generalist portfolio instructions - nbpts · generalist. portfolio instructions (for retake...

Early Childhood

GENERALIST

Portfolio Instructions (For retake candidates who began the Certification process in 2013-14 or earlier.)

Part 1 provides general instructions for preparing, developing, and submitting your portfolio entries.

Part 2 provides portfolio entry directions as well as cover sheets and forms you use to submit your portfolio entries.

PI-EC/GEN-05 Prepared by Pearson for submission under contract with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards®. © 2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards l All rights reserved.

PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS Early Childhood/Generalist

Contents PART 1: GENERAL PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS How to Use the Portfolio Instructions 1-1

Navigating the Portfolio Instructions Retake Candidates

Phase 1: Prepare

Locating and Using Important Resources Understanding the Portfolio Entries Following Policies and Guidelines Learning Portfolio-Related Terms

Phase 2: Develop

Writing about Teaching Recording Video Entries Analyzing Student Work Organizing Your Portfolio Components Managing Your Time

Phase 3: Submit

Avoiding the 4 Most Common Submission Errors

PART 2: ENTRY DIRECTIONS EC/Generalist Portfolio Entry Directions 2-1

Overview of Early Childhood/Generalist Portfolio Entries Entry 1: Examining Children’s Literacy Development Entry 1: Cover Sheets Entry 2: Building a Learning Environment Entry 2: Cover Sheets Entry 3: Integrating Mathematics and Science Entry 3: Cover Sheets Entry 4: Documented Accomplishments: Contributions to Student Learning Entry 4: Cover Sheets Electronic Submission at a Glance Student Release Form Adult Release Form

Appendix: Excerpts from National Science Education Standards

© 2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards | All rights reserved.

PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS Early Childhood/Generalist

Part 1: General Portfolio Instructions This resource is available on our website at www.boardcertifiedteachers.org/certificate-areas.


http://boardcertifiedteachers.org/retake-candidates

Part 2: Portfolio Entry Directions

Part 2 provides instructions for developing and submitting your portfolio entries for the Early Childhood/Generalist certificate area:

EC/Generalist Portfolio Entry Directions contains detailed instructions for developing each of four portfolio entries.

EC/Generalist Electronic Submission at a Glance provides detailed instructions for assembling material for submission.

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PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS Part 2: Portfolio Entry Directions

Early Childhood/Generalist Overview

EC/Generalist Portfolio Entry Directions This section contains the directions for developing each EC/Generalist portfolio entry and assembling it for submission. Entry directions include

a list of the Standards that are the foundation for each entry; suggestions for planning your portfolio entries and choosing evidence of your teaching

practice; questions that must be answered as part of your Written Commentary; an explanation of how to assemble and submit your portfolio entries.

Overview of Early Childhood/Generalist Portfolio Entries

Following is a description of each entry. In addition to reading the entry directions, you may also wish to read “Part 1: General Portfolio Instructions.”

Entry 1

In the Early Childhood/Generalist portfolio, the entry based on children’s responses is “Entry 1: Examining Children’s Literacy Development.” In this entry, you select two children to feature as examples of your work with children in fostering literacy development. Your approach to assessment of the children’s abilities and needs, your response to that assessment in the design and implementation of instruction, a Written Commentary that provides an analysis and a context for your instructional choices, and selected work samples demonstrating the children’s literacy development are the focus of this entry.

Entry 2

In the Early Childhood/Generalist portfolio, there are two entries based on video evidence, one of which is “Entry 2: Building a Learning Environment.” In this entry, you submit a 15-minute video recording that demonstrates your knowledge and ability to deepen children’s understanding of a social studies topic, concept, or theme; your ability to integrate the arts (visual arts, music, drama); and your interaction with children during whole-class or small-group discussion that illustrates your approach to creating a climate in the learning environment that promotes children’s development of social and interpersonal skills. You provide a Written Commentary analyzing the video recording and instructional materials.

Entry 3

“Entry 3: Integrating Mathematics and Science” is the other Early Childhood/Generalist entry based on video evidence. In this entry, you submit a 15-minute video recording of and instructional materials for an integrative learning sequence designed to deepen children’s understanding of mathematics and science concepts through unifying concepts and processes in science and to develop children’s skills in using mathematical and scientific ways of observing, thinking, reasoning, and communicating. You provide a Written Commentary analyzing the video recording and instructional materials, including your use of technology to support children’s learning.

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Early Childhood/Generalist Overview

Entry 4

In the Early Childhood/Generalist portfolio, the entry based on documented accomplishments is “Entry 4: Documented Accomplishments: Contributions to Student Learning.” In this entry, you illustrate your partnerships with children’s families and community, and your development as a learner and collaborator with other professionals, by submitting descriptions and documentation of your activities and accomplishments in those areas. Your description must make the connection between each accomplishment and its impact on student learning.

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Early Childhood/Generalist Entry 1

Entry 1: Examining Children’s Literacy Development In this entry, you select two children to feature as examples of your work with children in fostering literacy development. Your approach to assessment of the children’s abilities and needs, your response to that assessment in the design and implementation of instruction, a Written Commentary that provides an analysis and a context for your instructional choices, and selected work samples demonstrating the children’s literacy development are the focus of this entry.

Standards Measured by Entry 1 This entry focuses on the following Standards:

I. Using Knowledge of Child Development to Understand the Whole Child

II. Partnering with Families and Communities

III. Fostering Equity, Fairness, and Appreciation of Diversity

IV. Knowing Subject Matter for Teaching Young Children

V. Assessing Children’s Development and Learning

VI. Managing the Environment for Development and Learning

VII. Planning for Development and Learning

VIII. Implementing Instruction for Development and Learning

IX. Reflecting on Teaching Young Children

The following statements from the Standards provide some examples of accomplished teaching practice.

Accomplished Early Childhood/Generalists

use theories of growth and development to understand individual children and to inform their practices.

learn from parent’s observations about children’s growth, development, behavior, and language. They partner with families for opportunities to learn crucial information about children and also about the resources families have to foster children’s learning and development.

adapt learning experiences and approaches to instruction in ways that ensure equitable participation.

design appropriate learning experiences in literacy that will challenge and motivate children.

assess what children know, set challenging yet attainable goals, and design learning activities that help children achieve those goals.

design meaningful learning environments that support the strengths, interests, and needs of individual learners within a group context.

responsibly and systematically plan for young children’s learning and development with clear goals and objectives in mind.

advance development and learning through a variety of strategies and resources, including play and appropriate use of technology, which foster children’s active engagement and ensure that all children achieve.

reflect in order to optimize the way in which their instruction supports children’s development and learning and to critique assumptions underlying their teaching practices.

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For the scoring rubrics and an explanation of how the rubrics are used to assess your portfolio entries, refer to the Early Childhood/Generalist Scoring Guide for Candidates.

What Do I Need to Do? This entry captures your ability to assess and support children’s literacy development.

In this entry, you

demonstrate your skill in assessing and supporting children’s literacy development; describe the ways in which you foster literacy in your classroom; analyze work samples from two children, discuss their development, and outline your

approach to supporting their learning; provide evidence of your ability to describe, analyze, and evaluate children’s literacy

development; help parents support their child’s literacy development; and reflect on your practice.

For this entry, you must submit the following:

Student work samples (6, 9, or 12 pages maximum, depending on option selected, for both children combined) to illustrate your analysis of the children’s literacy development.

Written Commentary (13 pages maximum) that provides a context for your instructional choices and analyzes and evaluates your support for these children’s literacy development.

Read all directions for this entry before beginning to work on individual components. It can also help to have a colleague review your work. However, all of the work you submit as part of your response to any entry must be yours and yours alone. The written analyses and other components you submit must feature teaching that you did and work that you oversaw. For more detailed information, see “Ethics and Collaboration” in “Phase 1: Prepare” (in Part 1) and the National Board’s ethics policy.

Detailed directions for developing each component follow. See “Entry 1 Cover Sheets” for a list of the forms required to assemble and submit your materials.

You must submit student work samples and a Written Commentary. If any component is missing, your response will not be scored.

The student work entry (1) and video recording entries (2 and 3) must be from different lessons and different units of instruction.

Selecting Student Work Samples Make two important and interconnected choices for this entry—select children and their work samples. Choose two children and select work samples representing the these children’s literacy development.

Selecting the Children

Select children whose literacy development you want to feature. You may want to collect work samples for several more children than this entry requires you to feature. Collecting extra work samples gives you more choices when deciding which children to feature and ensures that you have sufficient work samples in the event that a child permanently leaves your class prior to the completion of all assignments for your featured lesson for this entry.

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Choose two children who allow you to display the depth of your understanding of literacy and your skill in nurturing children’s literacy development. These children may reflect any level of literacy skill and need not be able to write connected text. It is not necessary that the children you select to feature make dramatic gains over the time span covered by this entry. The focus is on your teaching practice and understanding of literacy development, not on the level of the children’s performance.

Selecting Materials

Select children’s work samples that you can use to discuss the children’s literacy development. You may submit work samples in three different forms: as dictation and drawing, as dictation and writing, or as writing alone. (See the section “Selecting Options,” below, for more detail.) The specific work samples from these children must allow you to demonstrate how you have assessed their abilities and how you have used this information to promote their learning.

Submit children’s work samples that consist of the children’s writing or dictation collected from three distinct points in time. The time span covered by these work samples must be at least eight weeks. What you submit will differ depending on whether the children you are describing are able to write connected texts.

Selecting Options

Option A: Dictations and Drawing/Brief Writing Samples. This option is intended for children who have limited ability to use print in conventional ways. Such children are likely to be able to produce marks that reflect their understanding of the nature and uses of print, but these marks do not reflect conventional ways of forming letters. At the same time, these children are able to tell stories, report events, draw pictures, and describe objects. Document a child’s emerging literacy skills by collecting the child’s work samples. Strive to collect samples that reflect a broad range of the ways that children use print and oral language. The samples you collect must

cover a span of time of at least eight weeks and be taken from three distinct points in time during the current school year;

include three samples of each child’s writing and/or drawing. Each sample must be accompanied by a dictation that you wrote as the child described the sample or told you a story based on the sample. Altogether, the samples and dictations must total no more than 12 pages (3 pages of a child’s writing and/or drawing for each child and 3 pages of teacher dictation for each child);

include both the illustration and the writing on the same side of the page (if you choose to include illustrations);

include all translations of the dictation in English.

Option B: Samples of Extended Writing. This option is intended for children who are able to express themselves in writing, alone or with support. (Submissions of work samples with illustrations are acceptable.) Select samples that reflect each child’s ability to do different kinds of writing (e.g., story, report, poem). The work samples you collect must

cover a span of time of at least eight weeks and be taken from three separate points in time;

include three samples for each child. Altogether, these must total no more than 6 pages of children’s work;

be first drafts produced by the child in the context of normal classroom routines. These must be accompanied by a typed copy that you produce on a separate piece of paper. Do not change the child’s words; simply provide a legible version that is spelled using conventional spelling. This is important to facilitate scoring. The typed pages do not count toward the page limit; only children’s work pages count toward the page limit.

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Student Work Samples Format Specifications

Use a new Student Work Sample Cover Sheet for each student work sample.

The student work samples you submit must satisfy the following criteria and be prepared as follows: Criteria Student work samples must represent each child’s original work.

Student work samples must come from children who are in the class that is the basis for your Written Commentary.

Student work samples must be from two different children from three distinct points in time.

Format Pages must be no larger than 8.5" × 11". If submitting a smaller item (e.g., a photograph), you must photocopy it onto an 8.5" x 11" page or print a digitized image of that smaller item onto an 8.5" x 11" page. Several smaller items can be grouped on a single page.

Note: If a student work sample was created in a multimedia software program (such as PowerPoint presentation software or HyperStudio®), you may format up to six slides on one 8.5" × 11" sheet. Each sheet counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: If a student work sample contains Web pages, each Web page printout (one 8.5" × 11" sheet) counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: Do not reduce full-sized pages of student work samples in order to fit more than one student work sample onto a single sheet of paper. Note: Do not send video recordings, audiotapes, models, and so on. If a child creates such a product, have the child write a 1-page description of the assignment and what the child made. You may include photograph(s) or child-made drawings to accompany the description, if appropriate. The 1-page description counts toward your page total.

Make sure materials are legible.

Anonymity guidelines

If materials include names or other identifying information, show the child’s first name only; delete children’s last names, teachers’ names, or any identifying information about the children’s families.

Labeling Place your candidate ID number in the upper right corner of all pages. Do not include your name.

Clearly label all pages as “Student 1” or “Student 2” and “Option A” or “Option B.”

Page count Submit no more than 12 pages total if you choose Option A for both children (three 1-page samples per child

and 3 pages of teacher dictation per child); 6 pages total if you choose Option B for both children (three 1-page samples per child); 9 pages total if you choose Option A for one child and Option B for the other child (three

1-page child samples and 3 pages of teacher dictation for the Option A child; three 1-page child samples for the Option B child).

Additional pages will not be read. Cover sheets and translations do not count toward these totals.

