphs and sections instantly, and easily move paragraphs and sections to other locations as they learn how to organize their writing. Spell-checkers and grammar-checkers, while not substitutes for student knowledge, alert students to typing and mechanical errors for correction. Microsoft Excel and similar spreadsheet programs facilitate organizing numerical data and verbal information. Students can type in figures or lists with little or no editing and Excel displays and prints them in spreadsheet format. Databases give teachers and students large amounts of easily accessible information about specified topics, enabling them to search and sort it. Graphic tools enable students and teachers lacking artistic ability to create colorful, effective, professional-looking visual images to illustrate, organize, and understand information and concepts. Students and teachers can establish, use, and contribute to online communities to communicate and share information remotely, often instantaneously.

Discuss some instructional activities that help students develop complex thinking processes like analyzing, predicting, comparing and contrasting, inferring, categorizing, summarizing, and synthesizing.

The directed reading and thinking activity (DR-TA; Stauffer, 1969) helps students analyze text, determine purpose, question, clarify, and predict in all content subjects. Students examine the title to predict text subject matter. Following reading, open-ended questions elicit student predictions, opinions, and opinion-text connections. Comparison-contrast: make students develop questions about similarities and differences, writing them in graphic organizers, e.g., students might ask, "If circles were squares, what would happen?" "How are dogs and cats different and similar?" "How are gloves like hands? How are they not like hands?" Inferring: provide political cartoons or comic strips, and ask students to infer meaning. Student pairs or small groups identify inferences and connections they must make to interpret the cartoonist's point. Categorizing: with younger students, play 20 Questions or 'animal, vegetable, mineral"-type games; provide manipulatives, having them sort objects into three different category containers. Give older students a controversial question or statement; have small groups research the topic; sort information into columns headed "Pro," "Con," and "Interesting Facts"; form opinions, and discuss. Summarizing: model first; have student partners or small groups read, stopping regularly to paraphrase; have them summarize key ideas in three or fewer textbook sections in no more than 20 words. Synthesizing: have students contribute to an idea web mural, adding and connecting ideas and comments about a central topic or question.

Define the instructional grouping configurations of whole-class, small-group, independent learning, one-on-one, and pair-share, including some of their characteristics and benefits.

The whole-class group configuration is the traditional, most widely used model. Teachers deliver lectures or lessons, assign classwork to, ask questions of, and lead discussions with the entire class at once. Small-group instruction, a more recent development, divides classes into groups, usually three to six students each. Each group collaborates, researching and discussing topics. Group members may be assigned different group roles, e.g., leader, facilitator, recorder, summarizer, timekeeper, presenter, errand monitor, etc. Teachers may assign individual tasks to each group member or have everyone contribute to a larger task. Students benefit from sharing, discussing, developing, and preparing their ideas in less threatening smaller groups before doing so in the whole class; and learning and practicing social interaction skills with fewer classmates under more controlled conditions. Small groups can benefit ELL/ LEP students culturally intimidated about questioning teachers by enabling questions of classmates, and students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) overwhelmed by larger group interactions. Independent learning allows proceeding at students' own paces, using their own learning styles and strategies. One-on-one instruction benefits students needing intensive, direct instruction, remedial intervention, and/or personal student-teacher interactions and relationships. Think-pair-share structures student discussion, limiting off-task thinking and behavior, and builds in accountability through reporting to partners and the class.

Relate a number of techniques and strategies for helping students to develop time management, planning, and organizational skills.

Time management: have students color portions of a clock face using dry-erase markers to represent time segments, e.g., five minutes, 15 minutes, etc., helping them visualize elapsed and remaining time; and check in halfway through time allotted. Give students halfway-point questions, e.g., are they halfway finished? Are they still focused on the task's goal? Are any distractions robbing them of on-task time? Must they speed or slow their work pace? Planning: one application is helping students plan homework. Ask them what a given homework assignment would look like; have them sketch it on paper divided into two columns, e.g., with a vocabulary assignment, students write vocabulary words and definitions in the left column, and draw pictures illustrating each definition in the right column. This helps them identify where to start, what they need, and how completed homework will look, promoting more independent work. Post-it note calendars help students visualize longer-term assignment due dates, and divide assignments into more manageable chunks. Organization: workspaces with Post-it notes or baskets labeled "Prepare," "Do," and "Done" support both planning and organization. Dual-pocket folders, one pocket for homework or materials to take home and another for completed homework to turn in, facilitate organization.

Describe some practices teachers can use to promote student use and refinement of higher-order thinking skills.

To get students to explore ideas from diverse perspectives, plan and ask questions prompting them to use their imaginations. For example, during a lesson on agriculture, ask students what they would think and feel about certain policies and practices if they were, respectively, legislators, corporate executives, factory farmers, small farmers, migrant farm workers, consumers paying for groceries, families eating groceries, etc. In a history lesson, ask students to take the perspectives of Native American tribes and of European settlers; or consider both the viewpoints of American revolutionaries and British colonial governors, etc. To promote problem-solving, instead of telling students how to solv problems mathematical, scientific, economic, logistical, creative, etc.— ask students how, also promoting inquiry; have them brainstorm to generate many ideas as a group; guide their consideration of alternative and speculation about potential consequences; and let them practice implementing solutions, analyzing and discussing results. Rather than 'yes" or "no" questions, asking open-ended questions allows for many varied responses. To develop research skills, have students form research questions, guiding revision of overly broad or narrow questions; guide them through steps of formulating hypotheses, conducting experiments testing hypotheses; collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data; reporting results; and drawing and communicating conclusions.

Discuss some teacher considerations related to diverse student backgrounds and needs, including classroom atmosphere, teacher communication, and designing appropriate content-area activities.

Today's classroom diversity includes students with different native languages, cultural backgrounds, previous educational and personal experiences, and knowledge. Disabilities are also a possibility. Regardless of background, gender, or other characteristics, all students need teachers to behave and communicate in considerate ways. Teachers who consider how peers and faculty may misjudge some students and how this affects them, and are aware of stereotypes and their consequences, can develop true awareness of others' perspectives. Using language, examples, and behaviors to treat students with interest and consideration and encourage others to follow suit facilitates establishing welcoming environments where students feel comfortable participating, enabling their success. Even though teachers may have student records, they need to inform themselves of individual students' background knowledge. They can begin school years surveying student knowledge prerequisite to their subject or class; give students lists of basic content-area vocabulary they expect students to understand, asking them to identify unfamiliar or problematic words; consult Individualized Education Program (IEP) information, special educators, and parents about how student disabilities can affect attendance and participation; and ask students, parents, school social workers, and/or others about student religion, family obligations, and other unique factors to consider.

Identify a number of criteria for instructional feedback to be useful. Describe some ineffective school district practices vs. using feedback to improve student performance.

Useful feedback must be consistent, formative, timely, and ongoing to enable student performance adjustments. It must be user-friendly: students must understand feedback to apply it, so it must be ageappropriate or developmentally appropriate, not containing excessive or overly technical information for students to handle. Expert educators communicate observation of one important behavior, which changing can produce noticeable improvement immediately, not offering advice until ensuring students understand the significance of observations. Effective feedback is actionable: grades, "wrong," and "good job" are not feedback. Inferences from data without presenting data are not descriptive enough. For example, "Many students were bored in your class" is judgment, not observation. "Twelve of 25 students texted or passed notes during your lecture; only one did during the small-group activity" is less arguable, more neutral and useful. Feedback must include explicit goals and tangible, goal-related results. Students can be too occupied with performing to attend to results: video recordings help. Most school district "formative" test grades refer to recently taught objectives, not final performance standards. Evaluating fall and winter performance against spring standards, measuring progress using more pre- and post-assessments, and using item analysis to identify individual student performance improvement needs are more effective.

Define and identify requirements, Bloom's taxonomy levels, and benefits of the complex cognitive processes of learning concepts, solving problems, developing and using metacognition, thinking critically, and transferring skills and knowledge.

When students learn concepts, they are not merely memorizing facts, the lowest level of Bloom's taxonomy. They also understand ideas, which is the next level. Problem-solving involves multiple steps: first, students must identify the specific problem, requiring observational and analytical skills. Then they generate multiple possible alternative solutions, requiring understanding relationships between needs and actions, plus independent and divergent thinking. Third, they anticipate various potential consequences of different alternatives, requiring abstraction, imagination, relating hypothetical situations to their own background experiences, and speculation. The next step, implementing solutions, requires active, hands-on, experiential learning. Then students evaluate solution results, requiring analytical thinking, cost-benefit analysis, judging effectiveness, value, etc. Analysis is Bloom's fourth level, evaluation Bloom's fifth. Metacognition involves thinking about one's own thought processes, requiring objectivity, analytical skills, reflection, and application—using metacognitive insights to inform, self-improve, and refine one's own learning strategies and processes for greater effectiveness. Critical thinking requires intellectual standards; discipline; open-mindedness; fairness; empathy, humility, and integrity; distinguishing objective from subjective information; evaluating and judging information and sources for validity and quality; applying logic and reasoning to unfamiliar or new ideas; informing thought with evidence; accuracy, clarity, precision, relevance, consistency, depth, and breadth. Transferring knowledge and skills requires application—Bloom's third level to different contexts and situations.

Define short-term, working, and long-term memory, including examples. Describe how information is processed and transferred for retention. Identify some instructional strategies for retaining, retrieving, and associating information.

When we temporarily retain information for about three to 20 seconds, this involves short-term memory a receptacle for visual and auditory information we rehearse, consider, analyze, interpret, or otherwise manipulate using working memory. For example, repeating a phone number to oneself silently or under one's breath until dialing or telling it to someone is in short-term memory. When we encode or consolidate and transfer information from short-term memory to long-term memory, that information is stored for an indefinite time period. Depending on individual cognitive characteristics, relative importance and meaningfulness of information, its affective impacts and associations, whether and how often one accesses the information, etc., long-term memories can last a lifetime, years, or less. Via top-down processing, prior knowledge in long-term memory strongly influences sensory perceptions; expectations about sensory experiences influence their interpretation, contributing to bias. Instructional design implications include making information sufficiently meaningful and relevant for transfer to long-term memory; and dividing information into chunks to facilitate transfer. Chunking enables the brain to automatically group some items for better retention and learning. Long-term memory, organized into interrelated schema networks, enables recalling relevant knowledge and relating new information to existing knowledge, which teachers activate using curiosity-piquing questions, graphic organizers, video, etc.

Give some examples of how technology is integrated into teaching and learning environments.

Examining patterns of teacher and student use of technology can show whether and/or to what degree technology is integrated into their teaching and learning environment. For example, an indication related to teacher activity is use patterns, e.g., the percentage of teachers using computer technologies for a variety of instructional and instruction-related tasks, including locating instructional resources; accessing resources and libraries online; downloading curriculum materials; communicating and networking with colleagues and other professionals; using computers to create instructional tasks, visuals, and/or materials; collaborating with remote teachers and classrooms on projects; communicating with parents; and publishing instructional materials online. Student use patterns, e.g., the percentage of students using computer technologies for various learning and instruction-related tasks, is another indicator of technology integration in the learning environment. Student instruction-related tasks include performing calculations; gathering information from varied sources; information organization and storage; collecting experimental or investigational data; making measurements; analyzing, interpreting, or manipulating data and information to draw conclusions, generate questions, discover relationships; reporting or communicating results, information, or conclusions; creating visual information or data displays; interacting or communicating with classmates, schoolmates, and others outside school; producing audiovisual presentations; composing, editing, and publishing text; creating original art, music, or graphics; publishing materials or projects remotely; and developing understanding of abstract or complex concepts and materials.

Identify a number of characteristics of culturally responsive instruction, including some general characteristics of activities and content instruction.

Culturally responsive teaching utilizes diverse students' cultural background knowledge, previous experiences, and performance styles, increasing the effectiveness and appropriateness of learning for them by teaching through and to their strengths. Culturally responsive instruction recognizes various ethnic groups' cultural heritages as legitimate—both as legacies influencing student attitudes, approaches, and dispositions to learning; and as content worth including in formal curricula. Culturally responsive approaches establish meaningful connections—both between students' school and home experiences, and between abstract academic concepts and the sociocultural realities that they live. It employs a broad range of instructional strategies addressing different student learning styles. It teaches students not only knowledge about their own and others' cultural traditions and heritages, but moreover to praise one another's cultural legacies and practices. Instructional practices that are culturally responsive incorporate multicultural information, materials, and resources in all skills and subjects schools routinely teach. Classroom environment considerations include using literature reflecting various literary genres and ethnic perspectives; incorporating everyday living concepts like jobs, economics, and consumer behaviors of different ethnic groups into math instruction; and activities that reflect a range of visual, auditory, tactile, and other sensory experiences to accommodate different student learning styles.

Discuss some of the uses, strengths, and limitations of essay test questions vs. selected response test questions; and of written tests vs. performance measures.

Essay questions have one obvious advantage of testing composition and writing skills as well as subject content knowledge when testing subjects other than English composition. They also enable students to go into depth and detail about topics, showing the extent of their knowledge. Essays afford students choices of subtopics, points they make, examples they use, how much they emphasize certain subtopics and points, how they organize their essays; allow them to persuade or convince readers through argumentation; require recall, not recognition; and showcase student higher-order thinking skills. Disadvantages include being more time-consuming to administer and write; requiring writing skills, which if deficient can obscure a student's other subject knowledge; and requiring far more time and subjective judgment to grade. Selected-choice questions are much faster to administer; can cover larger numbers of smaller points; allow teachers and testers more control of subject matter; are easier for students, requiring recognition, not recall; have more clear-cut right and wrong answers; are graded more objectively, and far faster, even electronically or automatically. Disadvantages include less information about individual students' overall knowledge; lacking elaboration or depth; and enabling some correct answers from sheer guesswork through probability. Written tests can be more objective; performance measures enable students to show what they can actually do, an advantage for those who do not write well.

Describe experiential learning as an instructional strategy, including experimental learning as one type of experiential learning.

Experiential learning is a student-centered, activity-oriented instructional strategy whereby students use inductive reasoning to discover information and insights. Process takes precedence over product. Activities involve "hands-on" learning. Rather than passively listening to teachers, only reading text, or viewing video or other visuals, students actively participate in direct experiences. This participation increases student motivation, as does communicating their activities to classmates so that, in effect, they teach one another. Critical components of effective experiential learning include formulating plans to apply learning to other contexts, and reflecting personally about learning experiences. Studies find student comprehension and retention are much higher through experiential learning activities than passive or receptive activities. Examples include administering surveys, building models, taking field trips, making field observations, conducting simulations, playing games, role-playing, synectics, focused imaging, and conducting experiments. Experimental learning involves the scientific method: asking research questions; formulating hypotheses regarding answers; testing hypotheses by experimenting, e.g., qualitative research like surveys and observations, or quantitative like randomly selecting participants, not treating a control group and manipulating independent variables with a treatment group to see if dependent variables are affected or unaffected to support or refute the hypothesis; reporting results; drawing conclusions and communicating these.

