Field Testing For The National Board For Professional Teaching Standards

Earlier today I field tested for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.  I field tested for two reasons. First, if I plan to mentor other teachers to become National Board certified, I need to be familiar with all components of the process of becoming Board Certified.  Since the process of becoming Board Certified changed beginning this year and I certified in 2014, I field tested a part of Component One, which is 45 multiple choice questions in 60 minutes.  The primary purpose of field testing is to construct a picture of a test’s validity and reliability. In this case, Component One is administered to an adequate number of examinees and the data is used for psychometric analysis.  In other words, the NB is trying to determine if the questions are too hard, too easy, or just right. The multiple choice format aligns with the board certification testing structure in the fields of medicine, dentistry, and engineering.

Second, I wanted to get a sense of my current strengths and weaknesses in the field of literacy, and I thought that testing my content knowledge would give me a good feel for where I stand.  According to the NB, "Component One is a computer-based assessment that measures content knowledge.  It requires candidates to demonstrate knowledge of and pedagogical practice for their teaching content area.  Candidates must demonstrate knowledge of developmentally appropriate content, which is necessary for teaching across the full age and range and ability level of the chosen certificate area."

One of the reasons that the process of becoming Board Certified changed is that some of the components in the older process were contextually based.  In other words, some of the entries that I submitted were based upon what I knew to be best practice for my students within the context of my classroom, school, and community. In the new Component One, candidates have to prove that they are an accomplished literacy teacher in any teaching environment, anywhere in the United States, across the full developmental range of their certificate area. 

I am glad that I took the time to field test. I would encourage any teacher who is considering Board Certification to field test prior to the year they begin their certification journey.  I would also encourage any Board Certified teacher to field test in their certificate area so that they are a more effective advocate for advancing the teaching profession. 

Teaching Thoughts At The End of Another First Grade Year

I love teaching. 

On the bus ride to Beaver Park a few weeks ago a parent volunteer and I were having a discussion about second grade placements.  The parent said to me, “The only criteria I have for my child’s teacher is that her teacher be passionate about teaching.” 

I thought that was a brilliant statement because, not only in teaching, but probably other professions, you must love what you do to do it well.  Kids don’t learn from teachers who don’t like to teach. Kids don’t behave when they are in the classrooms of teachers who don’t like to teach.  Kids don’t want to be in school when they are in a school full of teachers who don’t like to teach. 

My passion for teaching helps get me through all the hoops: the lack of money and time, the unrelenting mandates made by people who have never been teachers, and the difficult scheduling of stuff unrelated to teaching during the school day. And I hope, if you are fortunate enough to be in a position to teach, that you love it and that it is something that you truly want to do. Plus, if you are really lucky, you’ll not only be doing work that inspires both you and your students to do their best, you’ll also occasionally get a lovely thank you card.

Beaver Park's Infamous Bullfrog

Apparently there is a Lochness Monster in Beaver Park, only it is in the form of a bullfrog.  We found it today on our field trip!

Pond Video

Technology is a huge piece of my teaching set, but I only use it if it supports a targeted goal.  Yesterday we watched this well-done video on animals that live on the edge of a pond.  It is a variety of video clips and photos taken around a pond at Veteran Acres Park in Crystal Lake, in Illinois, mostly during the spring, summer and fall of 2010. 

My first teaching goal was to make sure that my students understood what the word "edge" means.  Without this understanding, they would not be able to make predictions about what they would see in the video.  We decided that "perimeter" is a synonym for edge and "center" is an antonym.

Second, I wanted my students to realize that there are many different kinds of animals that live next to a pond, some of which they probably would not predict, although they do have deep schema for ponds.  We have been classifying animals (birds, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, spiders, fish) and so I wanted to tie in their predictions with our animals classifications. Next, we made a list of animals that we anticipated would be the stars of the video - animals that live on the edge of the pond.

Finally, we watched the video twice and had a discussion about what we saw. Because there is a sunfish in the video, a discussion ensued about whether or not the sunfish should have been included in the video, since it is a fish and it probably swims in other places in addition to the edge of a pond.  

We also noticed that we did not include any of the multiple birds that were wading in the pond in our list, nor did we include many of the birds that were living near the pond in nests.  The discussion highlighted the importance of thinking about all seven of the different classifications of animals when predicting which animals would live in a specific habitat. 

They really are amazing first grade scientists!  Good for them. 

Look What Bear Found!

I was going for a walk with my husband and my son's dog, Bear, last week and we found these tadpoles on steroids.  Bear found a frog at the edge of a pond and when he investigated the frog, he also noticed these huge tadpoles in the water. I was able to catch enough for all four first grade teachers to have an aquarium in their classroom.  We kept them for a week and then returned them to the pond.  We also found some toad eggs, but they are not visible in these pictures.  We are studying ponds in science, so observing tadpoles is a very natural tie in to our theme. 

In early childhood it is important that science activities be hands on, driven by the child's curiosity, and authentic, because developmentally young children learn by using their senses.  To be effective, I use my first grader's own natural curiosity to guide our investigations.  Observations are a terrific way to build oral language. 

(I put the pen beside the aquarium to give you an idea of just how big they were - they were about 3 inches long!)

Our guiding question was, "What can we learn about tadpoles by observing them?"

We observed them with and without magnifying glasses for several days and I documented some of the statements that my first graders made:
"Their front legs grow first and then their back legs."
"They can swim up and down and back and forth."
"They are definitely amphibians because they have smooth, wet, skin."
"They mostly don't swim.  They mostly rest."
"They don't group together.  They stay by themselves."
"If you tap on the glass, they get nervous."
"They are camouflaged.  They look like the water plants."
"They have gills on just one side of their head that open and shut, open and shut, open and shut."
"Toad eggs are black.  They grow in long skinny lines like necklaces."
"Even when they are still, they still move a little, little bit."

Yesterday I found a 15" garter snake in one of my gardens.  My husband fed it a live earthworm today, which it ate in about 10 seconds.  Tomorrow I am bringing the snake to school in the same aquarium that I brought the tadpoles in for my first graders to make more observations. 

Here is the garter snake in an aquarium in my classroom.

The snake will also tie into our pond theme. As you can see by reading their observations, they have become very astute.  This is a video of a garter snake just like the one we caught swimming in a pond.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRivEM6HgYY)

And this is a picture of Bear, my son and his girlfriend's Borador, who found the frog that led him to the tadpoles, which in turn gave my students the opportunity to observe the tadpoles.