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Composing Written Commentary Organize your Written Commentary into sections under the following headings, which will direct assessors to the required information:

1. Instructional Context2. Analysis of Two Children’s Literacy Development3. Supporting Literacy Development4. Reflection

Your Written Commentary must address the italicized questions provided below for each section. Statements in plain text that immediately follow an italicized question help you interpret the question. It is not necessary to include the italicized questions within the body of your response.

Your Written Commentary must be no longer than 13 typed pages. Suggested page lengths are included to help you make decisions about how much to write for each of the four sections. (See “Written Commentary Format Specifications” for more detail.)

1. Instructional Context

Provide the following information in addition to the context that you supply on the Contextual Information Sheet, which focuses on the early educational program, school, or district at large. In this section, address the following questions about your selected class:

What are the number, ages, and grades of the children in the class featured in this entry, and what is the subject matter of the class? (Examples: 12 children in preschool, ages 3 and 4, literacy; 24 children in grade 2, ages 7 and 8, language arts)

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instructional strategies for this period of instruction: ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity; the range of abilities of the children; the personality of the class?

What are the relevant characteristics of the children with exceptional needs and abilities, including those with gifts and talents, or health issues that influenced your planning for this period of instruction (for example, the range of abilities and the cognitive, social/behavioral, attentional, sensory, and/or physical characteristics of the children)? Give any other information that might help the assessor “see” this class.

What are the relevant features of your teaching context that influenced the selection of this period of instruction? This might include other realities of the social and physical teaching context (e.g., available resources, scheduling, space allocation—own classroom or shared space) that are relevant to your response.

Suggested total page length for Instructional Context: 1 page

2. Analysis of Two Children’s Literacy Development

In separate sections labeled with each child’s first name, address the following questions:

What are the relevant characteristics of each child you have selected? Why did you select each child? Give a brief sketch of each child, including any important information that will help assessors understand your assessment and instructional strategies. State in this section which option you have selected for each child, Option A or Option B. (See “Selecting Options,” above, for more details.)

What questions did you have about each child’s literacy development, and how did you gather information that helped you answer them? Include information about both formal and informal methods of assessment that you used and why you selected those particular assessments.

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What are the relevant features of each child’s developing abilities to produce and understand oral language for varied purposes? What are the relevant features of each child’s abilities to read and write? Be sure to focus on each child’s skills as these relate to discrete features of text (e.g., sounds, letters, words) as well as larger units (e.g., sentences, accounts of personal experiences, comprehension, stories). Analyze specific work samples that support your discussion and explain other sources of information that you used. Refer to these work samples by the number on the Student Work Sample Cover Sheet.

What patterns of behaviors (strengths, interests, needs, and preferences) does each child exhibit toward literacy-related activities? Discuss activities that involve both print and oral language (e.g., book reading, discussions, journals, and dramatic play). Refer to specific work samples by the number on the Student Work Sample Cover Sheet to support your discussion and explain other sources of information that you used.

Suggested total page length for Analysis of Two Children’s Literacy Development: 6 pages

3. Supporting Literacy Development

In separate sections labeled with each child’s first name, address the following questions:

How do you ensure fairness, equity, and access for each child you have selected? Cite specific examples.

In what ways did the materials and the daily routines in your classroom support each featured child’s literacy development?

What instructional strategies will you employ in the coming weeks to support each child’s learning objectives? Explain why you have chosen these strategies and objectives. Describe how they connect with your assessment of each child’s abilities stated in the preceding section, “2. Analysis of Two Children’s Literacy Development.”

Which strategies did you employ to partner with families to help foster each selected child’s literacy development? Explain why you selected these strategies, how you used them over this period of time, how you facilitated two-way communication, and how each child benefited.

Suggested total page length for Supporting Literacy Development: 5 pages

4. Reflection

In this section, address the following questions:

How successful was this planned learning experience? What is your evidence? Identify specific examples from the learning experience that reflect success.

If you were given the opportunity to teach this particular sequence again with these children, what alternative strategies would you use? Why?

Suggested total page length for Reflection: 1 page

Written Commentary Format Specifications

Your response will be scored based on the content of your analysis, but it is important to proofread your writing for spelling, mechanics, and usage.

Your response must be organized under these section headings (described in detail above):

1. Instructional Context2. Analysis of Two Children’s Literacy Development3. Supporting Literacy Development4. Reflection

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Your Written Commentary must also meet the following requirements: Language Write in English.

Format Type and double-space text. Do not use 24-point line spacing.

Use 12-point Times New Roman font. Do not use condensed or compressed fonts.

Materials will be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word, Open Office or PDF

file. Page size must be 8.5" × 11" with 1" margins on all sides.




Labeling Place your candidate ID number in the upper right corner of all pages. Do not include your name. If you are using a word-processing program, you can save time by creating a “header” that prints your candidate ID number on each page.

Page count Submit no more than 13 typed pages in total. If you submit a longer Written Commentary, only the first 13 pages will be read and scored.

For advice on developing your Written Commentary, see “Writing about Teaching” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

Entry 1 Cover Sheets All cover sheets and forms required for this entry are listed in this section. To read and print these documents, you must install Adobe® Reader® software on your computer. You may download Adobe Reader for free by following the instructions provided on the Adobe Systems website (www.adobe.com).

As you prepare your portfolio, keep in mind some cover sheets contain directions that are not repeated elsewhere; follow these directions carefully.

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CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION SHEET

This form asks you to describe the broader context in which you teach: • If you teach in different schools that have different characteristics, and this entry features students from

more than one school, please complete a separate sheet for each school associated with this entry.• If a completed Contextual Information Sheet also pertains to another entry, submit it with that entry as

well.

In each entry, you are asked to provide specific information about the students in the class you have featured inthe entry. This is in addition to the information requested here. Please print clearly or type. (If you type, you mayuse the system default font, size, and spacing.) Limit your responses to the spaces provided below. For clarity,please avoid the use of acronyms.

1. Briefly identify• the type of school/program in which you teach and the grade/subject configuration (single grade,

departmentalized, interdisciplinary teams, etc.):

• the grade(s), age levels, number of students taught daily, average number in each class, and courses:Grades Age Levels Number of Students Average Number of Students in Each Class

Courses

2. What information about your teaching context do you believe would be important for assessors to know tounderstand your portfolio entries? Be brief and specific. Note: You might include details of any state ordistrict mandates, information regarding the type of community, and access to current technology.


Student Work Sample COVER SHEET

Student: (1 or 2)

Option: (A or B)

Work Sample (or Dictation) Number:

Title of this student work sample (or dictation):

Date this student work sample (or dictation) was created:

Context in which this student work sample (or dictation) was produced: [two sentences] (e.g., free exploration time, following a field trip to an aquarium, an ongoing project)

If the student work sample is longer than 15 lines, number the lines.

Use this cover sheet as many times as needed.

© 2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards | All rights



Entry 2: Building a Learning Environment

In this entry, you submit a 15-minute video recording that demonstrates your knowledge and ability to deepen children’s understanding of a social studies topic, concept, or theme; your ability to integrate the arts (visual arts, music, drama); and your interaction with children during whole-class or small-group discussion that illustrates your approach to creating a climate in the learning environment that promotes children’s development of social and interpersonal skills. You provide a Written Commentary analyzing the video recording and instructional materials.










Accomplished Early Childhood/Generalist teachers

• move children into and out of a variety of social groups as a way of developing the senseof social identity essential for understanding social studies, while supporting individualdevelopment and identity.

• help children move from being primarily concerned about themselves to being able toacknowledge the needs of others.

• know that social interaction is essential to children’s linguistic and cognitive development,and they can express the importance of this aspect of development to families.

• are keenly aware of their responsibility for establishing a social climate that fosterslearning and develops life skills for young children.

• nurture communities in which all children respect diversity and treat each other fairly.• understand the importance of providing high-quality experiences that promote the

learning and development of all young children.• design and select core academic subjects and the arts using their knowledge of child

development, individual children, and the community in which children live.• apply knowledge of core academic subjects, the arts, and developmentally appropriate

practices when designing spaces, selecting resources, and managing time.• analyze children’s social, cognitive, linguistic, physical, emotional, and ethical development

when designing the environment to meet their diverse needs.• skillfully help young children learn how to formulate questions, think through their ideas,

pose additional questions, unscramble confusions, and develop their own hypotheses.• focus on particular aspects of their teaching as well as on overarching elements of their

professional work, such as the ways in which it advances equity, diversity, and fairnessand the quality of partnerships with parents and the wider community.

Social interaction supports children’s learning from each other and is a key strategy that accomplished teachers employ. Accomplished teachers encourage children to communicate

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about what they are thinking and experiencing and they understand the importance of such decisions in helping children form, extend, and refine their theories and explanations. Their conversations with children about the climate and interactions in the learning environment provide these teachers with insight and direction. These observations and discussions shape their decisions about the future directions of their work.


What Do I Need to Do? In this entry, you

demonstrate your knowledge and ability to deepen children’s understanding of an important topic, concept, or theme in social studies through the integration of social studies and the arts;

demonstrate your ability to describe and illustrate how you sustain an environment that supports children’s growth, learning, social and emotional development, and ability to understand a social skill/concept particular to your class;

display your ability to observe and analyze the interactions in your classroom.


One video recording (15 minutes maximum) that shows you interacting with your whole class or a small group of children (no fewer than six children) as they engage in the discussion that addresses a social studies topic, concept, or theme; the integration of the arts; and the goal of building a learning environment.

Instructional materials. Instructional Material Cover Sheet responses (four cover sheets, 1 page

maximum of responses per cover sheet). Instructional materials (four items, 4 pages maximum combined [1 page

maximum for each]) related to the lesson featured on the video recording and that will help assessors understand what occurred during the lesson.

Written Commentary (12 pages maximum) that explains and illustrates your approach to building a learning environment.



You must submit a video recording, instructional materials, and a Written Commentary. If any component is missing, your response will not be scored.

The student work entry (Portfolio Entry 1) and video recording entries (Portfolio Entries 2 and 3) must be from different lessons and different units of instruction.

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Recording Your Video Entry Video-record a whole-class or small-group discussion (no fewer than six children).

Selecting the Topic

First, select a skill/concept in social development and an important topic, concept, or theme in social studies that can be integrated with the arts and involves children in class discussions that promote community and social studies understanding.

Video Recording

Choose which 15-minute video segment you wish to submit. Show the portion of the lesson during which children are most meaningfully engaged in discussion. For the purpose of this entry, the word “discussion” does not refer to sessions during which children are asked to recall information or to generate the correct answers to teacher questions; rather, refers to talk among children, and between you and the children, in which they express ideas and respond to one another’s ideas. Make sure that it is the group’s discussion that appears on the video recording, not the introduction to the lesson. This also means that assessors need to be able to hear the children featured and not just see a wide view of the entire group. Your video segment should provide evidence of how you facilitate children’s discussion.

You must have the parents/guardians of all children you plan to include in the video recording complete Student Release Forms before you make any video recordings. You must have any adults who will appear in the video recording (for example, teacher’s aides, parents, student teachers, or colleagues) sign an Adult Release Form prior to recording.

Video Recording Format Specifications

Your video recording must meet the following requirements: Formats Your video recordings must be submitted as an flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, mpeg, avi, wmv,

mp4, or m4v file.

Compression Settings

The ePortfolio system has a 500 MB file size limit for each file that is uploaded. You must compress larger video files before submission. Please follow the instructions in the “Video Compression Guide”.

Length Submit a video recording that is no longer than 15 minutes. If you submit a longer video recording, only the first 15 minutes will be viewed and scored.

Editing Make sure that your video recording is continuous and unedited. Caution: Stopping and restarting the camera or the sound is regarded as editing.

DO NOT stop and start the camera, except as specified in the entry directions.

DO NOT turn off the microphone during recording.

DO NOT add graphics, titles, or special effects (e.g., fade in/out).

Recording Use a camera angle that includes as many faces of the children in the class as possible. The video recording should show as much of the class as possible, but it is acceptable to focus on a particular child while he or she is talking, singing, or playing an instrument. You must be shown in the video as well.

Make sure that sound quality is good enough that the assessor can understand all of what you say, sing, or play and most of what children say, sing, or play.

Language Show conversations that occur in English unless you registered for World Languages (French or Spanish).

If a small portion of your video occurs in a language other than English and it is important that an assessor understand it, provide a brief description in the Written Commentary of what was communicated.

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For advice on recording your lesson, see “Recording Video Entries” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For more information on the use of languages other than English, see “Language Accommodations Policies” in “Phase 1: Prepare” (in Part 1).

Choosing Instructional Materials You must submit four instructional materials (limited to 1 page each) that support your lesson. These four supporting instructional materials will provide assessors with important information about how you planned and implemented the effectiveness of the lesson:

Two of the instructional materials you choose should support your discussion of what came before, during, or after the video-recorded lesson. These materials might include teacher- constructed materials, for example, or other materials that will help assessors understand the nature and involvement of children’s learning.

The other two of the four instructional materials you choose should support your discussion of the integration of social studies and the arts. If these are multidimensional, a photograph is acceptable (see “Instructional Materials Format Specifications” for more detail).

It is important to select instructional materials that will help an assessor understand (1) the role the arts played in promoting children’s learning of a social studies topic, concept, or theme, and (2) the content of the video recording. You or the children may have used these materials before, during, or after the activity featured on the video recording.