Describe a number of expert-recommended practices teachers can use for differentiating reading instruction.

Expert teachers find discussion particularly important when differentiating reading instruction. Student discussion effectively builds on every individual student's factual knowledge and understanding, and gives students opportunities to build comprehension and clarify meaning. Students deepen recall and understanding when teachers ask them to progress past fact memorization to discussion applying those facts to problems and issues. In-depth small-group or whole-class topic discussions demonstrate how classmates think and reason, build background knowledge, and can make information relevant to students' personal lives. Teachers must never assume every student absorbs the same information from a lesson or demonstration; also, students not having absorbed lesson content can write little or nothing about it because they can only write what they know and understand. Writing strengthens comprehension and enables thinking, exploration, and learning. Teachers can glean insights from reading student journals about student text analysis and inferential thinking skills, supporting intervention planning. Ongoing assessments enable teachers to reveal individual student need areas and successes and target instruction accordingly to support every student. Experts also advise teachers to think through every unit to determine what they want students to learn about genres, issues, and reading strategies; carefully plan units accordingly; and assemble appropriate read-aloud texts, plus reading materials to meet every student's needs.

Articulate some planning steps for teachers to organize and implement instruction effectively for enabling all students to achieve learning goals.

First review national and state standards, their course textbooks, supplementary materials, and any test preparation materials required, to ascertain which concepts they must teach. Create a plan of study based on this information. To visualize and organize instruction, make a personal lesson plan calendar. Using the plan of study and calendar, plan instructional units and timelines. Next, write detailed lesson plans for each unit. Effective lesson plans should include learning objectives; student activities; estimates of time needed; materials required; alternative plans for any students absent during lesson activities; and assessment methods, including tests, homework, and classwork. Transfer the general unit plan to a planning book, assembling all unit plans to get an overall picture of the school year, supporting organization, focus, and implementation. Write daily lesson outlines and agendas. Some teachers write detailed information and notes, while others make simple outlines including times. Being organized and making smooth transitions are important to maintain student attention. Collect or create required materials, e.g., lecture notes, overheads, handouts, manipulatives, any planned daily warmups, etc. Request media in advance. Create emergency lesson plans for substitutes and mini-lessons to fill extra or leftover time to plan for the unexpected.

Discuss some different assessment formats and how they can apply to specific instructional objectives, including an example.

For making preschool and kindergarten placement decisions, developmental scales are useful for assessing their developmental levels in various domains. These tests are also helpful in comparing developmental levels to age norms for diagnosing developmental delays. Developmental scale results then also become useful for designing instructional objectives whereby teachers can help children with developmental delays to reach or approximate normal development. When assessing students with significant disabilities, it is important to assess their adaptive well as intellectual functioning, as these sometimes differ widely. This also informs the levels, types, and weights of instruction for each. When older students are new to a school, diagnostic pre-assessments help educators evaluate their prior knowledge to determine classroom placement and where to begin instruction. When educational records are incomplete or unavailable, new assessments help determine intelligence, literacy levels, strengths and difficulties in specific academic subjects, etc. Standardized tests like ACT and SAT differentiate student verbal vs. quantitative abilities. For example, when a student more verbally than numerically gifted used a 166-point gap between verbal and quantitative SAT scores to justify her math struggles, her guidance counselor responded that her quantitative score nevertheless indicated she should be performing better in math

Identify some characteristics and types of formal and informal assessments.

Formal assessments all include standardized methods for their administration, scoring, and interpretation of the scores. Some examples of formal assessments include all standardized achievement tests, which are often national or statewide; so-called high-stakes examinations; standardized intelligence or IQ tests; many standardized screening tests and many standardized diagnostic measures. Standardized testing instruments have been statistically proven valid, i.e., they test what they are meant to test; and reliable, i.e., they yield consistent results across repeated administrations. Their manuals include statistical methods for scoring and interpreting the scores, and tables or charts showing the average scores of samples of students that represent the test-taking population, plus other scores and how many standard deviations these are from the average. Quizzes and exercises at the ends of educational textbook chapters, sections, and units are also examples of formal assessments. Informal assessments do not typically include standardized instruments, though some exist, e.g., standardized reading fluency measures. Teacher observations, class or student question-and-answer sessions, running reports, student projects, presentations, and experiments, student portfolios, and performance assessments are examples of informal assessment measures. Some find peer teaching anc debates informal assessments as well.

Define the term scope relative to curriculum design. Give some examples of curriculum scope.

In curriculum design, curriculum scope is the breadth and depth in which it covers content in each subject; clearly identified learning objectives reflecting local, state, and national standards; or how coherent curriculum is made through instructing basic concepts across several years of content coverage. Scope includes both how much material teachers must cover on any specified topic, and how much teachers should expect students to accomplish resulting from instruction. Sequence is the order in which scope is taught. If educators fail to structure curriculum scope and sequence deliberately, they risk having students miss significant learning when instruction is delivered without adequate planning. As examples, elementary school teachers might use a curriculum organizer table or chart where they enter titles and descriptions of each learning unit by time period, and the subject focus of each unit (e.g., arranged horizontally in columns). In the first column, before the series of units per time period, they can label cells vertically to enter main ideas, i.e., core student understandings; key concepts and questions to focus learning; teacher focus, i.e., unit goals like language development, group work, a culminating activity, etc.; fundamental content; subject foci, e.g., literacy, math, and respective programs, tasks, texts, and resources to use.

Explain how a teacher can interpret student assessment scores.

In general, a student's raw score on a statewide assessment equals the number of items that a student answered correctly. Raw scores can only be meaningfully interpreted relative to both the total number of items on the assessment and the raw scores of other students in the same grade. Raw scores must not be compared among different test administrations since minor variations in the test can result in widely varying average performances. With the limitations of the raw score, many assessments use a horizontal scale score allowing score comparison by adjusting for varying test form difficulty in different administrations. Using the horizontal scale score, educators can compare student cohorts (age and grade groups) taking the same subject or grade assessment in different years, compare individual students taking the same subject or grade assessment, and identify satisfactory or advanced performance. A vertical scale score, meanwhile, allows educators to measure student progress across subjects or grades.

Identify some characteristics of independent study as an instructional method. Give some examples of student activities that teachers can assign as independent study methods.

Independent study is not a single instructional method per se, but rather a type of instructional strategy that encompasses a range of different instructional methods. Teachers intentionally provide independent study types of methods for the purposes of developing initiative, self-determination, self-reliance, self-direction, and self-improvement in individual students. In addition to individual students working alone, th definition of independent study can also include paired, partnered, or small-group learning. In each case, the teacher functions as a facilitator and guide rather than directing or controlling the entire activity. Some advantages of independent study include giving students more choices of learning materials, topics, approaches, practices, and more autonomy in completing assignments. These increase student motivation. Another advantage is flexibility: teachers can use it with one, two, or several students and another strategy with the rest of the class; combine it with other strategies; or make it the main whole-class instructional strategy. An additional advantage is freeing teacher time. However, teachers mus ensure students have developed skills required for it. Some examples of independent study activities and methods include doing homework, writing reports or essays, learning contracts, correspondence courses and lessons, computer-assisted instruction, research projects, learning activity packages, assigned questions, and learning centers.

Explain some ways in which formal assessment results are used for making educational decisions.

Student scores from standardized intelligence scales and standardized scales of adaptive functioning are often used to inform student placements into specific schools, grades, and types of classes most compatible with their educational strengths and needs. While tracking is generally unpopular these days, educators seek to place students into groups where ability levels are similar and teachers can offer material (even if via differentiated instruction) that is sufficiently challenging, neither impossibly, inappropriately, or overwhelmingly difficult nor overly easy or boring. For students with certain disabilities, e.g., autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), many formal assessments exist to inform educators where a student is on the spectrum; intellectual and adaptive functioning levels; individual interests, difficulty areas, and specific behaviors, which can be both typical of the disorder and vary widely individually. Formal assessments are given at ends of school years to measure student achievement. These results are used for purposes of individual student grade promotions; to compare year-end student performance to baseline scores to assess student progress toward instructional objectives; and school accountability, to compare school effectiveness by comparing rates and percentages of student achievement to those of other schools, inform school improvement plans, and secure or continue government school funding.

Identify the purpose and importance of curriculum standards and frameworks and explain how they apply to planning instruction.

While the abundance of federal-level and state-level curriculum standards might seem to facilitate teachers' preparing relevant classroom curricula, it can overwhelm educators trying to design standards-based learning units. However, teachers discover that standards enable more curricular focus, refinement of their previous work, clearer communication of expectations to students, and enhanced learning—provided some model and processes for classroom standards application, many of which are available today. Standards articulate clear expectations for what all students should know and be able to do—regardless of gender, minority status, socioeconomic status, history of academic success (or failure), and previous access or lack thereof to any kinds of educational opportunities—while addressing school constituencies' varying needs. Standards give states common referents for assuring coordinated functioning of educational system components across schools and districts; offer parents, businesses, and community stakeholders a common language for discussing educational processes and communicate shared learning expectations, enabling more effective partnering in education; provide impetus and focus for new school programs and innovations in organizing content, delivering instruction, and planning assessment; make teachers design more intentional, purposeful learning of important content; and for all students, clearly identify performance expectations and means for meeting them; promote more equitable, challenging, and rewarding experiences; and improve performance.

Define formative and summative assessment, giving a few examples of each.

Formative assessments are conducted during instruction. Teachers use them to obtain feedback that they and their students can both utilize for improving the teaching and learning that will occur as it continues. For example, after giving a lecture, a teacher might ask middle or high school students to write down a sentence or two that identify the lecture's main point(s). Similarly, kindergarten and first-grade teachers can review an orally taught lesson by asking students to repeat one or two key vocabulary terms included, and/or one or two main points. When a teacher has told older students they will be assigned a paper as part of a unit, once the class has completed enough reading, teacher lessons, lectures, classwork, discussions, etc., the teacher can have students write and turn in outlines for the papers they will write. Summative assessments are conducted after instruction. They may evaluate learning from a unit, semester, or school year. Teachers use these to determine course grades, student grade promotion, and evaluate class, grade, and school achievement compared to those of other schools for accountability purposes. For example, grading final exams, critiquing senior music recitals or art projects, etc. help determine final course grades.

Discuss some topics relative to test results that parents typically want to know, and how educators can explain student test results to parents.

A common parental question is why their children were tested. Educators can explain to parents that standardized tests can identify their child's school strengths as well as areas where their child may need to improve. They can also evaluate and improve their child's school and the entire school district to provide better education. Educators should also tell parents their children are never evaluated based on a single test, and any assessment program is one among multiple tools evaluating student performance. Some parents are bewildered by scores like percentiles, stanines, grade-equivalent scores, etc. Teachers can help clarify these. For example, "stanine" refers to "standard nine," meaning that on a scale from 1-9, a score of 1-3 is below average, 4-6 is average, and 7-9 is above average. Percentiles tell what percentage of students scored below that percentile. Teachers should explain to parents that a score in the 75th percentile does not mean their child got 75 percent of test items correct; rather, it means their child scored higher than 75 percent of other students in the test group. If a student gets an 8th-grade-equivalent score on a 5th-grade reading achievement test, parents may think their child is ready for 8th -grade material; however, teachers should explain this means their child reads 5th-grade material as well as a typical 8th-grader.

Discuss some respective characteristics and pros and cons of rubrics and analytical checklists.

A rubric defines in advance a specific behavior(s), skill(s), or task(s) to perform. It supplies basic guidelines for performing task components and criteria for successful performance of each component. Rubrics also typically define general performance ranges and levels, e.g., unsatisfactory, satisfactory, or excellent, briefly describing each level's characteristics. Teachers and/or students can create rubrics or select from existing ones. The teacher should first go over the rubric with students, explaining what each part means, demonstrating when necessary. Then the teacher directs students to follow the rubric as a guide in performing the task. Finally, the teacher uses the rubric's criteria to assess student work. Advantages include combining learning objectives, associated tasks, performance guidance, and task evaluation criteria; and brevity, conciseness, and clarity. Disadvantages include assigning performance levels, not more precise grades or percentages; and perhaps not lending themselves to more detailed assignments. Analytical checklists pre-define certain behaviors, skills, and tasks; teachers check observation of their presence or absence. Advantages include saving time and effort by pre-listing tasks, behaviors, and skills, enabling quick and easy assessment; and making assessment uniform across students in terms of tasks and components. Disadvantages include not identifying additional valuable accomplishments observed (without additional notes); and sometimes limiting assessment to Yes/No formats, though some checklists do incorporate performance levels like rubrics.

Discuss some examples of factors to consider for choosing assessment instruments to use according to context, relevance, significance, and campus and district goal alignment.

A student's age or grade level are not the only factors to consider for selecting assessments. The educational context is also a key to format and instrument choice. For example, while intelligence scales give an idea of a child's intellectual capacity for purposes of educational placement, curricular and instructional design, individualized or differentiated instructional planning, etc., intelligence testing is not necessarily relevant or even significant to define adaptive functioning levels. Some children, due to innate characteristics, life experience, and training, function significantly higher in daily living and social skills than intellectually. Other children function adaptively much lower than their intellectual capacities would suggest due to behavior disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), learning disabilities (LDs), major mental disorders, etc. To ascertain daily living activities a child can perform compared to age peers and inform instructional design for developing adaptive skills, tests like the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales are indicated. When developmental delay is suspected in young children, tests like the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development help evaluate developmental levels. Because many school districts model their goals on their state education department's standards, the best way to align assessment with campus and district goals is often to administer standardized tests provided by statewide assessment systems.

Relate an example illustrating how a teacher can take advantage of an unanticipated learning opportunity.

According to some experts, effective early childhood development programs combine adult-guided and child-guided educational activities. Adult-guided activities include active, significant roles for children; child-guided activities include intentional adult roles in which adults take advantage of both learning experiences they planned, and unexpected opportunities for learning. For example, consider the preschool teacher whose class collected acorns outdoors and brought them back into the classroom. The teacher observes two children playing with the acorns. One child divides the acorns into two halves. She spreads her half out into a long row and clusters the other child's half into a pile. The second child becomes upset that she has more acorns than he has. The teacher asks the children how they could find out whether they each have the same number of acorns. Prompted by this intentional question, the second child gets the idea of counting both groups of acorns. The teacher observes, gives supportive comments, and asks thoughtful questions. The children discover they have the same number of acorns despite their arrangements and appearances. This teacher used an unexpected opportunity, helping two children normally in Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development to achieve an insight associated with Piaget's later concrete operations stage.

