Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA)

Secondary EnglishLanguage Arts

Task 2: Instructing and Engaging Students in Learning

1. Identify the number of the lesson or lessons from which the clips were recorded. Both clips are taken from lesson 3: How to Use Quotes in Your Essay. 2. Engaging Students in Learning a. Explain how the instruction (tasks, activities, discussions, and/or teaching strategies) depicted in the clips motivated and intellectually engaged students in developing their abilities to construct meaning from and interpret complex text. Cite specific examples from the clips of what students said/did to support your explanation. Todays lesson featured information and advice on how to include quotes in students nonfiction literary analysis essays. This was one of the final lessons of the unit. Students worked hard throughout the unit to identify important areas within their nonfiction books that best represent the authors use of literary language. At this point in the unit, students have written three outlines that cover the main features of a nonfiction book, including character analysis, literary language (diction and writing style), and purpose and theme. As required in their outlines, students should already have a solid idea of what quotes they will be using to support their analysis in the final essay. Todays lesson aims to help students take the quotes theyve already gathered for their outlines and use/format them correctly in their essay. My lesson is lecture-based, with information on how to use proper quotation format. Unfortunately, the nature of this lesson is not as conducive to peer collaboration and frequent interaction between teacher and student. The instruction in the clips shows the lecture that takes place during the first half of the class period. The second half of the class period was devoted to a class activity, as indicated by the presentation attached. Students were asked to take a portion of one of their outlines and format the material into a paragraph, using at least one quote from their book. Frankly, I encountered some difficulty with capturing the type and quality of evidence that I had initially hoped for. Unfortunately, and against prior instruction, my mentor teacher only captured the lecture portion of the lesson, rather than recording the in-class activity as well. I had planned on capturing the entire lesson, from which I could choose both evidence of lecturing and working with students during their in-class assignment. I realize this will impact the quality of my final assessment in this area. b. Using examples from the clips, describe how your instruction (tasks, activities, discussions, and/or teaching strategies) linked students prior learning and experiences with new learning. My instruction enhances students prior learning and experiences by linking previouslylearned and gathered materialquotes from the nonfiction bookto being able to format it correctly into an essay. The nonfiction unit is over a month long. I essentially began the unit by teaching students about literary language, purpose, theme, and writing style. Then, students take the foundational knowledge and practice identifying these concepts
Copyright 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Page 1 of 3 | 4 pages maximum

Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA)

Secondary EnglishLanguage Arts
in their nonfiction books. They then create multiple outlines for the purpose of organizing significant book quotes, moments, and main ideas that reflect the overall purpose and theme of their book. Finally, students learn how to make use of the quotes theyve gathered from their outlines, and practice turning their outlines into solid paragraphs in preparation of the literary analysis. Finally, we end with the summative assessmentthe nonfiction literary analysis. Students write their essays in class and are able to use all worksheets and assignments as support tools. When grading, students are deemed proficient or non-proficient, in which case that student is dropped from the class and must retake Fundamentals of Writing until they can demonstrate proficiency. In order to understand the content of this lesson as well as the content of the unit, students must know the definitions of specific literary language terms. Regarding higher order thinking skills, students must also be able to analyze literature based on their knowledge of literary language terms and evaluate the overall purpose and theme of their nonfiction book, as well as various nonfiction-based excerpts used as practice throughout the unit. The vocabulary of this unit is very specific and crucial to understand. Without it, students will not be considered proficient, as this is a district-required task. As a result, they will not pass Fundamentals of Writing. During this specific lesson, I utilized prior knowledge by referencing literary language terms and showing how their unit work can be used as supporting evidence and final interpretations when writing their essays. The purpose for including this lesson is because most students have not had adequate experience using quotes and citations in essays, especially relating to literature-based essays. It was very important that we went over the rules and guidelines for including quotes and proper citations, as this component was required for the essay. Students were expected to provide page numbers in their outlines so that they could reference these quotes again for the essay. This lesson connected the evidence gathered in the outlines to the final product of the unit.

3. Deepening Student Learning during Instruction a. Explain how you elicited student thinking through questions or materials and facilitated responses that supported students abilities to construct meaning from and interpret complex text.

I elicited student thinking through the use of examples to show students how to correctly apply this material to their essays. I provided examples of how to properly format quotes into an essay, and also provided examples of language that could be used to transition quotes into their essays. I asked students to come up with alternative examples for words that are typically used when inserting quotes, such as she said/he said. Also, toward the end of the lecture portion, I modeled evidence and read through examples of how to restructure their outlines into paragraphs. By modeling the procedure, students were more engaged and confident in working on the in-class assignment. b. Explain how you supported students in using textual (or, if a film, visual or dialogue) references to check or justify their constructions of meaning and interpretations of complex text.

Copyright 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

Page 2 of 3 | 4 pages maximum

Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA)

Secondary EnglishLanguage Arts
For the purpose of this lesson, I supported students in using textual references to support their interpretations of their books by providing the vehicle of information for which they could include supporting evidence in their essays. Based on previous assessment data, most students were unaware of how to properly cite textual evidence in a way that enhanced their analysis of the literature. Therefore, this lesson was necessary for students to gain practice formatting and working with quotes. Unfortunately, evidence from the clip does not show the in-class activity that facilitated the experience of using this new content. After completing the in-class assignment, I formatively assessed all work prior to the day students wrote their essays in class. By giving them feedback on their work, students were able to make corrections and avoid making similar mistakes on the essay. c. Cite evidence from the clips of what you and your students said/did to support your explanations. I worked with students to relate and activate prior knowledge by connecting the material weve learned throughout the unit with the final essay. Both clips capture my effort to create purposeful learning out of an otherwise dry topic. During the second clip, I captured interactions between students during question-and-answer based instruction. Students were asked to evaluate words that could be used as explaining words when including quotes in an essay format. Also, I asked students to consider why we use quotes in our essays in the first place. I wanted students to consider this question so they could make the necessary connections between the work they have contributed throughout the unit to their final product.

Copyright 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

Page 3 of 3 | 4 pages maximum