Instructional Materials Format Specifications

Assemble each set of instructional materials together in the following order:

Instructional Material Cover Sheet (use a new cover sheet for each of the four items of instructional materials)

responses to the questions found on the cover sheet (typed on a separate page, not on the cover sheet)

any relevant instructional materials that would help assessors understand the lesson (handouts, excerpts from teacher guides, instructions to children, copies of projected materials, etc.)

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The cover sheet responses you submit must meet the following requirements: Format for responses to cover sheet questions

Type your responses on a separate sheet of paper. Double-space your text; do not use 24-point line spacing.





Labeling Number each of your responses to match the corresponding question number on the cover sheet.

Place your candidate ID number in the upper right corner of the page. Do not include your name.

Page count Submit no more than 1 typed page per cover sheet. Additional pages will not be read.

For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

The materials you submit must meet the following requirements: Format for instructional materials

Materials must be no larger than 8.5" × 11". If submitting a smaller item (e.g., a photograph), you must photocopy it onto an 8.5" x 11" page or print a digitized image of that smaller item onto an 8.5" x 11" page. Several smaller items can be grouped on a single page.

Note: If an instructional material was created in a multimedia software program (such as PowerPoint presentation software or HyperStudio®), you may format up to six slides on one 8.5" × 11" sheet. Each sheet counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: If an instructional material contains Web pages, each Web page printout (one 8.5" × 11" sheet) counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: Do not reduce full-sized pages of instructional materials in order to fit more than one instructional material onto a single sheet of paper. Note: If instructional materials that are important for assessors to see are impractical to submit or do not show up clearly in the video recording (e.g., overhead transparency or slide projections, writing on a chalkboard or whiteboard, software, three-dimensional objects), submit a drawing, photocopy, digitized image, photograph, or description/transcription of the material. (If you submit a description/transcription, it must be typed in double-spaced text with 1" margins on all sides using 12-point Times New Roman font.)





Number each item of instructional material and refer to it by number in your Written Commentary.

Page count Submit exactly 4 pages of instructional materials (four items, 1 page for each). Additional pages will not be read. Cover sheets, translations, and sheets containing your responses to the questions on the cover sheets do not count toward this total.

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1. Instructional Context2. Planning and Instruction3. Analysis of the Video Recording4. Reflection

Your Written Commentary must address the italicized questions provided below for each section. Statements in plain text that immediately follow an italicized question help you interpret the question. It is not necessary to include the italicized questions within the body of your response. Your Written Commentary must be no longer than 12 typed pages. Suggested page lengths are included to help you make decisions about how much to write for each of the four sections. (See “Written Commentary Format Specifications” for more detail.)



What are the number, ages, and grades of the children in the class featured in this entry, and what is the subject matter of the class? (Examples: 12 children in preschool, ages 3 and 4, social studies; 24 children in grade 2, ages 7 and 8, social studies)

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instructional strategies for this learning experience: ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity; the range of abilities of the children; the personality of the class?

What are the relevant characteristics of the children with exceptional needs and abilities, including those with gifts and talents, or health issues that influenced your planning for this period of instruction (for example, the range of abilities and the cognitive, social/behavioral, attentional, sensory, and/or physical characteristics of the children)? Give any other information that might help the assessor “see” this class.

What are the relevant features of your teaching context that influenced the selection of this learning experience? This might include other realities of the social and physical teaching context (e.g., available resources, scheduling, space allocation—own classroom or shared space) that are relevant to your response.

What particular instructional challenges does the class chosen for this entry represent? What particular dynamics of the class does an assessor need to know about to understand the sequence of instruction? This might include, but is not limited to, a description of your children’s skills, knowledge, and previous experiences that relates to your teaching.


2. Planning and Instruction


What is the social skill/concept addressed during this lesson? Why is this appropriate for children with different developmental characteristics and levels of knowledge of concepts?

What is the social studies topic, concept, or theme addressed during this lesson? Why is this topic, concept, or theme important for establishing a foundation for future social studies instruction?

What knowledge, skills, and concepts from the arts are addressed during this lesson? How do they support the theme you have selected in social studies?

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How did you integrate social studies and the arts into your overall instructional goal(s) for children’s learning with this topic? Why did you choose the goal or goals? Include a discussion of the ways the goal(s) illustrate the knowledge and concepts from within social studies and the arts that you hope children will learn as well as the skills children will develop during this lesson. How does the goal or goals fit into your overall goals for the year?

How does the lesson fit into the context of what came before and after in the instructional unit?

What instructional materials from the arts and social studies were used during this integrative lesson? What was the rationale for using these materials during this featured lesson?

What strategies or methods from this lesson show how you foster fairness, equity, and access for all children in your class? Describe how you structured this lesson.

Suggested total page length for Planning and Instruction: 4 pages

3. Analysis of the Video Recording

This information focuses on your description and analysis of the lesson shown on the video recording. When citing specific evidence, it may be helpful to assessors if you identify specific locations in the video recording by describing specific dialogue, events, and/or children (e.g., “the girl in the green sweater”). In this section, address the following questions:

What occurred prior to and after the video segment that is important to know in order to understand and interpret the video segment? How does the video segment fit into the lesson as a whole? Provide information that assessors would need in order to understand the interactions depicted on the video recording.

What is the focus of the discussion featured on the video recording? Give an example from the video recording of how the integration of social studies and the arts has furthered children’s understanding of the lesson.

How do the interactions seen in the video recording illustrate children’s efforts toward the stated social goals? Analyze specific child-to-child interactions and explain how they show children’s efforts to relate to one another.

How did you facilitate this discussion/activity? What specific procedures and teaching strategies did you use in the lesson in support of children’s understanding and learning? Why did you choose these procedures and strategies? Cite specific evidence from the video recording to support your answer.

Give an example from the video recording of how the instructional materials from both the arts and social studies supported children’s learning.

Give specific examples of how you address issues of equity, fairness, and access for all of the children in your class.

Suggested total page length for Analysis of the Video Recording: 4 pages

4. Reflection


How well were the objectives for this lesson achieved? To what degree did the children become involved in and understand the main points of

your lesson? What is your evidence? Address both the children who actively participated and those who did not.

To what extent do you think your efforts to help the children understand the social skill/concept, the arts skill/concept, and the social studies topic, concept, or theme have been successful? Describe how the integration and execution of this lesson have helped

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the children grow in this respect. Where appropriate, refer to specific events on the video recording that support your conclusions. Identify critical moments or choices you made during the lesson.

What, if anything, would you do differently if you had the opportunity to teach this lesson again to these children? Why?

Suggested total page length for Reflection: 3 pages















For advice on developing your Written Commentary, see “Writing about Teaching” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

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CLASSROOM LAYOUT FORM (For Informational Purposes Only)

Please show the physical layout of the “classroom” (i.e., “setting in which t h e instruction took place”) as it appears in the video recording. This visual will provide assessors with a context for the video since the camera cannot capture the whole instruction area a t once.

It is helpful to assessors for you to identify where particular students are located in the room by using the same student identifiers that you refer to in your Written Commentary (e.g., “the girl in the green sweater”).The sketch will not be scored.


Instructional Material COVER SHEET

Instructional Material #:

Do not write or type on this cover sheet in response to the questions below. Provide your responses to the questions contained in the box below in a separate document using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. Your responses must fit on one page. Group your response sheet directly behind this cover sheet.

1. What is important to know about this one item of instructional material tounderstand what is shown on the video recording?

2. How was this one item of instructional material used?

Group the following with this cover sheet: • Your response sheet• One relevant item of instructional material



PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS Part 2: Portfolio Entry Directions, Cover Sheets, and Forms


Entry 3: Integrating Mathematics and Science

In this entry, you submit a 15-minute video recording of and instructional materials for an integrative learning sequence designed to deepen children’s understanding of mathematics and science concepts through unifying concepts and processes in science and to develop children’s skills in using mathematical and scientific ways of observing, thinking, reasoning, and communicating. You provide a Written Commentary analyzing the video recording and instructional materials, including your use of technology to support children’s learning.





V. Assessing Children's Development and Learning







provide opportunities for children to examine, explore, compare, classify, describe, and ask questions about their environment.

design mathematical tasks that engage children in doing mathematics in authentic ways. know unifying mathematical ideas and understand how these big ideas connect

mathematical strands as well as connect essential subject matter facts, concepts, and processes.

are adept at teaching the unifying concepts and themes of science, and they realize the significance of process standards to support those ideas.

understand ways of using inquiry to engage children in hands-on science that supports the learning of scientific concepts and processes.

judiciously select appropriate assessment tools for a given purpose based on a deep understanding of child development and the ways in which they show their subject matter conceptions.

value the thinking processes behind children’s naïve conceptions and design developmentally appropriate learning experiences to help children uncover explanations that are increasingly accurate.

provide tools and technologies that facilitate multiple methods of representation, connections, and communication.

are resourceful in creating, selecting, combining, and adapting a wide variety of appropriate materials that assist children in their development and learning.

ensure that learning experiences are coherent and connected across tasks, lessons, and units.

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create rich environments in which children select from among manipulatives, mathematical tools, and technology as means to solve problems.

deliberately analyze teaching events to guide their consideration of future actions.


Unifying Concepts and Processes in Science and Scientific Inquiry As explained in the National Science Education Standards, unifying concepts and processes cut across the branches of science and inform fundamental understandings of each branch. Examples include

systems, order, and organization; evidence, models, and explanation; constancy, change, and measurement; evolution and equilibrium; form and function.

Descriptions of these examples are included in the Appendix in the excerpted section from Content Standard: K–12 of the National Science Education Standards developed by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Discussions of science education emphasize that there are many contexts and content topics through which to study unifying concepts and processes in science. For example, a teacher may help children understand the use of scientific models and how evidence can be used to test and refine these models. This exploration can be done with equal effectiveness by studying plants, the phases of the moon, or magnets.

The key question for teachers to consider is not What is taught? but How is the topic taught? Teaching children only to name the parts of plants, for example, would not constitute the teaching of unifying concepts and processes. Instruction that helps children understand and examine the relationship between plant structure and how plants grow and survive in their environment, however, can be used to address various unifying concepts and processes in science, depending on the focus of instruction.

It is also important to recognize how children learn science. The National Science Education Standards make clear that it is not sufficient simply to tell children about complex relationships that help them understand the world. Learning science means learning how to

inquire, ask questions, develop models, seek and describe evidence, develop scientific explanations and arguments.

Teaching unifying concepts and processes in science also means teaching children how to explore particular topics through important scientific reasoning processes.

What Do I Need to Do? This entry captures evidence of your ability to plan, describe, implement, illustrate, assess, and reflect on your teaching practice. For the purposes of this entry, “learning sequence” is defined as a series of lessons or activities that are part of a larger unit of instruction.

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In this entry, you

plan and implement an integrative learning sequence, which includes the use of technology, that is designed to deepen children’s understanding of mathematics and science concepts through unifying concepts and processes in science;

engage children in mathematical and scientific ways of observing, thinking, reasoning, and communicating.


One video recording (15 minutes maximum) that demonstrates how you engage all children in your class in a science activity.

Instructional materials. Instructional Material Cover Sheet responses (four cover sheets, 1 page

maximum of responses per cover sheet). Instructional materials (four items, 4 pages maximum combined [1 page

maximum for each material submitted]) related to the segment featured on the video recording and that will help assessors understand what occurred during the learning sequence. Note: At least one of the instructional materials submitted must be related to the mathematics integrated in the learning sequence.

Written Commentary (11 pages maximum) that contextualizes, analyzes, and evaluates the teaching and integration of the math and science instruction.

You are not required to demonstrate the integration of mathematics directly in the video recording, although you may do so if you choose. You must, however, provide evidence of the meaningful integration of mathematics in the context of the science activity featured in the video recording through one or more of the instructional materials you submit and your Written Commentary.



You must submit a video recording, instructional materials, and a Written Commentary. If any component is missing, your response will not be scored.

The student work entry (Portfolio Entry 1) and video recording entries (Portfolio Entries 2 and 3) must be from different lessons and different units of instruction.

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Selecting Unifying Concepts and Processes and a Theme in Science and a Mathematical Application

Choose unifying concepts and processes and a theme in science to address in the learning sequence. Unifying concepts and processes can be studied through many contexts and content topics; basic needs of organisms, properties of objects and materials, or changes in seasons are just a few examples. The important characteristic of the theme for this learning sequence is that acquiring and drawing on unifying concepts and processes in science should enrich the understanding of the theme and the related science and mathematics concepts. Thus, the explorations of the theme and of the unifying concepts and processes should mutually inform one another. Two important things to keep in mind about unifying concepts and processes in science are they (1) cut across the branches of science and (2) inform fundamental understandings of each branch.

For guidance in your choice of unifying concepts and processes and a theme, review the section “Unifying Concepts and Processes in Science and Scientific Inquiry” on page 2-24 and “Excerpts from National Science Education Standards” in the Appendix.