Identify several different types of teaching strategies and learning activities that enable students to demonstrate a variety of skills and competencies in different ways.

Giving students choices among assignments enables them to decide how to demonstrate their learning. For example, some might choose to write compositions, some to make spoken presentations, some to draw illustrations, and some to construct models to demonstrate the same knowledge. A language strategy is A-Z Taxonomy: small student groups write the alphabet vertically on paper and think of vocabulary terms in the content they are studying that start with each letter. This technique is effective as both pre- and post-instruction. Pairing students to debate some controversial issue related to learning content, having pairs explain pro and con positions to each other and agree to an overall recommendation gives students practice in negotiating and compromising skills, plus listening and speaking opportunities. Brainstorming evokes creativity, originality, and quantity: ask open-ended questions; never criticize ideas. Providing a suitable target number of ideas sometimes helps. Some linguistically diverse students may feel more comfortable responding as members of a small student team or group.

Briefly define active teaching and learning strategies and what they accomplish. Cite some common teacher objections to and dilemmas in using them, and some expert guidelines for introducing and applying these strategies.

Active teaching and learning strategies make students active participants in learning. Rather than passively listening to teachers discuss, read about, or observe others perform skills, students practice skills to gain proficiency. Many students learn best by doing. Hands-on activities take students out of books and sometimes their seats, classrooms, schools, or even familiar thinking habits. In addition to engaging student interest and giving actual practice, they have the benefit of integrating subject-area content with all four language and literacy domains—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Though research consistently shows students learn better through active content engagement, some teachers avoid active learning. Objections and dilemmas include: concerns they will never cover required content; losing class control by not lecturing; having trouble getting students to work in teams some doing all the work, others none; students' not knowing how to answer higher-order questions; student resistance to active learning or a preference for habituated listening and note-taking; what to do with ELL or special education students during active learning and group activities. Guidelines include: vary partners and small-group teams via randomization, specific rotation schedules, or other systematic schemes. Vary required team tasks and techniques. Clearly identify team member roles, task purpose, outcome, and time allotted. Prepare all needed materials. Determine how to grade tasks. Start small or brief activities early. Establish a signal for students to stop discussion.

Summarize a number of instructional communications strategies to develop higher-order thinking skills.

Align learning goals, objectives, ideas, skills, content, tasks, materials, aids, and assessments. Create organized routines and activities: explain established routines, e.g., starting on time and following planned activity sequences; follow them. Conduct task analysis of a thinking skill to learn: identify the specific skill, prerequisite knowledge and skills, related sub-skills sequence, and student readiness with prerequisites. Prepare examples, sample problems and explanations. Prepare questions transcending simple factual information recall, addressing advanced understanding, e.g., how? How well? Why? Plan strategies for diagnosis, guidance, practice, and remediation. Establish a comfortable, non-threatening atmosphere. Communicate clear expectations, genuine topic interest, enthusiasm, and a businesslike approach combined with warmth. Prepare and organize thoroughly to minimize between-activity transition times. Clearly explain tasks: set goals at beginnings of assignments, and furnish finished product examples. Introduce tasks with clear, simple organizing frameworks like single-paragraph overviews, previews, charts, or diagrams. Introduce key terms and concepts before proceeding. Focus attention on important information using questions. Use written signals, repetition, nonverbal behaviors, and verbal statements for emphasis. Use demonstrations, models, pictures, diagrams, examples, etc. to make ideas vivid. Signal transitions between ideas. Give frequent feedback, including clarifying or correcting incorrect responses.

Identify some characteristics of analytic scoring as applied to student writing, including some advantages, disadvantages, and recommended applications.

Analytic scoring separately evaluates and scores discrete writing features, e.g., concise concept expression, creativity, grammar, punctuation, etc. Teachers may average these scores, but more often weigh them by relative importance. Analytic scoring helps teachers consider all writing elements, preventing them from, for example, giving too low a grade because of poor mechanics to an essay with excellent concept expression or problem analysis. By enabling final score breakdowns and teacher comments, it diagnoses areas needing improvement to guide further student efforts. Disadvantages include being time-intensive for teachers, not all students reading their teacher comments, and not using those teacher comments to benefit future assignments. Also, negative feedback, particularly combined with unclear or confrontational comments, can be counterproductive to student development. Written analytic scales define grading criteria and expectations for students. Teachers should weigh criteria by importance, e.g., if an assignment's goal is learning course information, then ideas, organization, and/or logic outweigh grammar and mechanics. Comments should balance challenge with support. Teachers should avoid confrontational practices like sarcastic comments; crossing, scribbling, or blocking out student work; etc.

Describe some of the advantages and disadvantages of using student self-assessments.

Because student needs vary widely, educators must differentiate content, processes, and products of learning for individual student readiness, learning styles, and interests. Also, because of this student diversity, more than one record and voice are needed to recognize and report student growth, development, and learning needs. Moreover, research finds both conducting ongoing assessment and engaging students as partners in their learning and assessment vital. When students must analyze their own thinking and learning critically, they become more motivated to learn; they develop metacognitive skills, enhancing their engagement across subject areas and supporting lifelong learning motivation. When ongoing assessment is used to inform and adjust ongoing instruction, both students and teachers reap benefits of additional knowledge about what students do and do not understand from student feedback. However, students commonly lack the experience, training, and expertise to conduct assessments as teachers can. They obviously are less objective than others when assessing themselves. Individual student differences cause corresponding self-assessment differences, whereas one teacher's assessments of all students may be more uniform. Teacher assessments must accompany self-assessments, to standardize evaluation across students and mitigate self-interested, self-destructive, or overly subjective results.

Discuss some teacher considerations for assigning student peer assessment, including how to address some inherent disadvantages.

Before assigning peer assessment, teachers should explain to students the benefits and expectations of the peer review process. One disadvantage is that student relationships and interactions can influence peer review to be personal or subjective. Teachers can keep student work anonymous for peer review, making feedback more objective. Students inexperienced with peer assessment may not know what kinds of feedback are or are not useful and why or why not. Teachers can address this by giving students feedback on their feedback to classmates. They can also give examples to students of feedback with different levels of quality, and discuss with students which are more or less useful and the reasons why. To impart structure, norms, and appropriateness, teachers should provide time limits and clear direction for in-class peer review, and define deadlines for homework peer review assignments. Peer assessments are more valid when students are more familiar with and take more ownership of criteria, so teachers should engage students in discussing designated criteria. Teachers should offer necessary input and guidance during group feedback discussions. Peer assessment is better assigned for academic tasks that students have experience with, not professional tasks. To encourage more individual responsibility, avoid letting multiple students assess identical tasks.

Identify the levels of Bloom's taxonomy, including Anderson and Krathwohl's revision, for the cognitive domain. Define each level. State how these should inform instructional objectives. Also identify and briefly define the levels of Krathwohl and Bloom's taxonomy for the affective domain, and those of common psychomotor taxonomies.

Bloom's 1950s taxonomy originally included levels or categories of knowledge, i.e., recalling learned information; comprehension, i.e., grasping, restating, and explaining meaning; application of knowledge to new and different situations; analysis, i.e., separating components of material and showing relationships among components; synthesis, i.e., bringing separate concepts and ideas together to create new wholes and relationships; and evaluation, i.e., judging the value or worth of information according to established criteria. Anderson and Krathwohl's 2001 revision changed these nouns to verbs: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create—also switching the order of evaluate from after synthesis to before create. Instructional objectives should include learning activities that address each of these categories, sequenced correspondingly from remembering to creating to reflect the hierarchy's progressively increasing difficulty. Krathwohl and Bloom's taxonomy in the affective domain covers receiving, or attending to something; responding, or showing new behaviors influenced by experience; valuing, or showing definitive commitment or involvement; organization, or integrating new values into priorities; characterization by value, or behaving consistently with new values. Dave (1970), Simpson (1972), and Harrow (1972)'s psychomotor taxonomies include observing a physical action or event; imitating another's action; practicing repeatedly; and adapting, i.e., fine-tuning performance. In all three domains, these taxonomies progress sequentially from basic to higher levels, as corresponding instructional objectives should.

Identify several cognitive, thinking, and learning strategies included among higher-order thinking skills. Summarize a number of instructional strategies that help students develop these skills.

Cognitive and learning strategies include organization, elaboration, rehearsal; and metacognition for self-evaluating and self-regulating one's thinking, entailing mnemonics, visualization, diagramming, highlighting; or more complex strategies, e.g., the Multipass reading comprehension procedure. To help students develop critical and creative thinking and learning skills, intentionally design lessons expressly for teaching specific thinking and learning strategies. Teach self-reflection and self-evaluation: give students inexplicable dilemmas, paradoxes, etc., challenging pre-existing beliefs. Guide systematic student inquiry. Encourage reflection and making sense of new information by having students write or discuss in their own words how to integrate it with their existing ideas, approaches, and opinions. Encourage and guide students in forming hypotheses, brainstorming, guessing, speculating about consequences, and discussing how their thought processes have changed their ideas. Monitor inefficient strategies and correct them. Encourage continuous student reflection of beliefs about thinking, thought processes, and evaluating effectiveness. Use advance organizers and cognitive maps to show main parts or steps when approaching various thinking and learning tasks. Teach PQ4R (preview, question, read, reflect, recite, and review) with written materials. Instruction in abstraction, analysis, outlining, summarization, and generalization enhances both reading and reasoning skills. Stress broad algorithms, heuristics, and problem-solving strategies; give enough practice to overlearn for effortless, consistent use. Teach specific strategies using modeling, think-alouds, discussion, and practice. Students develop self-confidence from teachers modeling self-confidence in thinking and reasoning processes.

Discuss some of the differences between formal and informal assessments, including why both are important.

Formal assessments provide quantitative data because they are standardized and report standard scores. Informal assessments provide qualitative data because they are not standardized, so the results reported by teachers using them are more subjective. Formal assessments enable comparison of individual students with peer groups, but typically not specific details about individual students. Informal assessments can give more detail about an individual student's strengths, needs, and performance; but less objective comparison of individual student performance with age, grade, or peer performance. Formal assessments are norm-referenced tests comparing student performance to norms for their developmental level, age, or grade. Informal assessments are typically criterion-referenced tests comparing student performance to pre-established criteria students are expected or intended to achieve and teachers are expected or intended to teach. Some students experience significant test anxiety when standardized formal tests are administered in whole-class or group settings. Some students also experience significant anxiety, even panic, when teachers single them out to answer questions in class as informal assessment. Hence it is important that teachers obtain sufficient results from both formal and informal assessment, and multiple forms of each, to develop more comprehensive pictures of student abilities and achievements.

Discuss some ways in which computer mediation supports student learning. Cite some applications of computer-mediated communication found effective for enhancing prerequisite and higher-order learning skills acquisition.

Communicating using computers gives students opportunities to access remote data sources, collaborate with students in other places on group projects, and share their work with other students to obtain their responses or evaluations. Research finds that computer-based instruction (CBI) and computer-assisted instruction (CAI) combined with regular classroom instruction enhances student motivation, academic achievement, and attitudes. Moreover, the increasing prevalence, even requirement, of computers in workplaces demands student preparation; and federal and state standards increasingly require integrating technology into instruction and student computer literacy. Studies have shown that the following computer-mediated communication applications are effective for enhancing student learning of prerequisite skills and higher-order cognitive skills: building skills in logical reasoning, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and making verbal analogies; practicing and drilling procedures that incorporate tests or probes; and practicing problem-solving strategies and skills in making inferences. In addition, interactive learning software programs give students more autonomy in learning, allow them to learn at individual paces, engage student interest, and often make learning more entertaining. Moreover, students need immediate, specific, corrective feedback on their learning progress, which interactive software programs can give more consistently than single teachers with large classes.

Define peer assessment, some of its overall benefits, and some techniques for incorporating peer assessment into instruction.

Constructivist and active learning theories provide foundations and support for peer assessment. By assigning peer assessment, teachers can empower students to take responsibility for and manage their own learning. They can help students learn assessment techniques and develop lifelong assessment skills. Peer assessment leads to exchanges of ideas and diffusion of knowledge among students, enhancing all individual students' learning. Teachers can also motivate students to engage in more depth with course materials by having them assess one another's learning. Teachers can incorporate peer assessment by identifying activities and assignments wherein peer feedback could benefit students. They can include peer assessment opportunities at different stages of larger assignments, e.g., an outline, first draft, second draft, etc. of a paper. Teachers should create rubrics or guidelines defining tasks clearly for students conducting peer reviews; and use learning exercises to introduce rubrics to assure student abilities for effective rubric applications. Peer reviews can be in-class, homework, online, etc.; teachers should determine these. Teachers must also model constructive criticism, appropriateness, and descriptive feedback in their own responses to inform peer assessment. Including small-group feedback sessions enables recipients to question, and peer reviewers to explain, written comments to recipients.

Describe a procedure for continuous monitoring and charting of student performance, including its goals, purposes, functions, critical elements, and some tips for implementation.

Continuous monitoring and charting (I) gives teachers information on student progress with short-term, discrete objectives. They can respond flexibly to student understanding, engagement, lacks thereof, and feedback, adjusting instruction by re-teaching or reviewing skills and concepts immediately instead of only finding students did not learn certain things after having covered several topics; and (2) gives students visual depictions of their learning. Having students chart and graph their own performance can enhance their engagement in learning. Continuous monitoring functions as ongoing evaluation, visual representation, immediate feedback; a diagnostic tool; instructional planning guide; communication mechanism with students, parents, other teachers, and administrators; and an evaluation practice that can motivate and engage students. However, it is not an independent student practice activity. Critical elements are frequently assessing student understanding and performance of discrete skills and concepts; ability to replicate assessment procedures over several days; tally, graph, or chart student responses; and involve students in tracking that progress and setting goals. To implement, select a specific instructional objective; design an assessment sheet students can complete in a few minutes with items reflecting the target skill, and where indicated, concrete, representational, or abstract understanding level; administer and score; have students plot correct or incorrect responses on graphs; discuss; draw goal lines on graphs; repeat.

Identify the critical elements of cooperative learning, including some ways to provide for these.

Cooperative learning requires positive interdependence (students sink or-swim together): assign assembly line-style and synergistic task completion. Establish collective goals, resources, and rewards; assign group roles; arrange group furniture and environment; have groups compete against each other. Face-to-face interaction entails seating groups in circles or pairs facing each other. Promote individual accountability through checking with random group members, assigning individual tasks, bonus group credit or rewards if all members perform well individually, and having students bring individual work to their groups. Social skills including decision-making, communication, trust-building, leadership, and conflict management must not be assumed but taught. Teachers should record their observations of students on observation forms to provide feedback. Social skills include categories of group formation and assembly, group functioning, and the formulation and fermentation of ideas and knowledge. Group processing can be accomplished orally and/or in writing by small group reflection; teacher provision of feedback to small groups or whole classes; teacher and small group observations; and goal-setting, by students with teacher guidance as needed, for students' next work sessions, e.g., regarding further social skills development.

