Working on a practice EdTPA...

This semester the biggest thing I have accomplished is my practice edTPA. This experience is one that I am going to remember for when I do my real edTPA this Spring. I know that it is not an document that you can do within a few hours, but it is something that should take time and a real look at. I know through this class that starting early as possible is the way to accomplish everything and do it with less stress. edTPA is a three task (four for elementary education) document that teacher candidates have to complete and fill out. I have heard so much bad stuff about edTPA and lots of rumors about it, but I have not hear many positive things. I hope that this practice will help me succeed in passing the real edTPA.

Working through the edTPA section by section and task by task has really helped me understand the questions that they are asking. I was able to work with my group on this and that was great for bouncing ideas off of each other and creating our documents that fit us. I like that this was an assignment, because it gave us a chance before it is the final document to work with others and to understand the questions better. I think that the hardest part is the assessment. It is not hard to assess yourself teaching or lesson planning, but it is hard to assess in a positive light. There are always things that I see that I can do better or different that may work much better. It is hard to find the one or two things that you've done well while you are watching yourself giving a lesson on video tape. I have found that assessing myself is very hard and a skill that I will have to work on so I can do it properly for the real edTPA. I think that the hardest part of the entire assessment is that someone else will be reading it, and there is always that feeling of what if I missed something in my own assessment. Although, there is a lot of dread when it comes to the edTPA there is some valid points in it. I like that they make you assess your teaching and I feel like this is a big part of teaching. I like that it makes you assess how you did on planning the lesson and how the lesson really panned out. One teacher gave me great advice, He told me to make a chart of what will go wrong, what may go wrong and what it is that I am going to do to solve that problem. I found this very helpful when planning for the lesson for the sixth grade science class. The hardest problem to solve was not having enough time to finish the lesson.