Also select an application of a mathematical concept that can be integrated in a meaningful way into this science learning sequence that will enhance children’s learning. The content you choose should be important to the study of mathematics. Examples may include, but are not limited to, the following: using standard and nonstandard units of measurement, estimating, performing operations, representing data in various ways (e.g., tables, pictographs, bar graphs, line graphs), detecting patterns or trends in data, and applying basic principles of geometry.

Your learning sequence must also incorporate the use of technology to support children’s learning.

Recording Your Video Entry Video-record an activity in which children are engaged in science learning as part of an integrated learning sequence.

Selecting a Video Recording

Choose a whole-class learning experience you wish to record on video in which you show children engaged in science. Remember that the video recording is the only direct evidence of the children’s engagement in this learning sequence. In addition, this video recording must demonstrate how you explore scientific concepts with children. It should also demonstrate how children use scientific ways of observing, thinking, reasoning, and communicating. You want to show the portion of the learning sequence during which children are most meaningfully engaged in learning. For the purposes of this entry, the phrase “meaningful engagement” does not refer to sessions in which children are asked to recall information or to generate the correct answers to teacher questions; rather it refers to exploration, discovery, and talk among children and between you and children in which they express ideas and respond to one another’s ideas. Make sure that it is these moments that appear on the video recording, not the introduction to the teaching/learning or the transition to activities. This also means that assessors need to be able to hear the children on the video recording and not just see a wide view of the entire room. It is helpful to make several video recordings before you make your final choice so that assessors can see the best evidence of your practice.

You must have the parents/guardians of all children you plan to include in the video recording complete Student Release Forms before you make any video recordings. You must have any adults who will appear in the video recording (for example, teacher’s aides, parents, student teachers, or colleagues) sign an Adult Release Form prior to recording.

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Video Recording Format Specifications

Your video recording must meet the following requirements: Formats Your video recordings must be submitted as an flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, mpeg, avi, wmv,

mp4, or m4v file.

Compression Settings

The ePortfolio system has a 500 MB file size limit for each file that is uploaded. You must compress larger video files before submission. Please follow the instructions in the “Video Compression Guide”.

Length Submit a video recording that is no longer than 15 minutes. If you submit a longer video recording, only the first 15 minutes will be viewed and scored.

Editing Make sure that your video recording is continuous and unedited. Caution: Stopping and restarting the camera or the sound is regarded as editing.

DO NOT stop and start the camera, except as specified in the entry directions.

DO NOT turn off the microphone during recording.

DO NOT add graphics, titles, or special effects (e.g., fade in/out).

Recording Use a camera angle that includes as many faces of the children in the class as possible. The video recording should show as much of the class as possible, but it is acceptable to focus on a particular child while he or she is talking, singing, or playing an instrument. You must be shown in the video as well.

Make sure that sound quality is good enough that the assessor can understand all of what you say, sing, or play and most of what children say, sing, or play.

Language Show conversations that occur in English unless you registered for World Languages (French or Spanish).

If a small portion of your video occurs in a language other than English and it is important that an assessor understand it, provide a brief description in the Written Commentary of what was communicated.

For advice on recording your lesson, see “Recording Video Entries” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For more information on the use of languages other than English, see “Language Accommodations Policies” in “Phase 1: Prepare” (in Part 1).

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Choosing Instructional Materials You must submit four instructional materials (limited to 1 page each) that support your teaching/learning sequence. You may include a photocopy or a description of relevant materials that will help the assessor understand the content and interactions seen on the video recording. These may include materials related to what came before, during, and/or after the segment on the video recording. Include instructional materials that relate to the activity you are submitting on the video recording. Instructional materials include, but are not limited to, children’s responses, assignments/prompts, visuals, and teacher-generated worksheets.

You must submit at least one instructional material that provides evidence of how you integrated mathematics in the context of the science activity featured in the video.

Instructional Materials Format Specifications

Assemble each set of instructional materials together in the following order:

Instructional Material Cover Sheet (use a new cover sheet for each of the four items of instructional materials)

responses to the questions found on the cover sheet (typed on a separate page, not on the cover sheet)

any relevant instructional materials that would help assessors understand the lesson (handouts, excerpts from teacher guides, instructions to children, copies of projected materials, etc.)

The cover sheet responses you submit must meet the following requirements: Format for responses to cover sheet questions

Type your responses on a separate sheet of paper. Double-space your text; do not use 24-point line spacing.





Labeling Number each of your responses to match the corresponding question number on the cover sheet.

Place your candidate ID number in the upper right corner of the page. Do not include your name.

Page count Submit no more than 1 typed page per cover sheet. Additional pages will not be read.

For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

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The materials you submit must meet the following requirements: Format for instructional materials

Materials must be no larger than 8.5" × 11". If submitting a smaller item (e.g., a photograph), you must photocopy it onto an 8.5" x 11" page or print a digitized image of that smaller item onto an 8.5" x 11" page. Several smaller items can be grouped on a single page.

Note: If an instructional material was created in a multimedia software program (such as PowerPoint presentation software or HyperStudio®), you may format up to six slides on one 8.5" × 11" sheet. Each sheet counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: If an instructional material contains Web pages, each Web page printout (one 8.5" × 11" sheet) counts as 1 page toward your page total. Note: Do not reduce full-sized pages of instructional materials in order to fit more than one instructional material onto a single sheet of paper. Note: If instructional materials that are important for assessors to see are impractical to submit or do not show up clearly in the video recording (e.g., overhead transparency or slide projections, writing on a chalkboard or whiteboard, software, three-dimensional objects), submit a drawing, photocopy, digitized image, photograph, or description/transcription of the material. (If you submit a description/transcription, it must be typed in double-spaced text with 1" margins on all sides using 12-point Times New Roman font.)





Number each item of instructional material and refer to it by number in your Written Commentary.

Page count Submit exactly 4 pages of instructional materials (four items, 1 page for each). Additional pages will not be read. Cover sheets and sheets containing your responses to the questions on the cover sheets do not count toward this total.

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Your Written Commentary must address the italicized questions provided below for each section. Statements in plain text that immediately follow an italicized question help you interpret the question. It is not necessary to include the italicized questions within the body of your response.

Your Written Commentary must be no longer than 11 typed pages. Suggested page lengths are included to help you make decisions about how much to write for each of the four sections. (See “Written Commentary Format Specifications” for more detail.)



What are the number, ages, and grades of the children in the class featured in this entry, and what is the subject matter of the class? (Examples: 12 children in preschool, ages 3 and 4, science and mathematics; 24 children in grade 2, ages 7 and 8, science and mathematics)

What are the relevant characteristics of this class that influenced your instructional strategies for this learning sequence: ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity; the range of abilities of the children; the personality of the class?

What are the relevant characteristics of the children with exceptional needs and abilities. including gifts and talents, or health issues that influenced your planning for this learning sequence (for example, the range of abilities and the cognitive, social/behavioral, attentional, sensory, and/or physical characteristics of the children)? Give any other information that might help the assessor “see” this class.

What are the relevant features of your teaching context that influenced the selection of this learning sequence? This might include other realities of the social and physical teaching context (e.g., available resources and technology, scheduling, space allocation— own classroom or shared space) that are relevant to your response.

What particular instructional challenges does the class chosen for this entry represent? What particular dynamics of the class does an assessor need to know about to understand the sequence of instruction? This might include, but is not limited to, a description of the children’s skills, knowledge, and previous experiences that relates to your teaching.


2. Planning and Instruction


What theme and unifying concepts and processes in science did you address during this learning sequence? Discuss why this theme was selected, the length of time of this sequence, and how it related to the unifying concepts and processes in science you chose.

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How does the selected theme and unifying concepts and processes deepen children's understanding of mathematics and science concepts?

What were your overall math and science goals for the learning sequence? What were your reasons for selecting these goals?

What was the nature and flow of the learning sequence in your instruction? Describe the integration of mathematics and science throughout the learning sequence.

What were your instructional mathematics and science objectives for this learning sequence? What were your reasons for selecting these objectives? Explain the relevance of the mathematics objectives to the science objectives in the learning sequence. What are your plans for assessing children’s knowledge in light of these objectives?

What learning activities/experiences did you choose as a way to achieve your goal(s) and objectives? Why did you choose these learning experiences as a way to achieve your goals? Pay particular attention to children’s knowledge, natural curiosities, and experiences prior to the learning experience, and to the diversity of the children in your classroom.

How have you chosen to integrate technology into this learning sequence? Describe the type of technology(ies) and the methods and rationales for using it. How did this decision to use this particular type of technology enhance your teaching and children’s learning?

What instructional materials and resources were used? What was the rationale for using these materials and resources in your teaching sequence?

Suggested total page length for Planning and Instruction: 4 pages

3. Analysis of the Video Recording

This information focuses on your description and analysis of the teaching/learning shown on the video recording. When citing specific evidence, it may be helpful to assessors if you identify specific locations in the video recording by describing specific dialogue, events, and/or children (e.g., “the girl in the green sweater”). In this section, address the following questions:

Where does the video segment fit in your learning sequence? In other words, what occurred immediately prior to and after the video segment that is important to know in order to understand and interpret the video segment?

What were the specific objectives for the teaching/learning featured on the video recording? Explain how these related to your goals for the entire sequence.

What was the sequence of events seen in the video-recorded lesson? Briefly describe the sequence of events seen in the video recording. Why did you choose to sequence the events this way?

What evidence of inquiry, intellectual engagement, discussion, and content are demonstrated in your video recording? How did you further the children’s knowledge and skills and engage them intellectually?

How does the discussion/activity featured on the video recording reveal children’s reasoning and understanding? Cite specific examples of children’s understanding, misunderstandings, misconceptions, errors, and progress.

How do particular exchanges demonstrate a productive, open, and enriching learning environment? Cite interactions from the video recording that show how you support this climate for learning.

How do you ensure fairness, equity, and access for all of the children in your class? Cite specific examples from the video recording.

Suggested total page length for Analysis of the Video Recording: 4 pages

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4. Reflection


How might you conduct this learning sequence differently if you were to do it again? Explain how this learning sequence did or did not meet your stated goal(s) and objectives and explain how you determined children’s progress as it pertains to your stated goal(s) and objectives.

How did the learning that resulted from the experience featured on the video recording influence subsequent lessons? Explain how, in your subsequent planning and teaching, successes were built upon and missed opportunities were addressed.

Suggested total page length for Reflection: 2 pages















For advice on developing your Written Commentary, see “Writing about Teaching” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Written Materials” i n “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

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Instructional Material COVER SHEET

Instructional Material #:

Do not write or type on this cover sheet in response to the questions below. Provide your responses to the questions contained in the box below in a separate document using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font. Your responses must fit on one page. Group your response sheet directly behind this cover sheet.

1. What is important to know about this one item of instructional material tounderstand what is shown on the video recording?

2. How was this one item of instructional material used?

Group the following with this cover sheet: • Your response sheet• One relevant item of instructional material



CLASSROOM LAYOUT FORM (For Informational Purposes Only)

Please show the physical layout of the “classroom” (i.e., “setting in which t h e instruction took place”) as it appears in the video recording. This visual will provide assessors with a context for the video since the camera cannot capture the whole instruction area a t once.

It is helpful to assessors for you to identify where particular students are located in the room by using the same student identifiers that you refer to in your Written Commentary (e.g., “the girl in the green sweater”).The sketch will not be scored.




Entry 4: Documented Accomplishments: Contributions to Student Learning

In this entry, you illustrate your partnerships with children’s families and community, and your development as a learner and collaborator with other professionals, by submitting descriptions and documentation of your activities and accomplishments in those areas. Your description must make the connection between each accomplishment and its impact on student learning.



II. Partnering with Families and Communities



X. Exemplifying Professionalism and Contributing to the Profession



seek out relevant research in child development and apply that knowledge to meet all children's needs.

understand that establishing reciprocal communication and relationships of trust with families of young children is essential to successful collaboration.

advocate on behalf of young children and their families by engaging colleagues and by networking for information and social support.

employ multiple approaches to learn about how parents perceive their child and what long-term goals they have for their child.

find creative and mutually beneficial ways to partner with collaborators outside the classroom or immediate learning environment.

are adept at working within and beyond their immediate institution to secure resources necessary to ensure the learning of every child.

engage in a variety of reflective processes, individually and with colleagues, collecting information on teaching and young children’s learning that provides a strong basis for analyzing practice and improving subsequent engagement.

use reflection to deepen their understanding of children’s social, cognitive, linguistic, physical, emotional, and ethical development, as well as their subject matter knowledge.

know that systematic reflection not only improves their own work, but also serves as an example that can improve the work of colleagues and thus strengthens practice in the early childhood profession.

are committed to children, families, and colleagues and uphold professionals early childhood codes of ethics in their school, community, and profession.

work with colleagues to construct curricula, plan and implement instruction, and design and evaluate assessments.

use their professional knowledge and standards for ethical practice to articulate their concerns to administrators and school boards to devise creative responses and solutions that safeguard the interests of children, families, and communities.

2-31 © 2015 National Board for Professional Teac hing Standards | All rights reserved.



Your response will be judged on the extent to which it provides clear, consistent, and convincing evidence of your ability to impact children’s learning through your work with families and the community, with colleagues and other professionals, and as a learner.