Identify four necessary features of instructional objectives. Summarize some characteristics and/or examples of each. Include two expert observations for writing objectives related to Bloom's taxonomy.

Correctly written objectives include: student orientation, behavioral terminology, a criterion, and a condition statement. "Review long and short vowels in one-syllable words" or "teach fire safety" are teacheroriented. To clarify their significance and use for students, they should be student-oriented: "correctly read aloud words containing long or short vowels"; "identify fire safety rules." Behavioral terminology is observable and measurable. This is why Bloom's taxonomy supplies action verbs for each complexity level in the hierarchy and each domain. Experts remark that while knowledge-level objectives, e.g., to read sight words aloud or recite multiplication tables, are prerequisites for more advanced learning, teachers should still not dwell primarily on these as most easily observable or identifiable, but ensure they give equal time in their lessons to higher-level cognitive skills. Experts also remind teachers not to confine objectives to Bloom's cognitive domain, but include the psychomotor and affective domains as well. Objectives can include all three. For example, an instructional objective for a student to answer comprehension questions orally with 90 percent accuracy after silently reading a passage from a grade-level basal text can include requesting assistance by raising one's hand, using a person's name to get his or her attention, asking a question, and saying "please" or other social amenity.

Explain some respective aspects of critical thinking and creative thinking as cognitive processes involved in learning, including some general examples.

Critical thinking includes the abilities to question, evaluate, and judge information or material. For example, students should learn to distinguish opinions from facts in what they read and hear; look for evidence supporting author or speaker arguments, or lack thereof; evaluate supporting evidence, e.g., consider whether its source is reputable, proven, accepted by experts in its field, etc.; judge the quality of information or material through comparison, experience, and intuition. Creative thinking includes generating original ideas, coming up with problem-solving alternatives that differ from usual solutions, applying knowledge in novel ways and contexts, and divergent thinking. Traditional academics tend to emphasize and require convergent thinking, wherein multiple concepts, ideas, facts, and information come together or converge to yield the same answer or conclusion. Divergent thinking, by contrast, involves generating concepts, ideas, facts, and information that differ or diverge to yield varying answers or conclusions. For example, some informal assessments of divergent thinking include thinking of as many different categories of use for paper clips, or bricks, etc. (Bricks as projectiles represent one category, despite different targets and/or projection methods; bricks as building materials, also one category despite construction types or methods; using paper clips as fasteners is one category regardless of things fastened.)

Discuss some features and benefits of culturally responsive teaching.

Culturally responsive teachers maintain cultural identity and heritage as well as academic performance. They teach the whole student, using cultural references to develop cognitive, affective, social, and political learning. Students develop interpersonal relationships, acting as extended family members supporting, encouraging, and helping one another. Group accountability makes individual success everybody's responsibility in academic communities. Teachers satisfy student needs regarding human dignity, sense of belonging, and individual self-concepts. Multidisciplinary teacher teams may collaborate, teaching single cultural concepts; students can actively participate in their own evaluations. Classroom climate, learning context, student-teacher relationships, curriculum content, instructional techniques, and assessments are included in culturally responsive teaching, which is multidimensional. It empowers students as learners and people by sharing teacher and student authority; relating personal growth to public life; developing critical curiosity and inquiry habits as well as strong knowledge and skills; and treating individual development as a social, cooperative, active process wherein students explore society, power, inequality, and change. It uses varied cultural experiences, not traditional practices, as teaching and learning resources. Students learn reflection, decision-making, and effective action—personally, socially, economically, and politically; more humane, caring interpersonal understandings and skills; more insightful, clearer thinking; and continual knowledge criticism, revision, renewal, and sharing.

Explain how curriculum scope and sequence are used in planning curricula.

Curriculum scope and sequence work together to furnish instruction with an organized structure which enables students to receive the maximum numbers of opportunities to learn and to take advantage of these to learn the most that they can. For educators to overlook important parts of subject content instruction is entirely too easy without the organizing structure of curriculum scope and sequence. It is also much more difficult to deliver instruction depending on previous learning, and avoid repeating material over grade levels, without planning sequence in advance. Most states develop scope and sequence directly from state-level standards. Some school districts design curriculum frameworks, which provide the scope of content and sequence in which to teach it. It is also popular for state education departments and district curriculum departments to divide learning sequences into developmental strands or bands. A common method of organizing a curriculum scope is to divide it into key learning areas (KLAs) or integrated themes used as curriculum organizers. Depending on their size, structure, and sector, different schools approach curriculum scope and sequence development through different processes. Some states define scope and sequence in certain subjects, but leave this to individual districts in others.

Explain what is meant by observable behavior in terms of instructional objectives, including some examples.

Educational interest in observable behaviors was influenced by behaviorist learning theory, which proposed that because internal mental or emotional states could not be externally observed or measured, the study and modification of behavior should be confined to observable behaviors, i.e., actions or states of being that others could outwardly observe an individual producing. However, because only observable behaviors could be accurately measured, these were the only kind that could be changed through behavior modification techniques based on operant conditioning principles. In applying Bloom's taxonomy to cognitive learning objectives, the same proposition is embraced in that only action verbs are appropriate. For example, under the second category of Understanding, the verb understand itself is not found because it is internal, hence impossible to quantify; action verbs under Understand include describe, differentiate, discuss, cite examples of) demonstrate use of, identify, select, tell, etc. Thus a good instructional objective would not require a student simply to know or remember something, which requires assuming the student knows or remembers, but rather to recall, name, list, or repeat it because these demonstrate the student's knowledge and memory in ways that others can observe.

Discuss some expert recommendations for communicating assessment results to students and parents.

Experts recommend two steps in reporting assessment results to students: an initial briefing for the whole class or group tested; and then follow-up meetings with individual students, focusing on how teachers will meet their needs. Briefings should include an overview of the assessment program and instruments; how teachers, school, and districts use test results; the process for reviewing results with individual students; which results students receive; and any plans for recognizing outstanding assessment performance. Follow-up meetings should include assessed student strengths and needs, how these relate to other student information from other tests and/or teacher observations, and the plan of action recommended for addressing individual student needs. Teachers and school administrators should jointly report results to parents to build active partnerships for student learning. Individual parent-teacher conferences are ideal for explaining individual student results, reporting school-wide performance, answering parent questions, and explaining instructional improvement initiatives. If these are impossible, teachers can provide written reports carefully describing assessment processes and procedures, explaining how to interpret results, and including contact information for questions. Parent group meetings are alternatives if individual meetings are impossible. Parent newsletter articles describing assessment, scoring, overall school placement, improvement initiatives, FAQs, etc. are additional communication options.

Describe several different teaching strategies that involve students in active learning activities that allow them to show their learning in diverse manners.

In a "carousel questions" strategy, the teacher writes several questions about a content topic being learned on large posters or paper stations posted around the classroom. Small student groups, each with a different color marker, rotate every few minutes among question sets. At every station, teams add ideas, responses, or answers not already included. Then the class shares all student responses, gaining multiple and varied answers to the questions. In case studies, students are given real-world stories about things that happened to an individual, family, school, or community; students apply their content knowledge and skills to authentic situations. In critical explanation, teachers ask students to consider reasons or factors that might explain some content-related issues or problems. Use "might" and "could," not "why" to avoid implying right, wrong, or only one correct answer. In discussion webs, students consider a content-related issue or problem in small groups, then regroup and share their work and information with classmates from other groups. In field studies, students have opportunities to learn about and study issues in their community related to the content they are learning. Health classes might study community nutrition, disease, safety, environmental issues, consumer health, or healthcare services; earth science classes might collect rock samples, identify them, and determine local distribution patterns; social studies classes might study local landmarks and associated history, etc.

Articulate some concepts essential to standards-based learning and their theoretical bases.

In standards-based education, all grade levels and subjects have clear learning goals; all instruction and assessment are aligned to these because the strongest school-level influence on student achievement is opportunity to learn: students are unlikely to learn specific content without opportunity. Students are given multiple opportunities to demonstrate achievement because reading, math, social studies, and science should be treated like PE and music: poor initial performances do not receive low grades, but rather require repeated practice until students master the skills. Formative assessments, giving feedback and promoting growth, are emphasized because research shows effective feedback is the strongest single classroom instructional change increasing learning and achievement. Rubrics and scoring guides are consistently employed because they enable teachers to give students better, criterion-referenced feedback about specific skill and knowledge levels, not merely norm-referenced feedback via percentage scores. This helps teachers evaluate their learning objectives as well as advance student achievement. Teachers regularly report student progress toward learning goals because specific, formative, more frequent feedback than annual standardized tests critically affects teacher conscientiousness and effectiveness with initiatives developing new reporting practices and forms; with instructing, assessing, and encouraging students; and student success. Instructional activities represent the "how," standards the "what" and "why" of school programs.

Describe an example of scaffolded instruction showing how teacher and student roles and responsibilities are involved and change throughout the process.

Scaffolding can be implemented with individual students, small groups, or whole classes. It is useful whenever students cannot understand a certain concept or are not progressing in some aspects of tasks. Step 1: the teacher models how to perform a difficult or unfamiliar task, for example, how to use a graphic organizer when students have never done so. The teacher might prepare an incomplete graphic organizer with some parts completed for handouts and a projection. The teacher describes how the graphic organizer illustrates relationships, asking students to "think aloud" about this. Step 2: teacher and students work together on completing the graphic organizer. Students might suggest information to add. The teacher writes student suggestions on the board or overhead; students complete their copies of the organizer. Step 3: students work in pairs or small groups to complete a blank or partially filled graphic organizer. Teachers may need to provide multiple scaffolds at various times to help students master more complex content. Step 4: students practice independently, demonstrating mastery and gaining speed and automaticity. In each step, teacher and students have different roles and responsibilities.

Describe how a number of different instructional approaches emphasize student responsibility for learning, and/or assign students and teachers different responsibilities, forms of responsibility, and/or roles.

In the inquiry-guided instructional method, students investigate to answer questions, attaining understanding of concepts independently. This not only promotes the development of lifelong research skills, but also places the responsibility for learning with the student. In the learner-centered teaching method, teachers are responsible for facilitating learning, while students take responsibility for learning. This shifts classroom power from teacher to student. In the instructional method of establishing learning communities, every member participates, taking responsibility for accomplishing learning goals. With shared learning, responsibility is collective, not individual. Participants include students, teachers, other educators, staff, administrators, parents, community members, and other stakeholders. Service learning is an instructional approach combining academic content with community service projects. Teachers are responsible for structuring and supervising learning, enabling student reflection. Students learn to take civic responsibility. In team-based learning (TBL), unlike other group activities, students participate as members of permanent teams; group meetings occupy most of class. Students are more responsible for and reliant on each other (interdependent) for learning, and more responsible for arriving to class prepared. Research finds TBL increases both student engagement and responsibility.

Discuss several aspects of integrating technology into instruction, including what makes it effective, and some history and benefits.

Instructional technology integration is effective when it supports curriculum goals. Technology must support four essential learning elements: active student engagement, group participation, frequent interaction and feedback, and connections with real-life experts. In the 1960s, MIT professor Seymour Papert collaborated with cognitive-developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, and then developed Logo, a programming language for children to use without advanced mathematical knowledge. Students using Logo could write and debug programs to control robot movements with minimal instruction. They learned more in-depth geometry concept understanding and programming skills—and were more engaged in learning than in traditional classroom exercises. Papert pointed out the ample overlap of education and fun with computers for promoting all students' internal motivation. Today technology learning tools abound; almost every US public school has Internet connection. When technology is used for mom ambitious learning goals than basic skills, studies find it helps students develop creativity, research skills, and higher-order thinking.

Summarize some general characteristics of interactive instruction as a teaching strategy. Offer some examples of interactive learning activities.

Interactive instruction is a teaching strategy that enables a range of different interactive methods and ways of grouping students. It is interactive because it places a major emphasis on having students share and exchange ideas, questions, activities, and tasks, and engage in discussions of their work and learning with classmates. Students in pairs, threes, small groups, or whole classes may participate in interactive discussions, projects, or assignments. Some examples of activities involving interactive instruction include holding debates; participating in student panels; engaging in role-playing exercises, which are also used in experiential learning; discussion, which is also a feature of indirect instruction; group brainstorming to generate ideas; practicing academic skills and tasks with peers; cooperative learning groups, which are always interactive and sometimes also involve independent study; laboratory groups, which can also involve experimental and experiential learning; problem-solving activities; circle of knowledge group activity sessions; tutorial groups, including peer tutoring; and conducting interviews with peers and/or others.

Discuss some of the characteristics and advantages of interdisciplinary instruction, how it has evolved, and examples of some components.

Interdisciplinary or cross-curricular instruction applies knowledge, principles, and values to multiple school disciplines and subjects concurrently. Disciplines and subjects are often related through central themes—thematic units have been identified as interdisciplinary teaching's organizational structure—or experiences, processes, topics, problems, and issues. Schools first integrated listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking as language arts components, thereafter trending to more widely integrating all curriculum subjects through unifying themes. Cross-curricular instruction is often a remedy to recurring educational problems like instruction in isolated skills and fragmentary learning; and a means of supporting goals like giving students more relevant curricula, teaching reasoning and thinking, and facilitating skills transfer to other contexts. It enables students to apply and integrate knowledge across subjects, which isolated skills instruction does not; raises student motivation and engagement when, through participation, students realize the value of the knowledge; and supplies conditions for effective learning. Subject teachers collaborate, for example, a PE and math teacher may combine math skills of counting and graphing with PE skills of throwing, catching, hitting, and kicking balls, including student practice and teacher assessment of both physical and numerical techniques. Elementary classroom teachers may combine multiple subjects in one thematic unit, e.g., using a bean-growing project to teach science via botany, the life cycle, research questions, and observation; mathematics via counting and measuring; and English-writing reports.

Explain why educational outcomes should be measurable, and give examples of outcomes that are not measurable vs. measurable.

Learning objectives must be not only observable, meaning teachers and others can see, hear, or otherwise observe evidence a student has learned something; but also measurable, meaning there is some way to quantify the behavior demonstrating learning. Behaviorist learning theory pointed out only observable behaviors can be measured, therefore changed. As a corollary, it has demonstrated that by nature, observable behaviors can nearly always be measured because if people can observe another's behavior, they can also find a way of measuring it. To be measurable, outcomes or results must be specific. For example, "The student will use correct grammar" is not measurable because it is too vague, not specifying what or whether all or some percentage of grammar must be correct, etc. But the objective "The student, given a sentence written in the present or past tense, will be able to rewrite it in future tense with no contradictions (e.g., 'I will see them yesterday') or errors in tense" is a measurable objective, specifying the condition (given a sentence written in present or past tense) and behavior (rewrite it in future tense). These are elements of the ABCD method— audience, behavior, conditions, degree of mastery required (e.g. 100 percent, 95 percent, 90 percent, etc.).

