The edTPA® focuses on three areas, which include planning, instructing, and assessing. Completing the edTPA® requires candidates to create lesson plans, develop instructional materials, compile students’ sample works, develop assessment tools, record instruction, and respond to commentary prompts.
What do I need to know about edTPA?
With edTPA, you will demonstrate your ability to plan for, instruct, and assess your students, and provide evidence to support each decision made in the 3-5 days of recorded lessons. What Do I Need to Know About edTPA? The edTPA is broken into 3 tasks: planning, instruction, and assessment.
What's new in the edTPA lesson plans?
In order to be more in line with Common Core standards, the edTPA decided to shift some things around in their lesson plans. Some items were completely removed while others were changed or updated. This article will focus on two important components in lesson plans—Central Focus and Academic Language—and how to write them effectively.
How many points do you get on edTPA?
Each of the 15 total rubrics has 5 scoring levels worth 1 point each, so you can earn between 1 and 5 points for each rubric. The highest possible score you can make on edTPA is 75.
Can students use the edTPA trademarks?
Use of the edTPA trademarks is permitted only pursuant to the terms of a written license agreement. that they have learned in one subject and relate it to another subject. After reading the first poem, the teacher asks the students what it was about (3:11-3:41).
How do you write a central focus for edTPA?
The Central Focus should go beyond simply listing skills students will acquire. Instead, it should align with content standards (or Common Core standards) and learning objectives. Last, but not least, the Central Focus should address the subject-specific components in the learning segment.
What is central focus in a lesson plan?
The Central Focus in a unit/lesson plan is a description of what the lesson or unit is trying to accomplish. It conveys the core concepts that you want students to develop in the learning section of the lesson plan.
What is the central focus of language?
“Conversation” is the central focus of language and the keystone of language acquisition: Learners are required to produce and understand communicative messages. That is exchanging information is crucial to language acquisition.
What is a literacy central focus?
The central focus aligns with an essential literacy strategy, an approach selected deliberately by a reader or writer to comprehend or compose text, and its related skills, literacy skills that students will develop and practice while learning an essential literacy strategy.
How hard is it to pass the edTPA?
So it follows that pass rates on the edTPA are still relatively high. Last year, 18,000 prospective teachers took the edTPA nationally, and about 72 percent scored high enough to pass. This pass rate seems more reasonable than the national pass rate for traditional licensure tests of over 90 percent.
How do you write a lesson focus?
Deciding Your Lesson FocusYour Subject & Standard. Your first decision in establishing a focus for your instructional design project is to narrow your lesson's scope to a grade level, subject, and a specific College and Career Readiness Standard. ... Be Mindful of Scope. ... Your Topic. ... Lesson Goals. ... For example ...
What is an essential learning strategy for edTPA?
Literacy Strategy Example strategies for reading include summarizing or retelling, comparing and contrasting firsthand and secondhand accounts of the same event, using evidence to predict, interpreting a character's feelings, or drawing conclusions from informational text.
Is there a lesson plan template for edTPA?
There is no required format or template for edTPA learning segment lesson plans, although each lesson plan may be a maximum of four pages in length.
What is a pattern of learning edTPA?
Patterns of learning: Includes both quantitative and qualitative consistencies for different groups of students and individuals across the whole class. Quantitative patterns indicate the number of similar correct responses or errors across or within student assessments.
What is focus and review in lesson plan?
During focus/review you will activate schema, relating previously learned material and/or experiences to the lesson you are about to teach. In doing this, you will give the students a purpose for listening and also focus their attention on the activities ahead.
What are requisite skills edTPA?
Requisite skills are those skills that students develop DURING the lesson. Think: A requisite skill in a lesson on summarizing a story's plot is speaking in complete sentences.
What Do I Need to Know About EdTPA?
edTPA is broken into 3 tasks: planning, instruction, and assessment. Typically, each task has five rubrics provided to guide you and help explain how you’ll be scored. You will also be given a handbook specific to your certification area.
How Am I Scored on edTPA?
Generally, each of the three edTPA tasks is broken into rubrics. Each of the 15 total rubrics has 5 scoring levels worth 1 point each, so you can earn between 1 and 5 points for each rubric. The highest possible score you can make on edTPA is 75.
Preparing Yourself for the edTPA
Once you are registered in the official edTPA portfolio system, you will receive a specific handbook. While everyone does very similar tasks, each content area has its own details and guidance.
Getting Started: Context for Learning
This is your opportunity to describe your teaching environment in detail for your scorers. The artifact you submit will include specific information about your school and classroom. Explain the demographics of your class, including special learning needs and accommodations.