What Do I Need to Do? This entry captures evidence of the way in which your role as a teacher is broader than your direct interaction with students in your classroom. In your role in your learning community, you work with students wherever learning takes place—be it classroom, resource room, library media center, studio, gymnasium, auditorium, workshop, outdoors, and so on. You also interact with members of the broader community to enhance and support student learning.

In this entry, you demonstrate your commitment to student learning, through your work with students’ families and

community and through your development as a learner and as a collaborator and/or leader;

your commitment, through evidence of your efforts to establish and maintain partnerships with students’ families and the community; through evidence of your growth as a learner; and through work that you do with other teachers at a local, state, or national level;

how what you do outside of the classroom (or beyond explicit student instruction) impacts student learning.

For this entry, you must submit the following: Description and Analysis (a combined total of 10 pages maximum for up to

8 activities or accomplishments). Each Description and Analysis must clearly and specifically describe why each accomplishment is significant in your teaching context and what impact each has had on student learning.

Documentation (a combined total of 16 pages maximum for all accomplishments) that supports the activities or accomplishments that you have chosen to describe. Documentation can take the form of artifact(s), a Communication Log, and/or Verification Form(s).

Reflective Summary (2 pages maximum) that reflects on the significance of your accomplishments taken together and your future plans to improve student learning.

Read all directions for this entry before beginning to work on the individual components of the entry.

You must demonstrate your work in each of three categories: 1. as partner with students’ families and community (current year)2. as learner (within the last five years)3. as collaborator and/or leader (within the last five years)

You may choose to demonstrate discrete accomplishments in each category, or you may address broader accomplishments that cut across multiple categories. While an accomplished response must contain evidence for all three categories, you may submit no more than 8 accomplishments. Your accomplishments must demonstrate an impact (direct or indirect) on student learning. Impact on student learning is meant in a broad sense. Your descriptions of your accomplishments must demonstrate to assessors why or how improved student learning is a likely result. Specific examples of impact, where appropriate, are helpful.

All of the work you submit as part of your response to any entry must be yours and yours alone. For more detailed information, see “Ethics and Collaboration” in “Phase 1: Prepare” (in Part 1) and the National Board’s ethics policy.

Detailed directions for developing each component follow. See “Entry 4 Cover Sheets” for a list of the forms required to package and submit your materials.

You must submit Description and Analysis, documentation, and a Reflective Summary. If any component is missing, your response will not be scored.




Writing Description and Analysis The Description and Analysis of each accomplishment should clearly and specifically explain what the accomplishment is and why it is significant in your teaching context, including how it has had an impact on student learning.

You are allowed to submit a maximum of 8 accomplishments and must describe them within a maximum of 10 pages of Description and Analysis.

Describe the accomplishments that you have chosen so that someone who does not know you or your teaching context can appreciate the significance and impact of what you have described. Explain acronyms used in your school or district, as they may not be familiar to assessors who work in different contexts.

Make your Description and Analysis specific because accomplishments often sound alike, and their actual significance in a particular place and time may not be clear just from their names or brief descriptions. You must describe what is important about these accomplishments— that is, tell what the accomplishment is, explain why it is significant, and describe how you know it impacts student learning. All parts of the description—what, why, and how—are important. Assessors should see a clear connection between the Description and Analysis and documentation and a clear connection between the accomplishment and student learning.

Dedicate each Description and Analysis to a single accomplishment. An accomplishment may be a single activity or event, or a set of related activities and events that are logically related to a unified goal or outcome. You may use as few or as many pages as you like for each description—whatever it takes to describe the accomplishment and explain its significance and impact on student learning—as long as the combined total number of pages for all Description and Analysis does not exceed 10 typed pages for up to 8 accomplishments.

You are not permitted to put several unrelated activities under a single accomplishment. If you do so, each activity will be counted as a separate accomplishment.

For each accomplishment you choose, you must write a Description and Analysis that answers EACH of the following questions. Provide this information in addition to the context that you supply on the Contextual Information Sheet, which focuses on the school or district at large.

What is the nature of this accomplishment? Be very specific. Remember that the assessor will know nothing about you or your teaching context.

Why is this accomplishment significant? To be significant, the accomplishment must be an important effort or achievement that demonstrates your work as a partner with students’ families and their community; as a learner; and as a collaborator and/or leader with colleagues or other professionals.

How has what you have described had an impact on students’ learning? You need to connect your accomplishment to the learning of your students or the students of your colleagues. Where appropriate, cite specific examples.

You must provide supporting documentation for each Description and Analysis. Details on how to choose your accomplishments or activities and the types of documentation you may submit are provided later in these entry directions.




Description and Analysis Format Specifications

Your Description and Analysis must meet the following requirements: Language Write in English.

Format Type your responses on a separate sheet of paper. Double-space your text; do not use 24- point line spacing.


Materials will be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word, Open Office or PDF file. Page size must be 8.5" × 11" with 1" margins on all sides.



Label to indicate the number of the accomplishment. Place a title at the top of the first page of each Description and Analysis, specifying the accomplishment number (e.g., “Accomplishment #1”).

Page count In a Description and Analysis, a “full page” is a page that is more than 50% text; a “half page” is a page that is 50% or less text. Given these definitions, your Description and Analysis may be more than 10 pages if you choose to begin the Description and Analysis of each accomplishment on a separate page; however, you are not required to do so. It is permissible to provide the Description and Analysis of more than one accomplishment on a single page as long as you precede the Description and Analysis for each accomplishment with an identifier such as “Accomplishment #1”. Regardless, the total amount of text must not exceed 10 pages.

Submit no more than 10 pages in total.

For more information about writing your Description and Analysis, see “Writing about Teaching” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Formatting Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

Collecting Documentation of Accomplishments

Choosing Your Accomplishments

Choose activities and accomplishments carefully, because the Standards on which this entry is based value those activities that have both significance in your teaching context and a positive impact on student learning.

The following procedures are designed to help you choose the most appropriate accomplishments:

With you and your teaching context in mind, read “Standards Measured by Entry 4” (at the beginning of this entry) and the scoring criteria provided in the Scoring Guide for Candidates.




Think of all your activities and accomplishments that might be relevant to the Standards for this entry.

Carefully review the three categories of accomplishments for which you require documentation.

Begin to list your activities and accomplishments that seem relevant to the three categories and to meeting the Standards for this entry.

Consider all possible resources when writing your initial list: your files, professional colleagues, family, personnel folder, old calendars, previous years’ planning books, and so on.

Once your initial list is complete, think about what documentation you can provide to support your accomplishment.

When selecting your accomplishments, consider the following three categories of involvement that must be addressed:

1. Teacher as partner with students’ families and community: Provide evidence ofhow you value parents and other interested adults as partners in your students’development and education; how you facilitate ongoing, mutually beneficialinteractions between the students and the wider community; and how you foster two- way dialogue with parents and other interested adults. You also need to show howyour interactions impact student learning. (In the current year)

2. Teacher as learner: Provide evidence of how you have engaged in ongoingprofessional development strengthening your knowledge, skills, and abilities relevantto your teaching context (e.g., how you seek information on current theories andresearch—and their applications—through familiarity with professional literature;participate in and support professional organizations; or take advanced course workrelevant to your teaching and learning context). You also need to show how theseactivities impact student learning. (Within the last five years)

3. Teacher as collaborator and/or leader: Provide evidence that you have workedcollaboratively with colleagues and that you have shared your expertise in aleadership role with other educators to improve teaching and student learning withinthe school or in the wider professional community. (Within the last five years)

You do not have to have separate accomplishments for each of these categories; in fact, you may find that many of your accomplishments overlap the categories.

The Documented Accomplishments Categories Diagram below provides one way of thinking about how the three categories intersect and overlap. This diagram is not prescriptive, but it may help you think about your activities outside the classroom in as wide a manner as possible. For example, the category of teacher as learner might include documentation describing how you improved your understanding of teaching skills or your content knowledge in an area that you teach or how you sought to better understand your students. The diagram shows how the aspects of your work outside the classroom might overlap.

This diagram is meant to be an aid to identifying and categorizing the different kinds of activities in which you engage outside the classroom. It is also designed to show how you can submit one accomplishment that addresses more than one category.




Remember, accomplishments relating to your work with students’ families and the community must come from the current year (i.e., for the 12 months preceding the opening of your ePortfolio submission window) AND accomplishments relating to your work as a learner and collaborator and/or leader must come from within the five years preceding the opening of your ePortfolio submission window. You are not required to cite accomplishments spanning all of the last five years, nor are you required to cite accomplishments for each individual year of the five-year period.

The Categories Chart

To help you make your final selections, we encourage you to use a Documented Accomplishments Categories Chart like the one that follows to track and organize your accomplishments and the related documentation. Write down the significance and impact of each accomplishment before you decide which activities and accomplishments to submit. Remember that the emphasis is on significance and impact, not on quantity. If you cannot complete the boxes on the chart for a particular accomplishment, it is probably not a good choice to submit for this entry.

This chart is organized into categories that help you think about the different areas in which you work outside the classroom to improve student learning. Your accomplishments might overlap more than one category.




Documented Accomplishments Categories Chart

Category— Accomplishments that demonstrate . . .

Activity Significance Impact on Student Learning

Documentation

Your work with the families and community of your students (in current year)

Your development as a learner (within last five years)

Your work as a collaborator and/or leader (within last five years)

Some activities in which all teachers must engage may not make the best examples of accomplishments for this entry unless you perform them in a way or to a degree that makes them very effective in promoting students’ learning. For example, almost all teachers are required to attend an open house for parents each new school year. This is, of course, a form of communication with parents and caregivers. In and of itself, this activity shows little or no significant accomplishment or impact, because according to the Standards, it is both routine and required. However, if your contribution to the open-house night went beyond the routine, making it an effective avenue to engage parents about their child’s learning, you should make that very clear in your Description and Analysis.

Not everything you do outside the classroom is appropriate for this entry. For example, community volunteer work or personal interests are worthwhile endeavors, but for those activities to be valued in this entry, your involvement must have had an impact on student learning.

On the other hand, if you have been involved in an activity that has had great impact on student learning, you must discuss that impact and how it made a difference in student learning to provide the necessary evidence for an accomplished score. Assessors are trained not to make inferences in this area; you must clearly describe the impact on student learning.

Choosing Your Documentation Carefully select and organize the documentation for each accomplishment that you feature. Documentation is defined as evidence that verifies that you have done what you say you have done in the Description and Analysis. Assessors do not evaluate the documentation; they are looking only for a clear connection between documentation and your accomplishment. You are allowed to submit a maximum of 16 pages of documentation for this entry. Therefore, be selective and make each choice count.

The accomplishments you feature may involve a set of activities or events all related to a unified goal or outcome. Such complex accomplishments may require lengthy descriptions in which you detail all or most of the steps taken or activities in which you were engaged. It is not necessary to provide a specific piece of documentation for every part of a complex accomplishment as long as the documentation you choose to submit supports the overall picture painted by your Description and Analysis. For example, you may have attended multiple workshops addressing a single topic, such as classroom management or a new area of curriculum. You do not need to provide documentation that you attended each and every workshop. Because of page-number limitations, perhaps a better choice would be documentation of your attendance at one workshop, followed by documentation that shows your growth in understanding and the new skills you acquired over the course of prolonged study. You must submit documentation for each accomplishment, but you may choose the type of documentation that is best suited to that accomplishment and that most clearly




communicates the nature of your accomplishment. There are three types of documentation that you can submit: artifact(s), Verification Form(s), and a communication log.

Artifacts

What they are These are documents produced by engaging in such activities as writing an article, developing a newsletter, receiving a letter from a parent, or presenting a workshop.

You may wish to provide documents that support descriptions of curricula, professional articles or other publications, workshops or presentations that you developed or conducted, grant proposal abstracts, or syllabi for professional classes you have taught.

Guidelines for use

For long artifacts, such as publications (e.g., an article or newsletter), you may submit the title page only.

For multiple artifacts such as correspondence with parents, one or two letters may suffice.

Confirm that your name and the date of the accomplishment appear on one of the pages of the artifact you are submitting to document an accomplishment. If they do not appear on the artifact, submit a Verification Form in addition to your artifact to strengthen your evidence.

Verification Forms

What they are These are forms completed by colleagues, parents, or others who comment on your description of an accomplishment and confirm its accuracy.

When they are required

You do not need to submit a Verification Form for every accomplishment. Generally, you would submit either an artifact or a Verification Form with each activity or accomplishment.

However, if your artifact does not provide enough of the required information (as described in “Documentation Format Specifications” below), submit both your artifact and a Verification Form to validate your activity or accomplishment.

Further, if you do not have an artifact at all—that is, if an activity or accomplishment does not leave a paper trail of supporting documents that you could photocopy and submit as documentation—you must submit a Verification Form to document your activity or accomplishment.

Guidelines for use

When you determine that you should submit a Verification Form, you must find someone who has firsthand knowledge of the accomplishment you are describing. Example: If you have mentored a new teacher in your school, your verifier would have firsthand knowledge of your work with that new teacher. The verifier need not be a supervisor or someone in authority in your school or district; for example, a parent or student could be a verifier.