Provide an example of a lesson plan with eight steps, including the amount of time the teacher allots for each step and examples of activities during each.

Introduction — 5 minutes: teacher writes Lincoln's quotation of the Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal"; students discuss potential 1860s meaning. Foundation - 5-10 minutes: brief discussion about slavery, men and women, educated and uneducated white men; the goal is explaining the significance of the Gettysburg Address to American history and today's voting rights. Key vocabulary words and phrases include: conceived in liberty; dedicated; proposition; equal. Brain activation — 5 minutes: ask what the words mean, why Lincoln phrased it thus, what would happen today with this speech, what the speech informs us about 1860s America, how the phrase connects to the American history then and now, and how the first paragraph leads to the ideas in the second and third paragraphs. Body of new information - 10-15 minutes: referring to specified textbook pages and illustrations, discuss the Battle of Gettysburg. Teacher writes key ideas or notes on overhead; students add to history notes. Clarification - 5-10 minutes: students write reflections on text. Practice and review - 5-10 minutes: small-group discussions of the battle's and speech's significance, Lincoln's speaking on the battlefield, and its turning point in the Civil War. Independent practice - 10 minutes: students select and write brief summaries of two or three other key phrases from the speech. Closure - 5 minutes: students share phrases with partners, write favorites with short explanations on "exit passes," and the teacher collects these to assess understanding and inform tomorrow's lesson.

Discuss some of the ways that library media specialists can collaborate with classroom teachers.

Library media specialists are experts at locating information and resources, among other things. As information specialists, they contribute skills for accessing and evaluating information resources in different formats for both students and teachers. They function as models for students, showing them strategies for finding, accessing, and evaluating information that is available in their school library media centers and outside them. Due to the impact of technology development on library media center environments, library media specialists also keep up with mastering the newest, continually evolving electronic resources, and pay ongoing attention to the quality, character, and ethical use of information in traditional and electronic formats. They are instructional partners collaborating with teachers, other educators, and administrators. They identify connections among school expectations for student learning, student achievement, school curriculum content, student information needs, and available information resources. They work closely and cooperatively with teachers in designing authentic learning activities and assessments. Collaborating with teachers, they help integrate information and communication skills to meet content standards. They have knowledge of current research literature in teaching and learning, and expertise for its application. They help students find information from multiple sources, evaluate it critically, and use it to support learning, problem-solving, and critical thinking.

Generally and differentially define long-term goals, short-term objectives, instructional objectives, and lesson plan objectives. Give examples of each.

Long-term goals typically are mastered over a school year and are stated in very broad, general terms. Goal areas typically correspond to content areas like reading, writing, math, and other subjects. Teachers derive short-term objectives from long-term goals. Short-term objectives can be completed in shorter time periods, ranging from two weeks to three months. Teachers then derive instructional objectives from short-term objectives. Students can generally master instructional objectives within one lesson. From smaller numbers of long-term goals, teachers should be able to generate a larger number of short-term objectives and even larger numbers of instructional objectives from short-term objectives. As an example, if a long-term goal is for students to read at grade level, then related short-term objectives could include recognizing vocabulary sight words; using phonics, context clues, and structural analysis to identify unfamiliar words; and demonstrating text comprehension on literal, inferential, and critical levels. From these, a teacher could break down phonics into rules for short and long vowels, digraphs, initial and final single consonants, and consonant blends to write individual instructional objectives.

Relate some research findings about how teachers address student conceptions, misconceptions, and preconceptions.

Multiple teachers agree to the value of having students discuss scientific concepts and struggle to define these on their own before teachers supply them with the scientific terminology. They find this process enables students to construct and own their knowledge. Teachers also observe students from diverse cultural backgrounds may have different ways of making sense of problems, making it important to provide real-life contexts giving them personal relevance to students and accessing prior student knowledge for understanding them. Teachers emphasize structured activities, which afford students chances to develop their thoughts before sharing them; and allowing each student time to share ideas increases participation. Starting with small groups and progressing to whole-class discussion allows teachers to circulate, monitoring or assessing many more student responses; allows students to exchange and develop ideas in smaller, non-threatening groups; and improves subsequent whole-class discussion levels. Teachers emphasize needing to address previous student knowledge. They realize misconceptions can be based on cultural beliefs and personal experiences, making them resistant to change. Researchers report that, although teachers can often predict common student misconceptions, students frequently give wider response ranges than teachers can predict; and that many teachers propose re-teaching for preconceptions, but more experienced teachers try different instructional strategies.

Identify and define two different common assessment formats, when each should be used and not used, and some advantages and disadvantages.

Multiple-choice tests have stems usually questions, sometimes statements—and several answer choices. One answer is correct, others incorrect; in some formats, there is more than one correct answer. These are efficiently, easily administered to large classes. They can be scored by teaching assistants, machines, or computer programs. These are effective to measure memory, knowledge, convergent thinking, and problem-solving in convergent subjects; but not when "correct" answers are equivocal, ambiguous, or disputable. Writing wrong answers reflecting common misconceptions or errors enables diagnostic value from wrong-answer pattern analyses. However, students cannot elaborate on topics. High-quality tests are harder to write than some teachers realize. Overuse can lead students to memorize separate pieces of information instead of developing overall subject understanding. Oral questioning is the most common classroom assessment. Teachers can use hypotheticals ("What would you have done if...?"), get explanations and reasons for specific student practices, challenge practices, and check understanding of underlying concepts or principles not directly observed. Not requiring reading and writing is often more inclusive and less discriminatory. It applies highly to assessing spoken, not written language. It is more valid than reliable, and time-intensive, indicating standard questions for summative assessments or multiple assessors. Recording is required for permanent documentation, which has its own considerations. Experts advise asking students' opinions of lessons and activities before questioning, for highest information quantity and quality.

Give summaries of a variety of instructional strategies that researchers have found promote student development of higher-order thinking skills.

Name and define each cognitive skill for students; ask them for examples and synonyms. Model steps for applying each skill. Explain appropriate and inappropriate skill application contexts. Assign cooperative learning groups to practice skills. To improve comprehension, problem-solving, decision-making; and concept, principle, and procedure application: ask probing questions to diagnose existing student conceptions and misconceptions. Furnish hands-on experiences enabling students to explore generating new explanations or interpreting raw data. Give question stems or examples requiring higher-order thinking; have students answer in groups, pairs, or independently. Give practice in brainstorming, decision-making, experimenting, identifying and solving problems in art, music, and writing a: well as math and science. Incorporate individualized options in lesson plans, e.g., assignment choices, modalities for multiple intelligences, varying instruction and application sequences, open-ended participation tasks with multiple alternatives, multi-ability tasks and varied activities accommodating differences in abstraction, language proficiency, and emotional influences. Give opportunities to discover procedural knowledge; explain procedure goals, applicable situations or problems, and corresponding strategies and rationales; demonstrate stepwise procedure application; give students practice selecting and implementing procedures; give performance feedback. Promote internal locus of control by helping students perceive themselves as effective learners.

Define norm-referenced tests. Explain what kinds of data are produced by norm-referenced tests and how these are typically used.

Norm-referenced tests are standardized tests that provide pre-established norms for student scores on given tests. Before publishing or marketing standardized tests, e.g., national or statewide achievement tests, test authors typically administer their test to groups of students they have selected as samples representative of the larger intended test-taking student population. They then conduct and publish statistical analyses of the scores received by students in the sample groups. These show what the average score or range of scores is, the proportion of students receiving this average, and the distribution of all other scores on the test. Once a test is statistically proven valid and reliable and is published, educators who administer it can compare their students' scores to the established norms supplied with the instrument. This enables school administrators and teachers to compare their students' average and individual performance on the achievement test to the performance of the students in the norm samples. Because the sample students were selected as representative of the national or statewide student population, their scores provide norms against which educators can compare their students' performance. Such comparisons are typically used to satisfy federal and state legal accountability requirements for all schools receiving federal funds to educate their students adequately.

Summarize an example of eight sequential phases or steps in a lesson plan that builds on prior student knowledge, extends understanding for further lessons, corrects misconceptions, and engages students

One model (Cunningham, ASCD, 2009) contains eight steps. (1) Introduction: state overall lesson reason or purpose. Introduce main idea, topic, and key concepts. "Hook" student attention with a challenge or a quirky or amazing fact, etc. Explain lesson relevance for extending prior knowledge and promoting future learning. (2) Foundation: confirm prior student knowledge, either by clarifying or double-checking. Connect the lesson to standards. Tell students precisely what they will know and be able to do from the lesson. Include additional information, preparing the main lesson. Introduce essential vocabulary visually, aloud, in reading, and in writing. (3) Brain activation: clarify concepts; add information through probing questions, engaging students and building background. Brainstorm concepts, ideas, and possibilities, enabling students to clarify and expand thinking. Plan activities revealing misconceptions; correct or clarify these. (4) Body of new information: present the main lesson via whole-class lecture, teacher-supervised small-group, or partner activity, including teacher input of new and key points, reading, problem-solving, and active student participation with specific goals. (5) Clarification: check for understanding with sample questions, problems, or situations; guide learning; give practice. (6) Practice and review: supervise practice; work with students. (7) Independent practice: supervise, selecting further strategies for small groups needing them; others work independently. (8) Closure: connect lesson steps and information; summarize; discuss lesson in larger learning context; have students write or explain learning, ideas, questions, and problems.

Describe some of the ways teachers use informal assessment findings to inform their educational decisions.

One of the most valuable and prevalent uses of informal assessment findings is to inform ongoing instruction. While teachers plan instruction based on initial student assessments, during implementation they may find some students are not responding to their methods or having difficulty learning new material. With new students and large classes, teachers can discover new individual student characteristics throughout the school year. For example, by using informal measures regularly as formative assessments, teachers may find early on a student(s) not progressing at the rate(s) projected. They can then either (1) change the timeframe when the student is expected to achieve certain objectives; (2) change objectives to represent smaller increments, amounts, or lower levels to achieve within the timeframe; or (3) change the instructional approach, techniques, or strategies to be more compatible or effective with particular students. Conversely, when students progress much faster than anticipated, teachers can adjust instruction to provide higher difficulty, enriched content, etc. Formative assessments also monitor and document on-target student progress. In addition to formative assessment, informal measures afford alternative ways of evaluating student performance that formal standardized tests cannot measure, e.g., performances, portfolios, creative projects, etc. Some students cannot respond to objective examinations but demonstrate their competencies in different formats.

Discuss some attributes of various types of standardized aptitude tests and how they compare and contrast with standardized ability and achievement tests.

One thing that most standardized aptitude tests share in common with most standardized ability tests is that both types of instruments measure potential rather than accomplishment. For example, IQ tests measure intellectual ability in various cognitive domains, but not how students perform academically—i.e., what grades they actually get in school. Similarly, aptitude tests measure student interest and ability for certain subject areas and domains—not specifically IQ or cognitive levels, but how inclined a student is toward certain activities or areas of interest. Some tests evaluate broader domain aptitudes, e.g., for numerical or mathematical thinking and activities, verbal or literary thinking and activities, etc. Others evaluate interest and ability for more specific activities, e.g., preference tests often used in career counseling with high school students. While these identify discrete interest areas, when some tests combine responses, they may produce strange results not accurately reflecting the whole person or even applicable career directions, e.g., a student whose responses indicated liking books and nature received results recommending careers of librarian or forest ranger neither was appropriate. Aptitude and preference tests, like IQ tests, differ from achievement tests by testing competence, ability, and interests; achievement tests evaluate learning a student has achieved and can demonstrate.

Identify three areas of executive functioning that commonly pose challenges for students. Explain how executive function skills develop, how students must use executive functioning skills using an example, some examples of activities requiring these skills, and some examples that indicate a student may have difficulty with them.

Parents frequently identify time management, planning, and organization as challenges for their children. These are three among many areas involving executive function. Executive function skills start developing during infancy, continuing development into adulthood. Considering this duration for full development, children need solid foundations. Executive functioning involves cognitive skills utilized for executing tasks. A single task requires several executive function skills. For example, to get dressed for school, a student must plan ahead for the weather, sustain attention long enough for task completion, manage emotions regarding wanting or not wanting to go to school, and start and finish the task in a timely fashion. Students use executive functioning skills to help them do homework and chores, keep track of belongings, follow rules, save money for things they want, and many other things. Some signs that a student may be experiencing difficulty developing and/or applying executive function skills include: the student has trouble estimating how long it will take to complete a school project, and/or planning the project; telling a story with the details sequenced correctly; or remembering information while performing an activity.

Give definitions and explanations of the terms standard deviation, mean, median, mode, grade-equivalent scores, and age-equivalent scores relative to testing and scoring.

Percentile is a statistical ranking method indicating a score or value below which a specified percentage of scores falls within a group. For example, if a student's test score is in the 90th percentile, this means s/he scored higher than 90 percent of other students in the group tested Standard deviation (SD or o) is the "mean of the mean," measuring score data dispersion, variance, or spread. Numerically, SD equals the square root of variance. SDS nearer to 0 indicate all data points clustered close to the average; higher SDS indicate wider distribution. The mean is the average of a data set or score distribution. The median is the middle score in a distribution. The mode is the value or number occurring most frequently in a distribution. Grade-equivalent (GE) scores indicate where on a continuum a student's test score falls. For example, if a 9th grade student scores a 10.5 GE, this represents the raw score typical of a student in the fifth month of 10th grade. Age-equivalent (AE) scores are based on student age, not grade. For example, for a student aged 7.5 years, a 6 AE score indicates performance typical of a 6-year-old. GE and AE scores should only be used as comparative or relative, not absolute assessment measures.

Discuss some aspects of the roles of planning, memory, and recall as cognitive processes in the overall learning process.

Planning is an essential cognitive process which many students fail to dc before plunging into activities. It requires abstract thinking and imagination to envision the processes of a task before actually performing them. While many higher-order cognitive abilities seem located in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, planning appears to be in the prefrontal lobe. It is high among the higher-order thinking skills. By planning before writing, for example, students are able to organize their compositions in advance, preventing many major problems, failures, and starting over from scratch. Students must plan projects before beginning them to give them organized structures, devote equal or appropriately weighted durations to different parts, stay on schedule complete them within prescribed timeframes, etc. Moreover, planning academic tasks provides essential practice for planning in everyday life, which facilitates many activities in similar ways on a larger, even more practical scale. Students use working memory to rehearse information il short-term memory and move it into long-term memory for retention. They retrieve information from long-term memory by recalling it directly or recognizing it among provided alternatives. Without memory retention and retrieval, students could not demonstrate, apply, or build upon what they learn.