Getting Started: Scheduling
When you begin your student teaching experience, talk to your mentor teacher about edTPA. edTPA is relatively new in the education world, so it’s possible your mentor teacher is unfamiliar with it. It is important that your mentor teacher understands you will need 3-5 days to film the learning cycle.
Task 1: Planning
In Task 1, you are expected to plan the instruction and assessment for your learning segment.
Task 2: Instruction
In Task 2, you will put your plans in action! You will video record yourself teaching students in a 3-5 day learning segment. For each of the rubrics in this task, submit video footage and written commentary that explains how the chosen video clips meet the rubric’s standards.
What is evidence for EDTPA?
Evidence for edTPA consists of artifacts that document how you planned and implemented instruction AND commentaries that explain your plans and what is seen in the videorecording(s) or examine what you learned about your teaching practice and your students' learning. Evidence should demonstrate your ability to design lesson plans with instructional supports that deepen student learning, use knowledge of your students to inform instruction, foster a positive learning environment that promotes student learning, monitor and assess student progress toward learning objectives, and analyze your teaching effectiveness. Your evidence must be submitted electronically using the electronic portfolio management system used by your teacher preparation program.
What is central focus?
central focus: A description of the important understandings and core concepts that you want students to develop within the learning segment. The central focus should go beyond a list of facts and skills, align with content standards and learning objectives, and address the subject-specific components in the learning segment. The subject-specific components for elementary literacy include an essential literacy strategy and the associated requisite skills for comprehending or composing text.
What is student centered learning?
An approach to learning that involves gaining knowledge and skills in the process of problem solving or seeking an answer to a question. Student-centered.
What is the central focus of a primary grade literacy segment?
For example, the central focus for a primary grade literacy learning segment might be summarizing narratives. The learning segment would focus on the essential literacy strategy (summarizing) and requisite skills (e.g., decoding, recalling, sequencing). The central focus for an upper elementary learning segment might be persuasive writing. The learning segment would focus on the essential literacy strategy (using evidence to support an argument) and requisite skills (e.g., writing paragraphs, using correct verb tense, or other conventions). See the Making Good Choices resource for suggestions on selecting your central focus.
What is a gap in a student's knowledge?
Skills or content that students have not learned. These gaps can prevent a full understanding of a topic or because of lacking skills, an inability to progress to a higher level of understanding or procedure.
Who owns the EDTPA?
All rights reserved. V5_0916 The edTPA trademarks are owned by The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Use of the edTPA trademarks is permitted only pursuant to the terms of a written license agreement.
What is the focus of planning?
The focus of planning is to successfully scaffold students through the Zone of Proximal Development. This concept was developed by Lev Vygotsky in order to measure the amount of understanding a student has at a given point and time. Vygotsky believed in scaffolding students through the Zone of Proximal Development to guide students in their learning. In the teacher’s planning one can see that she uses modeling, conversation, and independent practice to scaffold the students through the Zone of Proximal Development. Using a variety of techniques like speaking, visualizing, and bodily movement allows students to learn through a learning style that best suits them. This theory was discovered by Howard Gardner which aides teachers in how to best educate their students. Therefore, by conversing, modeling, and using actions to represent the concepts, the students have a variety of opportunities to understand what the teacher has intended.]
Why is small group teaching important?
Also because of the small group setting, the teacher is able to closely monitor each students’ progress within the lesson. This allows the teacher to quickly adapt the lesson to better suit the students’ learning needs. ]

What's New in edTPA?
Central Focus Example
- The following is a complete example that has all the elements for success. Feel free to use this example as a guide for writing yours.
Common CORE Standards
- So far, Common Core has been implemented in 42 states. The idea was to create a standard for education that was universal for all U.S. students at the same grade level. If your state has adopted the Common Core standards, ensure that your Central Focus aligns with them. This does not mean you have to rewrite your learning objectives; however, a broader perspective should b…
What Should Be Included in The Academic Language section?
- When I first looked at the description of what the Academic Language section required, I was a bit confused too. Breaking it down into smaller pieces helped me to understand it. Essentially it is the writing or speaking that a student does to let you know they understood what you taught them. So what should the Academic Language section contain? 1. Language functionis the verb used to d…
Academic Language Example
- Look at the learning objective above. The following is what describes it: The language function is to display. The language demand is to graph (a line on a graph). Vocabulary includes slope-intercept formula (mathematics-specific) and equation (general). Adding adjectives such as sixenables efficient assessment of whether students have achieved the learning target. So, the …
Questions & Answers
- Question:Is "conjecture" a language function? Answer:Yes. The term “conjecture” can be used as a language function as long as the language demand is sufficient enough to explain the verb. © 2014 Drew Overholt