Note: If a parent or student is a verifier, his or her last name should appear on the Verification Form.

A single verifier is sufficient for any one accomplishment. The same person may not verify more than one accomplishment per category.

Fill out the top section of the Verification Form prior to requesting that the verifier sign the form. Use the space provided to describe the accomplishment you have chosen to submit. You may type or handwrite this information on the form. If you type, you may single-space the text using 12-point Times New Roman font.

When you provide your verifier with the Verification Form, you must also provide the Verification Cover Letter. Please direct the verifier to read the cover letter (which asks the verifier to attest to the accuracy of your

description); read the top half of the form (which you have already completed); complete the bottom section of the form (including the date); return the form to you.

The Verification Cover Letter and Verification Form are provided in the “Cover Sheets” section.




Communication Log

What this is This is a running log for the current school year in which you can briefly record pertinent information shared with or about students’ families at the time of the communication. It may be difficult to document some activities and accomplishments with an artifact or a Verification Form because of the nature of communications with families and others outside your classroom. A communication log provides one way to track your contacts with people outside the classroom concerning your students and their learning, and that shows you have gone above and beyond routine efforts to build communication.

See an example of a page from a completed communication log as well as a blank communication log below. You can use these as guides if you decide to create your own log.

A communication log includes each of the following pieces of information: dates of communication participants (delete last names to preserve confidentiality) descriptions of the nature of each contact, its purpose(s), and/or its outcome(s)

Each entry in a communication log can be short but must be specific. Assessors look for information regarding the variety of communications you make and the frequency with which you communicate with other people about your students. Be sure to record not just outgoing communications but those you receive from others who are significant in students’ lives.

Guidelines for use

A communication log is not mandatory, but we encourage you to submit a sampling of pages from one if you use one. Select pages that demonstrate the variety of communication you have with families and other parties.

Whether you submit originals or photocopies of your communication log pages, what you submit must be legible. If you are unable to make legible photocopies, you may transcribe the information from your communication log pages onto either the blank communication log provided or sheets that you create using the sample communication log as a model.

Cautions

You may not reduce full-size pages of text or images in order to fit more than 1 page of text/images onto a single page. For example, do not reduce 2 full pages of text in order to place both on a single page. Doing so would reduce the font to smaller than 12 point and make it difficult for assessors to read. If the print is so small that it cannot be read, that page will not be scored. If you submit pages in a reduced format, assessors will count that page as 2 pages.You may, however, place more than one small piece of documentation related to the same accomplishment on the same page. For example, if you wrote a journal article, you could reduce the title page and part of the first page of the article slightly in order to fit them on a single page.Regardless of whether or not a piece of documentation has been reduced in size, if the text is illegible, assessors will not read it, and it will not count in your score.

A curriculum vitae or résumé is not a good choice for documentation because it lacks descriptions to place the activities and accomplishments in context or to explain their significance. In addition, using a curriculum vitae or résumé would still require you to attach additional documentation in support of the particular accomplishments that you wished to highlight. Furthermore, the curriculum vitae or résumé itself would count as pages in your response.




Sample of Communication Log

Datemm/dd/yy

Contact Type of Communication (telephone, written, e-mail, or in person)

Nature of Communication (reason for communication, outcome of communication)

3/6 Juan’s father Phone call Juan has been showing dramatic progress. Spoke with father to encourage his continued support.

3/10 Tara’s mother Phone call Tara’s mother called me with some concerns about Tara’s behavior at home. We discussed her incomplete class work. I suggested a reward system.

3/11 Felicia’s parents E-mail Felicia’s parents responded to my initial request to all parents for information about their children. Learned that Felicia loves science!

3/13 PTA president E-mail Sent draft agenda for Family Math Night; scheduled appointment to plan activities and determine materials that we need.

3/20 All parents Newsletter Sent newsletter home and invited parents to attend and assist with upcoming student performances—waiting for responses.

3/23 Justin’s mother In person Justin will be moving into my class. Met with Justin and his mother for a smooth transition. Will call home after two weeks to keep mother informed.

3/27 Rotary Club Phone call Contacted president regarding the group members’ Career Day visit to school.

4/1 Tara’s mother Phone call Tara’s mother called to inform me that Tara’s behavior has improved. I mentioned that Tara had turned in her completed class work.




Communication Log

Datemm/dd/yy






Documentation Format Specifications

Your documentation must meet the following requirements: Language For evidence in a language other than English or the target language, submit a separate

sheet that translates the documentation or verification. This separate sheet will not count toward the total page count for documentation.

Format Make sure documentation is no larger than 8.5" × 11". For larger materials or three- dimensional objects, submit photographs rather than the objects themselves.

Make sure documentation is legible. Multiple pages of evidence should not be reduced to one sheet unless the resulting font size is no smaller than 12 point, nor should small pieces of evidence from different Description and Analysis sets of activities and accomplishments be put on the same page.

Artifacts: Confirm that your name and the date of the accomplishment appear on one page of the artifact you are submitting as documentation for an accomplishment. Your artifact must show your name as evidence that you were responsible for or participated in the work and must show the date of the work. Artifacts not meeting these criteria may be submitted but must be accompanied by a Verification Form. Verification Forms: You may type or handwrite this information on the form. If you type, you may use the system default font, size, and spacing. Communications logs: This should be an accurate representation of your outreach with families and the community. Do not “cut and paste” random entries; instead, choose whole pages that best illustrate the interactive communication between you and your students, families, and others interested in students’ learning. Example: You can describe a communication that spans several weeks while submitting only a sample of this communication.


Note: These guidelines are designed to protect the identities of students and to ensure that assessors do not draw conclusions about your response based on ideas about where you teach:

Remove information that identifies you geographically. Do not use the last names of students and their families. Remove information, such as a parent’s last name, that identifies a third party.

Exceptions to anonymity guidelines

You must not remove information that identifies you from the artifact you submit, because assessors must know whose evidence they are evaluating.

Do not remove last names from Verification Forms of colleagues and others who have signed them. For example, if a parent signs a Verification Form, do not remove his or her last name.

Leave last names in place when an artifact is printed matter that is not confidential in nature. For example, do not remove last names from a newspaper article, a journal article, school-board letterhead, and similar documents.

It can be very difficult to remove all traces of school identity from an artifact, since the impact of many school-related documents is at least partly derived from the authority behind the institution. Therefore, it is acceptable to leave in school and institution identifiers if this information is significant.

Labeling Place your candidate ID number in the upper right corner of all pages.

Label to indicate the number of the accomplishment. It is critical that you label every page of documentation so that it is clearly identified as pertaining to a particular accomplishment. At the top of each page of documentation, write “Documentation for Accomplishment #_” and fill in the number of the accomplishment.




Page count Submit no more than 16 pages in total. For this documentation, this means no more than 16 sheets of paper, whether or not each piece of paper has text and/or images on the entire page.

Preparing a Reflective Summary When you finish writing your Description and Analysis and collecting your documentation, critically review the materials and write a 2-page Reflective Summary. The summary should not restate your Description and Analysis; rather, it should analyze the effectiveness of your accomplishments. This is your opportunity to highlight the significance of your accomplishments as a whole and to reflect on them and their impact on student learning.

Respond to the following questions for your Reflective Summary. (It is not necessary to include the italicized questions within the body of your response.)

In your work outside of the classroom (beyond explicit student instruction), what was most effective in impacting student learning? Why?

Considering the patterns evident in all of your accomplishments taken together, what is your plan to further impact student learning in the future?

Reflective Summary Format Specifications

Your Reflective Summary must meet the following requirements: Language Write in English.

Format Type your responses on a separate sheet of paper. Double-space your text; do not use 24- point line spacing.


Materials will be submitted electronically as a Microsoft Word, Open Office or PDF file. Page size must be 8.5" × 11" with 1" margins on all sides.



Page count Submit no more than 2 typed pages in total.

For more information, see “Writing about Teaching” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1). For examples of appropriate line spacing and font formatting, see “Specifications: Formatting Written Materials” in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

2-44 ©2015 National Board for Professional Teac hing Standards | All rights reserved.



Assembling Your Accomplishments and Reflective Summary When you have completed each Description and Analysis, gathered your documentation, and written the Reflective Summary, group the parts of your entry in three files:

Description and Analysis – 10 pages maximum for up to 8 accomplishments Documentation – 16 pages maximum, not counting cover sheets Reflective Summary – 2 pages maximum

Organize these materials within the Documentation file as outlined below so that assessors can easily see how the Description and Analysis and documentation fit together. Assessors are trained to score your entry by first reading the Description and Analysis of an accomplishment and then reviewing the documentation for that accomplishment.

Follow these guidelines to label, number, and insert cover sheets:

Labeling your Description and Analysis. You must label each Description and Analysis with a number that identifies which accomplishment you are describing. Place a title at the top of every page of each Description and Analysis, specifying the accomplishment number (e.g., “Accomplishment #1”).

Labeling your documentation. It is also critical that you label every page of documentation so that it is clearly identified as pertaining to a particular accomplishment. At the top of each page of documentation, write “Documentation for Accomplishment # ” and fill in the number of the accomplishment.

Cover sheets. After you have assembled all of your documentation and numbered the pages, find the Accomplishment Cover Sheet located in the “Cover Sheets and Forms” section that follows the Entry 4 directions. Make multiple copies so that you have a cover sheet for each accomplishment, and number each cover sheet in the space provided. Then insert Accomplishment Cover Sheet #1 in front of the first page of documentation for your first accomplishment. Place Accomplishment Cover Sheet #2 in front of the first page of documentation for your second accomplishment, followed by the page(s) of documentation for your second accomplishment, and so on for the rest of your accomplishments.




Entry 4 Cover Sheets All cover sheets required for this entry are listed in this section. To read and print these documents, you must install Adobe Reader software on your computer. You may download Adobe Reader for free by following the instructions provided on the Adobe Systems website (www.adobe.com).



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Courses


©2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards | All rights reserved.

Accomplishment COVER SHEET

Accomplishment #

Area of accomplishment

The checklist below is intended only to help you confirm for yourself that you have submitted accomplishments in all the categories. Assessors are trained to consider the substance of your accomplishments, not whether you have correctly labeled the ca tego ry .

This accomplishment reflects (check all that apply):

❏ Your work with your students’ families, showing ongoing, interactive, two-waycommunication (current year)

❏ Your work as a learner (within the last five years)

❏ Your work as a leader and collaborator at the local, state, and/or national level

(within the last five years)



VERIFICATION COVER LETTER

Dear Colleague:

The teacher whose name appears on the attached verification form is a participant in the assessment for certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards®. The teacher has been asked to describe his or her accomplishments regarding the Standards for Family and Community Partnerships, Professional Partnerships, and Reflective Practice and to provide documentation of these accomplishments.

The teacher has identified you as someone personally knowledgeable about his or her accomplishments. We would appreciate your help in verifying the accuracy of the candidate’s description of the accomplishments being reported to the National Board. Please read the verification form, which the teacher has prepared. Return the form directly to the candidate. We may need to obtain additional information about these activities from you at a later time. Please call us at 1-800-22TEACH® if you have any questions.

Thank you for your assistance in this important effort.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards


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VERIFICATION FORM Note: You may handwrite or type the information on this form. If you type, you may single-space the text using the system default font. If you handwrite, the form must be digitized prior to entry submission.

To be completed by the candidate:

Candidate Name:

Below, briefly describe the accomplishment(s) being verified by the signer of the form. Explain what the accomplishment is, why it is significant, and how it has impacted student learning.

To be completed by the verifier after the candidate has completed the top section:

Is the candidate’s description of his or her activities accurate? Yes No don’t know

How do you know of these activities?

Signature: Date:

Name (please print):

Title or Position:

Phone Number: ( )

Address:

Please return this completed form directly to the candidate.


Communication Log This log may be used to track your contacts with various people outside the classroom concerning your students and their learning.

Date mm/dd/yy



Copyright © 2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards®. All rights reserved.

Documented Accomplishments Categories Chart Use this chart to help you think about the different areas in which you work outside the classroom to improve student learning. Your accomplishments might overlap more than one category.

Category– Accomplishments that

demonstrate… Activity Significance

Impact on Student Learning

Documentation

Your work with the families and community of your students

(in current year) Your development as a learner

(within last five years) Your work as a collaborator and/or leader

(within last five years)



Early Childhood/Generalist Your Submission at a Glance for EC/Generalist

Your Electronic Submission at a Glance for EC/Generalist

The following chart provides an overview of the EC/Generalist portfolio contents—cover sheets, forms, and the materials you collect and/or prepare—as well as a list of the forms you keep for your records.

Enclosing complete and appropriate materials in the correct order is essential for the proper submission of your portfolio.

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EC/GEN_ESAAG_03 Prepared by Pearson for submission under contract with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards® © 2015 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards | All rights reserved.

Early Childhood/Generalist Electronic Submission at a GlanceSubmit your evidence of accomplished teaching using the ePortfolio system (see the Guide to Electronic Submission). Use this chart to understand how to group your evidence and submit it electronically for the Early Childhood/Generalist portfolio assessment.