Discuss some of the pros and cons of portfolio assessments.

Portfolio assessments involve reviewing a collection of student work products gathered cumulatively over a period of time, e.g., a semester or school year. One of their advantages is that they can provide clear evidence of student progress, growth, and other longitudinal changes that a written test or single term paper will not show as clearly. Another is that products may be artworks, models, and other concrete objects, not just test answers, written essays, or papers. These are more individualized, demonstrating more student skills than tests or papers, including nonverbal skills like artistic ability, creativity, divergent thinking, spatial awareness, mechanical ability, nonlinguistic organization, etc. Students with different learning styles, who may not use the linear thinking needed for objective tests and/or lack organizational, language processing, and/or verbal skills for writing, but excel in other areas, can produce evidence of those strengths in portfolios. Another advantage is avoiding test anxiety for many students. Students also have less time pressure and can devote more total time to creating things more gradually. Portfolios can be used for both formative and summative assessment. Some disadvantages include more subjective teacher grading, time required to accumulate portfolio products, teacher time and effort to match products with learning objectives, and lack of standardization.

Describe how the cognitive processes of questioning, inductive and deductive reasoning, and problem-solving inform learning.

Questioning promotes inquiry learning; gives students purposes for reading; focuses attention on learning targets; fosters active thinking, metacognition, and self-monitoring; augments comprehension; and helps students review new material and connect it to their previous knowledge. Student question generation can help them identify important ideas in learning materials and synthesize information. Teacher and student questions help students clarify meaning, find new information; analyze information by wondering about author intentions, meanings, and choices of content, genres, and formats; and pursue personally interesting topics related to learning material. Inductive reasoning is a bottom-up, specific-to-general process, beginning from accumulating specific observations or information; identifying regularities or patterns; and ultimately drawing general conclusions or principles. Conversely, deductive reasoning is a top-down, general-to-specific process; beginning from a general theory, principle, or field of information; narrowing this down to more specific hypotheses; testing these by collecting observations, information, and data to confirm or refute the theory; and draw a specific conclusion. Problem-solving involves identifying a problem, generating alternative solutions, testing these through implementation, and evaluating their effectiveness. This requires focus for problem identification, divergent thinking to generate alternatives, and critical thinking to evaluate results.

Describe some ways in which teachers use assessment to monitor student understanding and guide instruction.

Rather than teach an entire unit and administer an end-of-unit test, only to discover most or all students did not understand key or major points the teacher wanted to convey, it is more useful to monitor student understanding early and often. For example, at any grade level, after a teacher makes introductory statements in a lesson, s/he can stop and ask the class questions whose answers should reflect whether they heard and remember the few main points, whether they can repeat one or a few key definitions the teacher gave, whether they understood the concepts communicated, etc. Seeing few or no volunteers or many students looking perplexed indicates a need to reteach and/or explain or demonstrate concepts differently. Quizzes at ends of lessons within units also monitor student understanding of shorter segments. When teachers assign small-group projects, they may have a member of each group orally report current group or project status and progress to the teacher or class periodically. Teachers can offer time-management strategies if they are falling behind schedule or advise reducing project scope, information amounts, etc. Teachers who find the majority of students not understanding or learning need to revisit and revise their instructional levels, approaches, methods, and/or techniques.

Generally define statistical reliability and validity and name and define several different types of each. Define bias in research and give an example.

Reliability: whether a test gets consistent results over repeated administrations. Test-retest reliability retests the same respondents with the same test, e.g., two weeks or a month later. Difficulties include having to write different questions on the same material, etc., to control for memory and practice effects. Internal consistency reliability compares two versions of a test concurrently, evaluating whether they correlate or measure the same construct. Validity: whether a test measures what it purports or intends to measure. Criterion validity: whether a test reflects certain abilities. One type is concurrent validity: whether a test correlates with benchmark or criterion tests. Another type is predictive validity: how well a test predicts abilities by testing respondents for a given construct, then comparing future results. Content validity: whether a test represents all of a given construct. Construct validity: whether a test measures its identified construct and not others—e.g., depression, not stress or anxiety. Convergent validity: whether constructs we believe are related are actually related. Divergent or discriminant validity: whether constructs we believe unrelated are unrelated. Bias: subjective slant toward expected results. Example: IQ test item "cup and (a.) saucer, (b.) fork, (c.) table," presumed student familiarity with cup-and-saucer sets; but low-income students chose "table," having experience only with cups on tables, not cups in saucers.

Summarize a number of functions of formative assessment. Explain how formative assessment helps educators to detect and reduce student learning gaps. Include four essential elements of formative assessment related to addressing learning gaps.

Research finds that formative assessment reduces learning gaps. It also helps teachers design instruction targeting specific learning goals; supporting student learning; monitoring student progress; identifying strengths, needs, learning gains; differentiating instruction; evaluating instructional effectiveness; informing and adjusting ongoing instruction; promoting effective teaching practices; enhancing learning for struggling students, ELLS, and students with disabilities; improving all student learning outcomes; augmenting coherence through alignment or connection with State comprehensive assessment systems; and reforming curricula. Hence federal legislation like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, aka No Child Left Behind, or NCLB), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and state policies promote using formative assessment to narrow learning gaps. Researchers find: (1) to identify learning gaps, educators must understand differences between what students know and need to know to design instructional support enabling student progress toward learning goals. (2) Teachers must give clear, detailed feedback designed to close instructional gaps. Reciprocal teacher-student feedback informs student learning status and next instructional steps. (3) Active student involvement in learning and assessments, and student-teacher collaboration to develop shared knowledge regarding current learning status and actions needed for progress develop student skills for self-monitoring and knowing when they need help. (4) Teachers must break down major learning goals into smaller learning progression components to locate students on the skill set continuum required for mastering learning standards.

Describe a marketing analysis technique that teachers can apply to student content knowledge, and one for analyzing knowledge gaps and identifying solutions.

SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. While frequently used by anyone analyzing market trends, identifying target markets, and/or developing marketing plans (which includes not only salespeople, but also therapists and other practitioners who must promote their services), it is also useful to apply to education. For example, teachers can use it with high school students in career counseling to identify the job-relevant skills they possess (strengths) and those they lack (weaknesses); jobs open, job growth probabilities, and chances for advancement in a student's preferred career field (opportunities); and competition for jobs, dead-end positions, and downsizing probabilities (threats). Accompanying the SWOT analysis, a gap analysis tool identifies employer needs and job requirements; student and candidate knowledge and skills; differences between these, which represent gaps; an action plan to fill gaps; a timeframe to complete the plan; and people who can help. For example, an employer might require knowledge of Excel or other spreadsheet software; the student might only know Word or other word-processing software. The action plan is to learn Excel or other spreadsheet programs through a short community college course, school enrichment program, library-offered class, interactive computer tutorial, etc. Teachers can also use these tools to identify and address other, non-career-related academic gaps.

Define scaffolding. Explain how using scaffolding as an instructional approach changes the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students.

Scaffolding, in a metaphorical iteration of literal building construction scaffolding, is temporary support enabling students to complete tasks they cannot accomplish on their own at the time. As students master these tasks, the scaffolding can be gradually withdrawn until students perform the tasks independently without support. During this process, the role of the teacher is shifted from being the dominant expert on academic content to becoming more of a facilitator of learning and a mentor. As students learn how to perform tasks with support and gain increasing proficiency and independence, the responsibility for learning shifts from the teacher to the student. Scaffolded instruction establishes a supportive learning environment wherein students are able to give feedback, ask questions, and support one another in learning new material. Using scaffolding in teaching gives students motivation for adopting more active roles in their learning. Because teachers provide scaffolds for tasks students cannot initially achieve independently, scaffolding requires students to advance past their current knowledge and skill levels, sharing responsibility and taking ownership for teaching and learning.

Describe some features, advantages, and disadvantages of scoring guides, anecdotal notes, and continua for assessment.

Scoring guides are typically issued by authors of specific standardized assessment instruments to help teachers and testers score their tests. An obvious advantage of such a scoring guide is that it instructs scorers to follow procedures and interpretations designed by the authors, minimizing chances that scoring will be inaccurate, inappropriate, or interpreted incorrectly. Also, scoring guides do not force assigning specific responses specific scores, but allow some flexibility to use judgment according to individual student responses and test conditions within a reasonable range. Disadvantages include guideline misinterpretation or misapplication by users lacking experience or good judgment. Anecdotal notes have advantages of recording teacher observations of individual student behaviors often not included in standard checklists or test instruments; and collecting information outside of as well as during assessment, which can contribute to valuable insights. Disadvantages include lack of standardization, norms, or criteria for comparison unless a recording teacher includes these; and often, lack of supporting context. Continua offer the advantages of avoiding the limitations of discrete grades, percentages, and numbers, enabling more precise and individualized evaluative description; and more realistic, accurate performance ranges than exact numbers or cutoff scores. Disadvantages include difficulty comparing scores within or among students, classes, and schools without exact numbers, making continua more applicable to individualized than standardized assessment.

Offer some expert tips for teachers to get students engaged in class activities and increase their on-task times.

Seating arrangements appropriate to the specific activity enhance engagement and on-task time. Choosing course materials relevant to students, and emphasizing how they can apply the learning in real life, enables students to connect activities with prior knowledge and their lives. Students view schoolwork meaningful to them as more valuable, important, and worth the effort. Giving students some control and choice in learning, e.g., self-monitoring and self-evaluating progress or choice of paired or individual work, increases sense of autonomy, hence engagement. Assigning achievable yet challenging tasks for all students, including those with disabilities, at-risk, remedial, etc. enable students to feel successful, and to believe that they earned their success. Repetitive, rote tasks and seemingly impossible ones both discourage engagement. "Mystery" approaches give students partial or contradictory information and require they develop hypotheses based on available evidence, piquing their curiosity. This also fulfills needs for autonomy, competence, self-directed inquiry, and independent discovery. Assignments only teachers will read are unilateral: teachers typically do not need the information that students submit. Contrastingly, designing cooperative learning and other projects enabling students to share new knowledge with peers promotes reciprocal relationships, making learning activities more engaging.

State what student self-assessment can help students and teachers accomplish. Define several different student self-assessment methods.

Self-assessment promotes student reflective and metacognitive skills development, critical thinking in analyzing and judging effectiveness of teacher instructional practices and student learning strategies, and helps teachers identify and understand individual student differences to make their instruction more responsive to student needs. Having students create or contribute to rubrics defining success in group discussions, multimodal presentations, reading response tasks, etc. augments learning levels. Having students create and agree to learning contracts when beginning units engages students in defining learning goals, agreed activities, and products as evidence of learning. Teachers have students revisit contracts frequently during units to document new learning, identify points needing clarification, and obtain teacher or classmate feedback. Teachers can designate a classroom area for "muddy_ points," questions, or topics that students want the class to revisit. Teachers can build student learning ownership by periodically asking students to choose an item from this board. In the "nameless voice" method, teachers have students submit work samples anonymously for class sharing and discussion of similarities and differences with their understandings. Having students write end-of-unit letters to future students explaining what they learned, tips for learning, working with difficult texts, etc. This promotes both reflection and feedback on student thinking and learning.

Discuss some factors for educators to keep in mind when communicating student test results to and otherwise communicating or interacting with parents having different native languages or cultures.

Some parents' cultures and/or countries view education as more unilateral and authoritarian than in America. They may punish children for low test scores; and/or avoid helping children with homework, studying, or getting involved in school, viewing these as inappropriately challenging school and teacher authority. In some cultures, students typically receive few years of formal education; parents from these cultures may have lower expectations for children's educational achievement. Regarding English language proficiency test results, some immigrant families want to abandon their native languages as soon as possible to acquire English, discouraging children from using LIS. When these children are still too young for verbal fluency, this can hinder their proficiency in either language. Educators can explain how Ll proficiency contributes to L2 acquisition. Some parental attitudes positively influence English learning. Parents in communities lacking opportunities for independent English learning have positive attitudes toward English acquisition. Most immigrants, viewing literacy positively as key to succeeding in America, want to learn how to help their children in school. While preserving native cultures and languages, many parents also want to participate in mainstream US culture. Many cultural family structures are stronger and more involved than in America; collective commitment to family exceeds individual motivations.

Explain some fundamental differences between standardized tests of ability and of achievement.

Some standardized tests measure abilities, such as intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, which are the most prominent examples; tests of creativity, of divergent thinking (considered a key element of creativity); and more domain-specific abilities, e.g., verbal, numerical, quantitative, spatial abilities, memory, etc., which are often included as subscales on standardized IQ tests. Ability tests do not indicate or necessarily even predict student school grades. They only indicate what a student is capable of, i.e., they gauge competence, not performance. In addition to abilities, some tests measure levels of mental health constructs, e.g., Beck's Depression Inventory and Anxiety Inventory. In contrast to ability and competence or mental and emotional states, standardized achievement tests measure what students actually achieve rather than what they are capable of achieving. Standardized achievement tests are summative evaluations typically given at the ends of school years, not formative evaluations made during instruction. They test what students have learned and can demonstrate knowing and doing. This allows educators to compare individual student progress across years, compare students to peers, and compare their school to others.

Describe some of the roles that special education teachers can contribute to collaborative teaching activities.

Special education teachers have great expertise in how to adapt curriculum and instruction and provide classroom modifications and accommodations for students with various disabilities who receive special education and related services. They can share knowledge with classroom teachers about instructional considerations for each category of disability, individual special education students, and their needs. Since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) legislation first mandated education in the least restrictive environment possible for students with disabilities, inclusive education has increased and mainstreaming is more prevalent today. This presents challenges to regular classroom teachers, and advantages to collaborating with special education teachers, who can help integrate Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals into daily classroom instruction. In addition to knowing more techniques and strategies for teaching students with special needs, they also are likely familiar with individual special education students at their school to inform classroom teachers from experience about particularly effective and ineffective specific techniques. They can show new teachers how task analysis, chaining, and shaping enable intellectually disabled students to learn complex behaviors; advise newly mainstreaming teachers on practical matters like classroom logistics with wheelchairs and assistive devices, teaching other students device and disability etiquette; and help teachers coordinate varied adaptations, modifications, or accommodations to prevent their interference with each other.

Describe several types of formal and informal assessments and some of their applications, advantages, and disadvantages.

Standardized tests are a primary example of formal assessments. They have been used to test large numbers of students; data from results are mathematically calculated and summarized; standard scores, percentiles, or stanines are provided. Statistical analyses support conclusions based on test results, e.g., a certain score range is the average for representative samples of the student population in a given grade, hence other scores can be defined as above or below average and by how much. These are typically norm-referenced tests. Informal assessments are performance- and content-driven, not data-driven. For example, a running record of how well a student is reading a particular book is an informal assessment. Typical scores are most rubric scores; percentage of words read correctly; 15 correct answers out of 20 questions, etc. These are typically criterion-referenced or performance-based tests. To compare students to peers their own age, compare student strengths and weaknesses with those of peers, or assess overall achievement, formal assessments suit these purposes. To inform and improve ongoing instruction, as in formative assessment, informal assessments meet those purposes. Formal tests, statistically proven, are good for summative, not formative assessment and generalized data, not individualized data. Informal tests, more individualized, are good for ongoing assessment but less objective or statistically supported.

Identify two sources of criteria that educators can use for evaluating technological and other instructional resources in their districts and schools.

State education departments typically publish guidelines for their districts to evaluate instructional materials according to state criteria, aligned with state content standards and curriculum frameworks for each subject. In some instances, educators tasked with evaluating new instructional materials for certain subject domains (e.g., mathematics or science) and/or grade levels (e.g., preschool, elementary, middle, or high school), after studying various sets of evaluation criteria, found them all inadequate and decided to develop their own criteria instead. Some examples of elements found important to address and overlooked by existing criteria include: need for more authentic assessment practices within the materials evaluated; evaluation criteria focusing on technology's overall role in a specific instructional unit, rather than only criteria for evaluating individual pieces of technology; and criteria for evaluating whether an instructional unit is practical, e.g., whether teachers in schools with typical insufficient funding, overloaded classrooms, long hours, etc. can effectively implement the materials. Educators have consulted resources like standards published by national organizations for their discipline, e.g., the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of English; research articles and books on subject-specific assessment; local districts; and teacher and researcher experiences.

Identify some examples of the types of personnel who may be included as Individualized Education Program (IEP) team members, and some of their respective contributions to collaborating with classroom teachers.

Student IEP team members can include any or all the following and more: parents; special education teachers; classroom teachers; audiologists; occupational, physical, speech-language, activity, and/or other therapists; American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters; orientation and mobility specialists; school social workers; school nurses; school psychologists; counselors; advocates, etc. Parents collaborate with teachers, sharing their experience with their children, children's histories, personal preferences, effective behavioral and learning techniques; and may volunteer to help in the classroom and/or at school functions. By advocating, they help teachers meet children's special needs. Special education teachers help address IEP goals by incorporating related instruction and activities into daily classroom lessons and routines; and offer expertise in differentiated instruction, teaching, and behavior management strategies. Audiologists contribute knowledge of hearing loss, hearing aids, classroom accommodations, and modifications. Therapists add expertise in their respective disciplines—physical therapists (PTS) make or adapt devices, provide targeted postural and large-muscle exercises; occupational therapists (OTS), fine-motor, ADL development; speech language pathologists (SLPs) incorporate language development into instruction; ASL interpreters translate between hearing and deaf or hearing-impaired students and families; orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists help blind and visually impaired students navigate classrooms, schools, and communities. Social workers provide student and family histories, coordinate special services, and help families locate and access resources. School nurses help with medications, monitoring diabetic diets and blood checks; school seizures, accidents, and emergencies, etc. Psychologists administer, score, and interpret IQ tests; provide behavior management plans and training; data collection and analysis, etc.

Describe a hypothetical situation wherein a teacher identifies and analyzes student knowledge gaps, showing how this informs continuing instruction.

Suppose a teacher has designed a unit on a content subject and has taught the class a number of individual one-day lessons within this unit.The teacher's regular practice is to conduct formative assessments, e.g., pop quizzes, oral Q&A sessions, whips (going around the room quickly, having every student answer an open-ended content question), etc. near the end of each day's lesson. So far, each formative assessment has shown 80-100 percent of students grasped main lesson concepts, facts, and points. But on this day, the teacher finds 90 percent of the students fail to demonstrate knowledge or understanding of lesson content. It is highly unlikely 90 percent of students did not pay attention or lacked cognitive ability to comprehend the lesson, and highly likely the lesson was ineffective. Also, the 10 percent displaying knowledge and understanding may have been the most conscientious students and/or had the highest cognitive ability levels; and/or some, most, or all of the 10 percent may already have had existing knowledge of the lesson topic. Therefore the teacher re-teaches this lesson, using different instructional strategies than the first time. This time the formative assessment shows 95 percent of the class knowing and understanding key concepts and information.

Differentially describe direct instruction vs. indirect instruction, including the best applications for each.

Teacher-centered, direct instruction is the oldest, most widely used teaching model. Teachers give explicit, structured instruction using uniform lesson plans. Exploration, discussions, etc. are excluded. Most contemporary K-12 schools use updated versions. Examples include DISTAR, Hooked on Phonics, etc. Some longitudinal research shows Montessori, Waldorf, and other more flexible methods more effective. However, direct instruction is among the few scientifically confirmed ways of improving curriculum. Siegfried Engelmann originated a more specific direct instruction (DI), comparing it with 21 other methods during the federally funded Project Follow Through (1968-1995), meant to extend preschooler education following Head Start programs. Although funding was discontinued when data showed little or no benefit for this purpose, empirical evidence proved DI most effective of 22 methods for teaching reading, language, spelling, arithmetic, and positive self-image—the only one producing positive results consistently. Indirect instruction is student-centered and interactive; teachers facilitate small-group and cooperative learning. Students construct or transform material into new or different, meaningful responses. Encompassing all Bloom's taxonomy levels, it includes reading for meaning, cloze, concept mapping, case studies, inductive and deductive reasoning, content organization, examples and non-examples, questions, student experiences, self-evaluation, and discussion. DI aids learning facts, rules, and sequences; breaking down textbook or workbook material; lower Bloom's taxonomy levels; piquing student interest. Indirect instruction aids learning abstractions, concepts, patterns, inquiry, problem-solving, and discovery learning.

Explain how instructional design and goals can be aligned with some statewide assessments.

Teachers need not view the process of aligning their instruction with assessment as "teaching to the test." Instead, they first need to read the standards on which the statewide assessments are based. As an example, many states are now basing their statewide assessments on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This means that what students in the state are expected to learn to know and do via the instruction they receive is encapsulated within the CCSS. A teacher whose students will be taking a test based on the CCSS would need to first review the standards and align their teaching to ensure that everything included in those standards is also included in their planned curriculum for the year. Because the state tests are written to align exactly with the standards on which they are based, teachers can be assured that students who are adequately instructed in the knowledge and skills outlined in the standards will be measured appropriately by the exam, without the need for focusing on the test itself.

Describe some examples demonstrating teacher strategies for planning interdisciplinary units, and explain some of the benefits to students of these experiences.

Teachers of different subjects collaborate to plan interdisciplinary instructional units, generating topics, and developing instruction and assessment. For example, math and PE teachers have students count the number of times they can hit paddleballs consecutively, practice graphing them, and practice paddleball skills. Teachers might assess counting skills observationally, assess paddleball skills by observing student demonstrations, and assess graphing skills by reviewing handmade or computer graphing assignments. Elementary-grade teachers integrate English, math, and science, connecting classroom plant study to forest field trips, having students write about these connections. Vocational or technical high school students restored a historic landmark, integrating what they learned in math, journalism, and shop classes—applying learning to a reallife experience. Students also transferred learning, using creative, original thinking: after successfully completing the restoration project, they generated ideas for additional school and community service projects integrating various school subjects, presenting their ideas to teachers. A social sciences and math teacher co-taught students using ancient Egyptian computation techniques, comparing them to modern-day math. Students discussed ancient math in historical context, reflecting on past and present and what "modern" meant. Teachers find students gain more complex understandings of disciplines and their relationships through interdisciplinary instruction.

Explain some ways in which teachers of the gifted and talented can collaborate with classroom teachers to help them meet all student needs.

Teachers of the gifted and talented have specialized training in instructing this population. Considering mainstreaming requirements, increasing demographic diversity, school underfunding, staff shortages, and oversized classes, classroom teachers are challenged to meet all student needs in one class. They may have to spend large portions of time on differentiated instruction to students with disabilities, in addition to satisfying whole-class accountability requirements to cover enough required curriculum content and enable every student to perform to standards on high-stakes, large-scale tests to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Some teachers having limited or no experience with gifted students may assume they can work more independently need less teacher attention due to their high IQs and/or special talents. However, advanced students are frequently bored or impatient with the pace of instruction for average student abilities. They can demand more material to learn, at faster rates; more in-depth, extended, or enriched content; answers to their pressing questions; and advice, guidance, and feedback even as they work independently on projects. Teachers specializing in giftedness and creativity can help take some pressure off classroom teachers, by both working directly with these students, and giving teachers ideas for enrichment activities and coordinating these with classroom units and lessons.

Discuss some ways in which paraprofessionals collaborate with classroom teachers in schools.

Teachers today not only must differentiate instruction for individual students with a diverse range of needs, they frequently must also do this with excessive class sizes. Teachers' aides and other paraprofessionals provide vital help with these demands. Their collaboration with teacher: includes not only concrete assistance like taking attendance; physically setting up activities; helping with adaptive devices, distributing materials, snacks, etc.; but also scoring tests, grading papers; participating in training they receive from teachers, specialists, therapists, etc.; and then working one-on-one with individual students to deliver differentiated instruction and help students needing individual supervision for classroom tasks. They may be trained by school psychologists to observe students and collect behavioral data, relieving teachers of these additional duties. In mainstreamed classes, teachers cannot always work with all individual students enough. Paraprofessionals are invaluable in making it possible for more students to receive more individualized attention, supervision, and instruction more regularly, for longer time periods, and more often. They can enable more students to achieve their individual educational goals.

Identify several differentiated instruction practices that expert teachers find effective for enhancing student literacy.

Teaching experts advise using common instructional texts for read-alouds to facilitate differentiation. Teachers can use teaching text read-alouds to build background knowledge, demonstrate strategy application to students, introduce issues and invite student journal responses, and assure every student access to the information and skills they need to improve their reading. Researchers find that using multiple texts at varied reading levels—not just one—to teach units enables all students to obtain information from materials they can read best. Rather than teaching "the textbook," teachers need to organize every individual instructional unit around a topic, issue, or genre. This applies whether teachers assign students to small-group work, or use whole-class differentiated instruction approaches. By organizing for instruction this way, teachers can meet all student reading levels. Because students can only become better readers if they understand how to construct meaning while they read, teachers must show them this process by modeling the ways in which they think about texts during read-alouds; work with small reading groups; and one-on-one instructional conferences with individual students. This gives students multiple opportunities to learn how to construct meaning from text.

Differentially define learning resources vs. learning materials. Discuss some examples of how they support student learning.

Teaching resources include locations and means for finding teaching materials, e.g., websites, libraries, stores, etc.; intangibles, e.g., theories of learning or education, published research articles and books, or support from colleagues; and materials. Teaching materials most often mean concrete objects, e.g., worksheets, workbooks, or manipulatives including tools and games that students can physically handle and interact with to learn new concepts and skills. For example, younger students can use blocks to learn counting. Teaching materials should ideally be customized to the subject content, students in the class, and teacher using them. Students achieve more when their learning is supported by materials. For example, students learning a new skill in class have significant opportunities to practice it using a worksheet. This not only affords necessary repetition, but also enables independent student exploration of knowledge. Learning materials help structure lesson planning and delivery, especially in earlier grades, by guiding teachers and students through regular routines, e.g., having a weekly vocabulary game relieves teachers of pressure while giving students needed practice with new words taught weekly, as well as fun. Materials also facilitate differentiating instruction for individual students. Some teachers make their own; many more are available online, most free

Relate some benefits of and expert opinions about integrating technology into instruction, reasons for technology integration, and related research findings.

Technology can further learning through building local and global communities including students, teachers, administrators, parents, scientists, and others; giving students and teachers more opportunities for reflection, feedback, and revision; offering learning tools and scaffolds, e.g., visualization tools and modeling programs; giving classrooms exciting, real-world problem-based curricula; and expanding teacher learning opportunities. Social media support collaboration, reinforcing learning's social nature. Technology enables learning communities and improves learning cultures. Students learn concepts in ways impossible or impracticable with other instructional methods through social networking, simulations, and digital gaming. Educational technology complements what exemplary teachers naturally do. Experts note that digital games, instead of separating instruction from assessment, constantly assess student problem-solving progress, giving students feedback and further practice. Letting students teach them how they engage with digital media both informs teachers about technology and develops student metacognition. Integration means using technology to learn content and demonstrate content understanding, not simply digital expertise. Students need guided practice and exploration to achieve this.

Identify a number of different resources in the US whereby teachers and schools can provide enrichment or remediation for students.

The Stanford Mobile Inquiry Learning Environment (SMILE) uses technology innovatively for educational enrichment. This interactive learning model includes mobile software for learning management, plus its own server, which can run on a battery and functions as a Wi-Fi connection, router, and storage device. At schools adopting SMILE, students can exchange questions and ideas with other students worldwide; and teachers can instantaneously collect summaries of learning data analytics. Another American enrichment resource is Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE), a program emphasizing civic responsibility and duty for high school students, who form teams and develop social enterprise businesses (SEBs) or socially responsible businesses (SRBs), which compete in the annual SAGE World Cup. An American remediation resource is Teach for All, a model teaching lifetime educational advocacy and leadership foundations at both local and policy levels, training and developing effective leaders to change education for the most disadvantaged students; and promoting innovation by encouraging best practice sharing. PenPaI Schools teach six-week courses about world issues, giving students global partners to share multicultural understandings. Its Pay-What-You-Want policy enables low-income student participation. Many other resources are available in other countries or are shared among the US and other nations.

Summarize how teachers can most easily access national, state, and district curriculum standards and frameworks to inform their curriculum design and instructional planning.

The US Department of Education (ED) funds and supports high curriculum standards in public schools, but does not itself develop them individual state education departments do. ED has given over $350 million in funds to a consortium of the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association for developing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Most US states have voluntarily chosen to adopt these standards. The CCSS has a website with information. Additional sites with information on federal support of other state educational initiatives include a site on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, also known as No Child Left Behind, or NCLB) flexibility, whereby ED enables states to develop their own accountability systems; sites about the federal Race to the Top initiative and its assessment; and a webpage with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's speech about high standards. CCSS are concepts students should know and understand; school districts develop specific curricula, and teachers plan specific lessons, to help students master standards. Districts and schools have traditionally had printed copies of their state standards; today, these are typically also published online, the easiest way for teachers to access them—including any updates, which can be posted electronically more easily and frequently than printed.

Differentially define the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains as these apply to categorizing instructional objectives.