Entry 1: Submit 3 files Examining Children's Literacy Development

Entry 2: Submit 5 files Building a Learning Environment

Entry 3: Submit 5 files Integrating Mathematics and Science

Entry 4: Submit 4 files Documented Accomplishments: Contributions to Student Learning

Retain for Your Records

Contextual Information Sheet(s) Written Commentary (13 pages max.)

Student Work Samples Submit 6 work samples in 1 file; based on option selected, 6, 9, or 12 pages max. for all samples combined—cover sheets do not count in page totals

Student 1 Set • 3 Student Work Sample Cover

Sheets each with associatedwork sample

Student 2 Set • 3 Student Work Sample Cover

Sheets each with associatedwork sample

Contextual Information Sheet(s) Written Commentary (12 pages max.) Entry 2 Classroom Layout Form Video recording (15 minutes max.)

Instructional Materials Submit 4 materials in 1 file; 4 pages max. combined—cover sheets and cover sheet responses do not count in page total

Instructional Materials 1–4: 4 Instructional Material Cover Sheets each with associated: • cover sheet response (1 page

max. for each)• instructional material (1 page

max. for each)

Contextual Information Sheet(s) Written Commentary (11 pages max.) Entry 3 Classroom Layout Form Video recording (15 minutes max.)

Instructional Materials Submit materials in 1 file; see “Entry 3: What Do I Need to Do?” in Portfolio Instructions: Part 2 for evidence totals

Instructional Materials: 4 Instructional Material Cover Sheets each with associated: • cover sheet response (1 page

max. for each)• instructional material (1 page

max. for each)

Contextual Information Sheet(s) Description and analysis (10 pages max.) for up to 8 accomplishments Documentation (16 pages max., not counting cover sheets) • Accomplishment Cover Sheet

for each documentedaccomplishment

• Documents: Artifacts,Communication Log, and/orVerification Form(s)

Reflective Summary (2 pages max.)

• Student Release Forms • Adult Release Forms • Verification Cover Letter

Document. Submit as doc, docx, odt, or pdf file. Video recording. Submit as flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, mpeg, avi, wmv, mp4, or m4v file.

uhathbu

New Stamp

STUDENT RELEASE FORM (to be completed either by the parents/legal guardians of minor students who are involved in this project

or by students who are more than 18 years of age and are involved in this project)

Dear Parent/Guardian:

I am a participant this school year in an assessment to certify teachers as outstanding practitioners in teaching. My participation in this assessment, which is being conducted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards® (NBPTS®), is voluntary. The primary purposes of this assessment are to enhance student learning and encourage excellence in teaching.

This assessment requires that I submit short audiovisual recordings and/or photographs of lessons being taught in your child’s class. Although the recordings/photographs will show or involve students, the primary focus is on my instruction, not on the students. In the course of this assessment, your child’s image and voice may be recorded on the video, and your child may be photographed, with the recordings/photographs then submitted to NBPTS. Also, as part of the assessment, I may be asked to submit samples of student work (Student Work) as evidence of teaching practice; that Student Work may include some of your child’s work. No student’s last name will appear on any materials that I submit as part of my assessment.

NBPTS has broad rights to use my Submissions (which include my written commentary sheets, instructional materials, essays, classroom plans, assignments, and comments, but which definition excludes Student Work) and I assign to NBPTS all of my rights in and to the Submissions. NBPTS also obtains certain rights with respect to the Student Work. Specifically, NBPTS may use my Submissions and the Student Work in any way it chooses consistent with the mission of NBPTS, which includes any activity deemed by NBPTS to further education. For instance, without limitation, in addition to uses related to my assessment by NBPTS and its third-party assessors, NBPTS may use and distribute the Submissions and Student Work, such as by posting in a password-protected online database, and grant others the same rights, for educational, research, and professional development purposes, and may use the Submissions and Student Work in NBPTS works and publications. NBPTS may receive fees from those to whom it grants rights related to the Submissions and Student Work. These uses may make my Submissions and the Student Work available for viewing by a broad range of individuals, educators, and students. By providing permission below, you are granting NBPTS a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, and unrestricted license to use any Student Work by your child that I submit as part of my assessment, and to have and to use any copyright, rights of publicity, and other rights associated with any Student Work, and you are releasing NBPTS from all claims (including invasion of privacy) in connection with such use.

If you agree to your child’s participation in the activities as outlined above and NBPTS’s right to use the Submissions and Student Work in the manner described above, please sign the Permission Slip. I will retain this form documenting your permission, but may provide it to NBPTS upon request. If you do not consent to your child’s participation, your child will be out of view in making the recordings and photographs, and I will not include your child’s work in the Student Work I submit. Thank you very much.

Sincerely, (Candidate Signature)


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Student Release Form Permission Slip

Student Name:

School/Teacher:

Your Address:

I am the parent/legal guardian of the child named above. I have received and read your letter regarding a teacher assessment being conducted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and agree to the following:

D I DO give permission to you to record my child’s image and voice on video and take photographs as my child participates in a class conducted

at (Name of School)

by (Teacher’s Name)

and/or to provide NBPTS with copies of materials that my child may produce as part of classroom activities, all on the terms and conditions described above. No last names will appear on any materials submitted to NBPTS.

D I DO NOT give permission to you to record my child’s image or voice or to reproduce materials that my child may produce as part of classroom activities.

Signature of Parent or Guardian:

Date:

I am the student named above and am more than 18 years of age. I have read and understand the project description given above. I understand that my performance is not being evaluated by this project and that my last name will not appear on any materials that may be submitted.

D I DO give permission to you to record my image and voice on video and take photographs of me as I participate in a class conducted

at (Name of School)


and/or to provide NBPTS with copies of materials that I may produce as part of classroom activities, all on the terms and conditions described above.

D I DO NOT give permission to you to record my image or voice or to reproduce materials that I may produce as part of classroom activities.

Signature of Student:

Date: Date of Birth :


FORMULARIO DE AUTORIZACIÓN (para ser completado por padres o tutores de estudiantes menores que participen en este proyecto o por estudiantes mayores de

18 años y que participen en este proyecto)

Estimados padres/tutores: Este año escolar soy uno de los participantes en una evaluación para certificar a maestros como

educadores profesionales destacados. Mi participación en esta evaluación, llevada a cabo por el “National Board for Professional Teaching Standards®” (NBPTS®)/ Comité Nacional de Normas Profesionales para la Enseñanza, es voluntaria. Los objetivos principales de esta evaluación son mejorar el aprendizaje estudiantil y fomentar la excelencia en la enseñanza.

Esta evaluación requiere que yo entregue grabaciones audiovisuales cortas y/o fotografías de las lecciones que se enseñan en la clase de su hijo(a). Aunque las grabaciones o las fotografías mostrarán o incluirán a estudiantes, el enfoque principal será en mi práctica educativa, no en los estudiantes que puedan estar representados. Durante este proyecto, la imagen y la voz de su hijo(a) podrían ser grabadas en el vídeo, y se le podrían sacar unas fotos a su hijo(a), las cuales se entregarán al NBPTS. Además, como parte de la evaluación se me puede pedir que presente muestras del trabajo de los estudiantes (Trabajo Estudiantil) como evidencia de la práctica docente y ese Trabajo Estudiantil podría incluir algún trabajo de su hijo(a). Los apellidos de los estudiantes no aparecerán en ningún material que presente como parte de mi evaluación.

El NBPTS tiene amplios derechos para utilizar mis Entregas (las cuales incluyen mis comentarios escritos, materiales didácticos, ensayos, planes de lecciones, asignaciones y otro material cuya definición no cae en la categoría de Trabajo Estudiantil) y le asigno al NBPTS todos mis derechos en cuanto a estas Entregas. El NBPTS también obtiene ciertos derechos en respecto al Trabajo Estudiantil. En concreto, el NBPTS puede usar mis Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil en cualquier forma que elija en consonancia con la misión del NBPTS, la cual incluye cualquier actividad que se considere por el NBPTS como beneficiosa para promover la educación. Por ejemplo, sin limitaciones, además de los usos relacionados con mi evaluación por NBPTS y sus asesores externos, el NBPTS puede utilizar y distribuir las Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil mediante su publicación en una base de datos por Internet protegida con una contraseña y conceder a otros los mismos derechos con fines educativos, de investigación y desarrollo profesional, y puede utilizar las Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil en obras y publicaciones del NBPTS. El NBPTS puede recibir cuotas o aranceles de aquellos a quienes otorga los derechos relacionados con las Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil. Estos usos pueden hacer que mis Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil estén disponibles para ser consultados por diferentes individuos, educadores y estudiantes. Al dar su permiso abajo, usted otorga al NBPTS una licencia perpetua, irrevocable, sin regalías y sin restricciones para usar cualquier Trabajo Estudiantil llevado a cabo por su hijo(a) que entrego como parte de mi evaluación, además usted otorga el derecho de tener y de usar cualquier derecho de autor, de publicidad, y otros derechos asociados con cualquier Trabajo Estudiantil, y además libera al NBPTS de todas las reclamaciones (incluyendo la invasión de privacidad) en relación con tal uso.

Si está de acuerdo con la participación de su hijo(a) en las actividades descritas arriba y el derecho del NBPTS al uso de las Entregas y el Trabajo Estudiantil de la manera en que se describe arriba, por favor firme la hoja de autorización. Yo retendré este formulario para documentar su permiso, pero se me puede pedir su entrega al NBPTS. Si usted no da su consentimiento para que su hijo(a) participe, su hijo(a) no será incluido(a) cuando se hagan las grabaciones o se tomen las fotografías, y no incluiré el trabajo de su hijo(a) en el Trabajo Estudiantil que yo entregue. Muchas gracias.

Atentamente, (Firma del Candidato/ de la Candidata)


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Hoja de Autorización

Nombre del/de la estudiante:

Escuela/Maestro(a):

Su dirección:

Soy el padre/la madre/ el tutor/la tutora del/de la estudiante mencionado(a) arriba. He recibido y leído su carta acerca de una evaluación para maestros que está siendo conducida por el National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), y estoy de acuerdo con lo siguiente:

D SÍ, autorizo a que se graben la imagen y la voz de mi hijo(a) en videograbaciones y que saquen fotografías cuando mi hijo(a) participa en una clase guiada

en (nombre de la escuela)

por (nombre del maestro/de la maestra)

y/o que se le provea al NBPTS copias de materiales que mi hijo(a) pueda producir como parte de las actividades de clase, tal y como se expresa en los términos y condiciones descritos arriba. No aparecerán apellidos en ninguno de los materiales presentados a NBPTS.

D NO, no autorizo a que se graben ni la imagen ni la voz de mi hijo(a) o que se reproduzcan materiales que mi hijo(a) pueda producir como parte de sus actividades en la clase.

Firma del padre/de la madre, o del tutor/de la tutora:

Fecha:

Soy el estudiante/la estudiante mencionada arriba y soy mayor de 18 años de edad. He leído y entiendo la descripción del proyecto mencionado arriba. Entiendo que mi desempeño no está siendo evaluado en este proyecto y que mi apellido no se mencionará en ninguno de los materiales que puedan ser entregados.

D SÍ, autorizo a que se graben mi imagen y mi voz en videograbaciones y que me saquen fotos cuando participo en una clase guiada

en (nombre de la escuela)

por (nombre del maestro/de la maestra)

y/o que se le provea al NBPTS copias de materiales que yo pueda producir como parte de mis actividades en la clase, tal y como se expresa en los términos y condiciones descritos arriba.

D NO, no autorizo a que se me graben ni la imagen ni la voz en videograbaciones o que se reproduzcan materiales que yo pueda producir como parte de mis actividades en la clase.

Firma del/de la estudiante:

Fecha: Fecha de Nacimiento: / / MM DD AA


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ADULT RELEASE FORM (to be completed by non-students who are involved in this project)

Dear Sir or Madam: I am a participant this school year in an assessment to certify teachers as outstanding practitioners in teaching. My participation in this assessment, which is being conducted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards® (NBPTS®), is voluntary. The primary purposes of this assessment are to enhance student learning and encourage excellence in teaching.

This assessment requires that I submit short audiovisual recordings and/or photographs of lessons being taught in class. Although the recordings/photographs will show or involve students and others, the primary focus is on my instruction. In the course of this assessment, your image and voice may be recorded on the video, and you may be photographed, with the recordings/photographed then submitted to NBPTS.

No last name (other than mine) will appear on any materials that I submit (my Submissions). NBPTS has broad rights to use my Submissions and I assign to NBPTS all of my rights in and to the Submissions. Specifically, NBPTS owns and may use my Submissions in any way it chooses consistent with the mission of NBPTS, which includes any activity deemed by NBPTS to further education. For instance, without limitation, in addition to uses related to my assessment by NBPTS and its third-party assessors, NBPTS may use and distribute the Submissions, such as by posting in a password-protected online database, and grant others the same rights, for educational, research, and professional development purposes, and may use the Submissions in NBPTS works and publications. NBPTS may receive fees from those to whom it grants rights related to the Submissions. These uses may make my Submissions available for viewing by a broad range of individuals, educators, and students.

If you agree to participate in the activities as outlined above and to NBPTS’s right to use the Submissions on the terms and in the manner described above, please sign below. I will retain this form documenting your permission, but may provide it to NBPTS upon request.