The cognitive domain represents mental skills, i.e., facts, information, ideas, and concepts that one can learn, understand, and apply. Among knowledge, skills, and attitudes that a learner can acquire, the cognitive domain corresponds most to knowledge. The affective domain represents emotional attitudes that one can develop and apply, with respect to the self and others. The psychomotor domain represents physical skills that one can learn and apply. For example, when a student reads some information about physical exercise, understands it, analyzes it, compares it with other information sources, judges it according to established criteria, and writes a paper about it, these activities are in the cognitive domain. When this student finds value in exercise knowledge, demonstrates this by voluntarily participating in athletic events, and becomes an accomplished athlete in a certain sport, these activities are in the affective domain. When this student watches, copies, practices, and perfects the specific physical skills required for his or her preferred sport, these activities are in the psychomotor domain.

Explain how curriculum scope and sequence interact with each other and both interact with learning standards.

The scope of a curriculum refers to all of the content it will include within a specified length of time. The curriculum sequence refers to at which points during the time range specific parts of the scope of learning will occur. In other words, educators must decide which content should be taught during certain grade levels, or to certain classes or student groups. Teachers must also determine sequencing within work units, courses, and school years. Hence scope and sequence support maximal student learning, as well as providing continual opportunities for students to learn. By coordinating the scope of curriculum content and the sequence of curriculum instruction, educators give order to their delivery of curricular content. For teaching and learning to be effective, the important parts of all subjects must be included in scope, and must be delivered in the right order for students to benefit. By mapping curriculum scope, teachers can ensure they integrate the state and district learning standards guiding their curriculum. By mapping sequence, they can ensure they address curricular principles as well as matching knowledge prerequisites, increasing complexity, logical progression, psychological preferences, or other factors influencing temporal order.

Define thematic instruction, including how it integrates subject areas. Describe some typical teacher steps in developing a thematic instructional unit.

Thematic instruction reflects a holistic belief that learning is best in the context of a coherent whole, and connected to real life. Teaching thematically organizes curriculum around overarching themes— teaching around experiences, not isolated disciplines. For example, a teacher might design a unit wherein students explore a broad environmental theme including river basins, rain forests, communities, energy use, etc., simultaneously integrating reading, math, science, and social studies into each lesson. Thematic instruction's goal is teaching these cognitive skills within the context of real-world topics, combining both enough broadness to enable creative exploration and enough specificity for practical application. Teachers and students first choose a theme, typically around a broad concept—weather, democracy, etc.; or a large, integrated system such as an ecosystem, city, etc. They then organize their core curriculum's content knowledge and process skills learning objectives around the theme, e.g., with river basins, literature could include Mark Twain or other authors' books involving rivers; science could include floods, weather, etc.; social studies, the characteristics of river communities; math, calculating water volume and flow. Designing instruction includes combining subject hours, adjusting class schedules, inviting outside experts, planning field trips, team-teaching, etc. Teachers also encourage and assign student projects, which are naturally compatible with thematic units.

Describe one example of technology applications whereby teachers can more efficiently complete administrative tasks.

Today, mobile applications abound to save teachers time, effort, and space on administrative tasks, freeing more of their attention for teaching and helping students learn. One example is an app for the iPad called Paperless Teacher (Evon Technologies). It automates and customizes processes of taking attendance, planning lessons, creating rubrics, and entering grades in grade books. It weighs each gradable element, e.g., attendance, participation, assignments, tests, and homework, according to teacher specifications, and then automatically calculates grades. It enables teachers to email these results directly to students and parents. This eliminates the repetition of entering names, calculating numbers, and entering them manually one at a time. Users can easily share common data using this app; hence teachers can exchange student profiles or lesson plans anytime, remotely and effortlessly. The app features an integrated Dropbox framework, preventing data loss and enabling users with various other devices to access data. Its Message User Interface enables exporting and emailing data sharing in format allowing other users to open data directly in their apps. This facilitates notifying students of tests, assignments, schedules, etc. Semester planning and grade setting are customizable for multiple semester plans or grading systems. A protection feature keeps data safe for separate users.

Define and explain validity, reliability, raw scores, and scaled scores as these relate to testing and scoring tests.

Validity in testing means that a test instrument measures what it intends and/or claims to measure. For example, a test validated for educational diagnosis and/or placement could be completely invalid for determining high school graduation. However, the same test might be used for both purposes on the condition that the test has been validated for both. Reliability is consistency, i.e., whether a test yields similar results over repeated administrations. Internal consistency is reliability determined by administering two forms of the same test concurrently and finding they correlate. If one such form is given to students and the other form to the same students a month later—eliminating practice and memory effects from giving the same form both times—and they achieve similar scores in both administrations, this establishes test-retest reliability. Tests can be valid but not reliable, or reliable but not valid. Raw scores are students' actual scores on test scales, e.g., number or percentage correct. Scaled scores convert raw scores to common scales permitting numerical comparison, of individual student progress across semesters and years, among students in subject areas, etc. Scaled scores typically vary within tests among different content-area subscales.

Discuss some characteristics of teacher assessment literacy, practices, and needs, plus advantages and disadvantages of one assessment method according to research findings.

Various research finds teachers viewing learning as memorization assesses student information recall; teachers viewing learning as constructing knowledge and understanding use formative assessment to create continuous information flow about student understanding and adapt instruction to be more effective. Studies also show assessment-literate teachers do not limit assessment to multiple-choice or true-false questions but apply many, varied strategies, selecting those strongest and most relevant for specific learning goals. Pre-service teachers are found having inadequate repertoires of assessment strategies. One study showed the teacher asking the most conceptual questions and having the biggest variety of ways to adapt instruction according to assessment results had the highest student performance level. Also, some researchers (Gottheiner and Seigel, 2012) conclude others frequently overlook how teachers interpret formative assessment data in their studies, and more resources for doing so are needed. Teachers in their study reported that, although student group discussions of questions could contribute to new misconceptions, they also triggered discourse— building on classmate ideas and enabling concept discovery and construction before even learning corresponding terminology.

What is vertical alignment? What is horizontal alignment? How is educational alignment linked to the movement towards curriculum standards? Explain different roles played by educations at the local, district, state, and national level with respect to alignment.

Vertical alignment is the process through which courses are sequenced across a curriculum. What a student learns in a 4th grade math course will prepare him or her for what he or she will learn in a vertically aligned 5th grade math course. Horizontal alignment is the process through which different sections of the same course are standardized such that what one student learns in a section of Biology with Ms. Smith is similar (though not exactly the same) as the material learned by a student in a section of Biology with Mr. Johnson. Typically horizontal alignment is addressed locally, perhaps through professional learning communities in coordination with district guidelines for course content. Vertical alignment is often developed on a state or even national level. School districts develop their course outlines in coordination with standards adopted from either the state or national level. Educators at the state level decide the general scope of the schools' curricula and choose yearly statewide assessments for students. Educators at the district level adapt the state course guidelines to fit local communities and teachers implement those curricula in their classrooms. The success of the entire system is dependent on educators at all levels working collaboratively in the best interests of the students

Discuss some considerations for selecting assessment formats according to age-appropriateness, ability to be assessed, and other individual respondent characteristics, including a few examples.

When choosing assessment instruments, educators and testers should first always remember that any comprehensive assessment must include multiple and varied methods, instruments, tools, and (when feasible) formats. They should never rely on a single test. One test might be most indicated for assessing a very specific skill, but even for single domains, e.g., language or adaptive functioning, multiple tests are better, as responses and scores can differ and some reveal abilities others overlooked. Age-appropriateness is important. For example, to use Wechsler's IQ scales with a young child, one would administer the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales Intelligence (WPPSI), not the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC) or Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS). (If a gifted child exceeded WPPSI's top levels, administering the WISC would be interesting, though other giftedness instruments would also be indicated.) Students who are nonverbal—e.g., some with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), cerebral palsy (CP), intellectual disability (ID), or other disorders—can be evaluated using the Leiter, Raven's Progressive Matrices, UNIT, etc. Young and/or disabled students with receptive language understanding but absent or limited expression can respond to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary and other receptive tests.

Describe some ways teachers can communicate with students' parents about how to compare and interpret their children's test scores.

When educators explain the meanings of scores like stanines, percentiles, and grade-level equivalents to parents, they should also explain that these are derived by comparing their child's scores with those of a comparison group, which may be a sample of students representative of the national population or the other students in the school district who took the test at the same time. Discussing a student's test scores relative to other students' scores makes test results most meaningful for parents: teachers can tell them how their child is different and/or similar to others in the group. Parents most often want to know what test scores mean. Teachers should compare student test scores with daily classwork before parent conferences to ensure scores match. Differences can be attributable to subscale scores. For example, a student's overall reading test score may seem adequate in the 75th percentile; but the student's subscale score in comprehension might be in the 85th percentile but in the 65th percentile for vocabulary, indicating need for vocabulary improvement. To track progress, teachers should compare students' present to past scores with parents whenever possible.

Discuss some considerations for teachers to explain student assessment results in language that various audiences can understand and accept.

When explaining test results to younger students, teachers should avoid technical terms that the students will not understand. They can simplify while preserving general accuracy. For example, rather than telling a young child s/he scored in the 95 th percentile, a teacher can say s/he did better than most of the other students. Even among parents, audiences vary, influencing how teachers should communicate test results. For example, if a parent is an educator and/or psychometrist, the teacher can likely give percentiles, stanines, grade-level and age-level equivalents without having to explain them. Such knowledgeable parents may only want to know which comparison group was used; or how their child's score compares to a larger, national comparison group, etc. However, for parents with completely unrelated backgrounds, occupations, or little formal schooling, teachers may omit technical terms entirely or give parents concise, clear definitions of them; either way, be prepared to offer a common-sense equivalent, e.g., their child is doing similarly, better, much better, or worse than most other students in the class, group, or school.

Discuss how teachers can utilize progress maps to organize student assessment data to enhance student learning.

When teachers find traditional test results do not give students the feedback they need to understand and correct their errors, they can design classroom assessments to help students organize their learning goals. This involves establishing benchmarks to use as criteria in rubrics; identifying transfer levels as referents for rubric expertise levels; making individual student progress maps, plotting their scores over time, and giving them feedback customized according to their developmental or expertise levels; plotting collective student scores on aggregate progress maps, and planning future learning opportunities in response to score clusters and deviations; and informing student self-reflection and personal goal-setting by embedding these progress maps into students' electronic portfolios. Progress maps describe knowledge, skills, and understandings in their typical developmental sequence, depicting longitudinal improvement in specific subjects and domains by organizing longitudinal assessment data according to subject knowledge and skill continua. They include initial baseline assessment data, e.g., at the beginning of a school year, relative to associated standards; and subsequent formative assessments throughout the year according to developmental benchmark criteria. Their visual nature enables quick, easy appraisal of student progress toward subject content standards. Technology makes data collection, organization, and storage most efficient.

Describe some of the characteristics of holistic scoring when applied to student writing assignments, including some pros, cons, and tips for best uses.

When teachers have many essays to grade, holistic scoring is less time-consuming than analytic scoring, which divides writing into various components to score separately, deriving the composite score by weighing components according to assignment goals and purposes. Holistic scoring also enables multi-grader scoring. The original teacher chooses at least three student essays which, according to the teacher's criteria based on the learning objectives for the assignment, represent average, high, or low achievement. Using these as models, the teacher and other graders assess many essays written by a class (or classes) of students. Holistic scoring is found highly reliable and consistent as a method of scoring student writing. Because it takes so much less time than analytic scoring, holistic scoring is more efficient. Disadvantages include that, although scores are reliable, individual students are not necessarily informed of specific reasons for their grades. Most teachers write some final comment to give students some idea why their essays were worse, better, or similar to model essays. However, detailed comments throughout as formative feedback for student improvement are not provided as with analytic scoring. Holistic scoring is also most useful for two or more graders and can be impracticable for single instructors.

Explain how diagnostic assessment differs from formative and summative assessment, including a few examples.

Whereas formative assessment is conducted during instruction and summative assessment is conducted after instruction, diagnostic assessment is conducted before instruction. Also called pre-assessments, these frequently focus upon one domain or area. Administering diagnostic assessments can give educators information about previous knowledge each student has about a subject. This informs teachers where to begin their instruction for all students in the same class to access it without experiencing either significant knowledge gaps or significant repetition of things they already know. Pre-assessments also inform teachers of existing student misconceptions to correct during instruction. And they establish student knowledge baselines to compare knowledge following instruction to assess learning and instructional effectiveness. Teachers can use diagnostic assessment results to inform their development of lesson plans, and also differentiated instruction for individual students within classes to meet their specific needs best. Pre-assessments also gauge student preparation during sequential learning, e.g., after teaching the Coriolis effect, teachers might determine student concept retention through diagnostic pre-assessment; and refresh or reteach as needed, before they proceed to begin teaching a unit about ocean currents.

Define criterion-referenced tests differentially from norm-referenced tests. Explain how the data from criterion-referenced tests are used.

Whereas norm-referenced tests provide established norms in the form of average scores, all scores, and score distribution of students selected as samples representative of the larger student population, to which educators can compare their own students' scores, criterion-referenced tests do not compare student results to norms or other students. Instead, they compare student results to some pre-established criterion or criteria. Test authors have selected criteria to indicate successful student performance on each item tested. Criteria can include minimum percentage or number out of a total of correct items; minimum number of attributes included in responses; descriptions of required detail, clarity, and/or other features which responses must match or approximate; in some tests, rates of speed, e.g., assessments of oral reading or speaking fluency; or other criteria specific to the skills or learning being evaluated. Student result data from criterion-referenced tests can be used for formative assessment to monitor student progress, evaluate instructional effectiveness and adjust instruction; and/or as parts of summative assessment to demonstrate students have achieved pre-defined learning objectives, in addition to norm-referenced measures.

Define the term sequence as it relates to curriculum design. Give some examples of curriculum sequences.

Whereas scope represents breadth and depth of content coverage and learning objectives, sequence represents presenting material in logical order. Sequencing reflects the philosophy that students should be instructed starting with concrete concepts, becoming progressively more abstract throughout successive grade levels. After establishing scope, educators must determine when to teach it. This is important when certain learning is often dependent on previous other knowledge, e.g., understanding certain science or geography concepts requires certain numeracy skills. Even when some learning experiences are not reliant on mastering prerequisite knowledge, curricula may be sequenced instead according to increasing complexity, e.g., in science subjects; logical progression, e.g., from the local environment to the global environment in social studies; or psychological valence, e.g., from immediate to more distant interests in vocational education. Teachers must carefully sequence instruction, both within and across key learning areas (KLAs). For example, "reading effectively" would precede "writing effectively" in a curriculum sequence represented by a curriculum map showing English Language Arts (ELAs) taught by KLA because receptive language like listening and reading develops before expressive language like speaking and writing. Critical text interpretation follows reading and writing. Similarly, understanding and applying numbers precedes selecting and utilizing measures.