Sincerely, (Candidate Signature)

Permission Slip

Name:

Address:

School/Teacher:

I am the person named above. I have received and read your letter regarding a teacher assessment being conducted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and agree to the following:

I DO give permission to you to record my image and voice on video and take photographs of me as a participant in a class conducted

at (Name of School)


as part of classroom activities, and for NBPTS to use any such recordings or photographs on the terms and conditions described above. No last names (other than the teacher’s) will appear on any materials submitted to NBPTS, and I waive any claims or rights that I may have with respect to such recordings or photographs.

I DO NOT give permission to you to record my image and voice as part of classroom activities.

Signature: Date:


Activity Planner Worksheet Use this worksheet to plan your time on each of the activities required to complete your portfolio entries.

ACTIVITY Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5

Read the Standards and all of the portfolio directions. Use as a reference

Plan your calendar and timeline.

Get Student and Adult Release Forms signed, as needed.

Work on the practice activities in “Phase 2: Develop” (in Part 1).

Use your Communication Log for Documented Accomplishments.

Describe your accomplishments and collect documentation for Documented Accomplishments.

Video record classes, and collect student work samples.

Review your video recordings and student work samples.

Select your video recordings and draft your Written Commentaries for them.

Select your student work samples and draft your Written Commentary for them.

Do self-assessment of your entries.

Begin final drafts of your Written Commentaries.

Begin final draft of your Reflective Summary.

Complete final drafts of your Written Commentaries.

Complete final draft of your Reflective Summary.

Gather all materials for the four entries.

Prepare your portfolio and refer to the directions in “Phase 3: Submit” (in Part 1) for important information about organizing, uploading and submitting your portfolio electronically.


Entry Tracking Form This form may be used to keep a record of which students, lessons, and units of instruction you elect to feature in each classroom-based entry.

Your Entry Choices

Entry Unit

(must be three different units)

Lesson Dates Students Featured

Entry 1: (enter title here)




Appendix: Excerpts from National Science Education Standards The material on the following pages is reprinted with permission from the National Science Education Standards, copyright © 2008 by the National Academies Press, Washington, DC.

Please note that the pages that follow are only excerpts from the National Science Education Standards publication, not the entire published document. The pages included in this appendix contain only the information pertinent to completion of the portfolio for the specific certificate area you have chosen to pursue.

You can use the information from these excerpted pages to assist you in completing your portfolio entries. References contained in these excerpted pages are those shown in the original, published document, and do not correspond to information previously shown in the portfolio instructions.

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distinct—teachers should develop students’understandings continuously across grades K-12.

Systems and subsystems, the nature ofmodels, and conservation are fundamentalconcepts and processes included in thisstandard. Young students tend to interpretphenomena separately rather than in termsof a system. Force, for example, isperceived as a property of an object ratherthan the result of interacting bodies.Students do not recognize the differencesbetween parts and whole systems, but viewthem as similar. Therefore, teachers ofscience need to help students recognize theproperties of objects, as emphasized ingrade-level content standards, whilehelping them to understand systems.

As another example, students in middleschool and high school view models asphysical copies of reality and not asconceptual representations. Teachers shouldhelp students understand that models aredeveloped and tested by comparing the modelwith observations of reality.

Teachers in elementary grades shouldrecognize that students’ reports of changes insuch things as volume, mass, and space canrepresent errors common to well-recognizeddevelopmental stages of children.

GUIDE TO THE CONTENT STANDARDSome of the fundamental concepts that

underlie this standard are

SYSTEMS, ORDER, AND ORGANIZATION

The natural and designed world is complex; itis too large and complicated to investigate andcomprehend all at once. Scientists andstudents learn to define small portions for theconvenience of investigation. The units ofinvestigation can be referred to as “systems.”A system is an organized group of relatedobjects or components that form a whole.

Systems can consist, for example, oforganisms, machines, fundamental particles,galaxies, ideas, numbers, transportation, andeducation. Systems have boundaries,components, resources flow (input andoutput), and feedback.

The goal of this standard is to think andanalyze in terms of systems. Thinking andanalyzing in terms of systems will helpstudents keep track of mass, energy, objects,organisms, and events referred to in the othercontent standards. The idea of simple systemsencompasses subsystems as well as identifyingthe structure and function of systems,feedback and equilibrium, and the distinctionbetween open and closed systems.

Science assumes that the behavior of theuniverse is not capricious, that nature is thesame everywhere, and that it isunderstandable and predictable. Students candevelop an understanding of regularities insystems, and by extension, the universe; theythen can develop understanding of basic laws,theories, and models that explain the world.

Newton’s laws of force and motion, Kepler’slaws of planetary motion, conservation laws,Darwin’s laws of natural selection, and chaostheory all exemplify the idea of order andregularity. An assumption of order establishesthe basis for cause-effect relationships andpredictability.

Prediction is the use of knowledge toidentify and explain observations, or changes,in advance. The use of mathematics,especially probability, allows for greater orlesser certainty of predictions. [See ProgramStandard C]

Order—the behavior of units of matter,objects, organisms, or events in the universe—can be described statistically. Probability is therelative certainty (or uncertainty) thatindividuals can assign to selected eventshappening (or not happening) in aspecified space or time. In science,


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reduction of uncertainty occurs throughsuch processes as the development ofknowledge about factors influencingobjects, organisms, systems, or events;better and more observations; and betterexplanatory models.

Types and levels of organization provideuseful ways of thinking about the world.Types of organization include the periodictable of elements and the classification oforganisms. Physical systems can be describedat different levels of organization—such asfundamental particles, atoms, and molecules.Living systems also have different levels oforganization—for example, cells, tissues,organs, organisms, populations, andcommunities. The complexity and number offundamental units change in extendedhierarchies of organization. Within thesesystems, interactions between componentsoccur. Further, systems at different levels oforganization can manifest different propertiesand functions.

EVIDENCE, MODELS, AND

EXPLANATION Evidence consists ofobservations and data on which to basescientific explanations. Using evidence tounderstand interactions allows individuals topredict changes in natural and designedsystems.[See Content Standard A (all gradelevels)]

Models are tentative schemes or structuresthat correspond to real objects, events, orclasses of events, and that have explanatorypower. Models help scientists and engineersunderstand how things work. Models takemany forms, including physical objects, plans,mental constructs, mathematical equations,and computer simulations.

Scientific explanations incorporate existingscientific knowledge and new evidence fromobservations, experiments, or models into

internally consistent, logical statements.Different terms, such as “hypothesis,”“model,” “law,” “principle,” “theory,” and“paradigm” are used to describe various typesof scientific explanations. As students developand as they understand more science concepts

As students develop and...understand

more science concepts and processes,

their explanations should become

more sophisticated...frequently

reflecting a rich scientific knowledge

base, evidence of logic, higher levels

of analysis, and greater tolerance of

criticism and uncertainty.

and processes, their explanations shouldbecome more sophisticated. That is, theirscientific explanations should more frequentlyinclude a rich scientific knowledge base,evidence of logic, higher levels of analysis,greater tolerance of criticism and uncertainty,and a clearer demonstration of therelationship between logic, evidence, andcurrent knowledge.

CONSTANCY, CHANGE, AND

MEASUREMENT Although most things arein the process of becoming different—changing—some properties of objects andprocesses are characterized by constancy,including the speed of light, the charge ofan electron, and the total mass plus energyin the universe. Changes might occur, forexample, in properties of materials,position of objects, motion, and form andfunction of systems. Interactions withinand among systems result in change.Changes vary in rate, scale, and pattern,


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EVOLUTION AND EQUILIBRIUMEvolution is a series of changes, some gradualand some sporadic, that accounts for thepresent form and function of objects,organisms, and natural and designed systems.The general idea of evolution is that thepresent arises from materials and forms of thepast. Although evolution is most commonlyassociated with the biological theoryexplaining the process of descent withmodification of organisms from commonancestors, evolution also describes changes inthe universe.[See Content Standard C (grades 9-12)]

Equilibrium is a physical state in whichforces and changes occur in opposite and off-setting directions: for example, opposite forcesare of the same magnitude, or off-settingchanges occur at equal rates. Steady state,balance, and homeostasis also describeequilibrium states. Interacting units of mattertend toward equilibrium states in which theenergy is distributed as randomly anduniformly as possible.FORM AND FUNCTION Form and functionare complementary aspects of objects,organisms, and systems in the natural anddesigned world. The form or shape of anobject or system is frequently related to use,operation, or function. Function frequentlyrelies on form. Understanding of form andfunction applies to different levels oforganization. Students should be able toexplain function by referring to form andexplain form by referring to function.[SeeContent Standard C (grades 5-8)]makingmodels.


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Full inquiry involves asking a simple

question, completing an investigation,

answering the question, and presenting the

results to others. In elementary grades,

students begin to develop the physical and

intellectual abilities of scientific inquiry.

They can design investigations to try things

to see what happens—they tend to focus on

concrete results of tests and will entertain

the idea of a “fair” test (a test in which only

one variable at a time is changed). However,

children in K-4 have difficulty with

experimentation as a process of testing

ideas and the logic of using evidence to

formulate explanations.

GUIDE TO THE CONTENT STANDARDFundamental abilities and concepts

that underlie this standard include

ABILITIES NECESSARY TO DO

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

ASK A QUESTION ABOUT OBJECTS ,

ORGANISMS, AND EVENTS IN THE

ENVIRONMENT. This aspect of the

standard emphasizes students asking

questions that they can answer with

scientific knowledge, combined with

their own observations. Students should

answer their questions by seeking

information from reliable sources of

scientific information and from their

own observations and investigations.

PLAN AND CONDUCT A SIMPLE

INVESTIGATION. In the earliest years,

investigations are largely based on systematic

observations. As students develop, they may

design and conduct simple experiments to

answer questions. The idea of a fair test is

possible for many students to consider by

fourth grade.

EMPLOY SIMPLE EQUIPMENT AND

TOOLS TO GATHER DATA AND EXTEND

THE SENSES. In early years, students

develop simple skills, such as how to

observe, measure, cut, connect, switch, turn

on and off, pour, hold, tie, and hook.

Beginning with simple instruments,

students can use rulers to measure the

length, height, and depth of objects and

materials; thermometers to measure

temperature; watches to measure time;

beam balances and spring scales to measure

weight and force; magnifiers to observe

objects and organisms; and microscopes to

observe the finer details of plants, animals,

rocks, and other materials. Children also

develop skills in the use of computers and

calculators for conducting investigations.

USE DATA TO CONSTRUCT A REASON-

ABLE EXPLANATION. This aspect of the

standard emphasizes the students’ thinking

as they use data to formulate explanations.

Even at the earliest grade levels, students

should learn what constitutes evidence and

judge the merits or strength of the data and

information that will be used to make

explanations. After students propose an

explanation, they will appeal to the knowledge

and evidence they obtained to support their

explanations. Students should check their

explanations against scientific knowledge,

experiences, and observations of others.

COMMUNICATE INVESTIGATIONS AND

EXPLANATIONS. Students should begin

developing the abilities to communicate,

critique, and analyze their work and the

work of other students. This communication

might be spoken or drawn as well as

written.

See Teaching

Standard B


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UNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

■ Scientific investigations involve asking and

answering a question and comparing the

answer with what scientists already know

about the world.

■ Scientists use different kinds of investiga-

tions depending on the questions they are

trying to answer. Types of investigations

include describing objects, events, and

organisms; classifying them; and doing a

fair test (experimenting).

■ Simple instruments, such as magnifiers,

thermometers, and rulers, provide more

information than scientists obtain using

only their senses.

■ Scientists develop explanations using

observations (evidence) and what they

already know about the world (scientific

knowledge). Good explanations are based

on evidence from investigations.

■ Scientists make the results of their

investigations public; they describe the

investigations in ways that enable others

to repeat the investigations.

■ Scientists review and ask questions about

the results of other scientists’ work.

Physical ScienceCONTENT STANDARD B:

As a result of the activities in

grades K-4, all students should

develop an understanding of

■ Properties of objects and materials

■ Position and motion of objects

■ Light, heat, electricity, and magnetism

DEVELOPING STUDENTUNDERSTANDING

During their early years, children’s natural

curiosity leads them to explore the world by

observing and manipulating common objects

and materials in their environment. Children

compare, describe, and sort as they begin to

form explanations of the world. Developing a

subject-matter knowledge base to explain and

predict the world requires many experiences

over a long period. Young children bring

experiences, understanding, and ideas to

school; teachers provide opportunities to con-

tinue children’s explorations in focused set-

tings with other children using simple tools,

such as magnifiers and measuring devices.

Physical science in grades K-4 includes

topics that give students a chance to increase

their understanding of the characteristics of

objects and materials that they encounter

daily. Through the observation, manipula-

tion, and classification of common objects,

children reflect on the similarities and

differences of the objects. As a result, their

initial sketches and single-word descriptions

lead to increasingly more detailed drawings

and richer verbal descriptions. Describing,

grouping, and sorting solid objects and

materials is possible early in this grade

range. By grade 4, distinctions between the

properties of objects and materials can be

understood in specific contexts, such as a set

of rocks or living materials.

Young children begin their study of matter

by examining and qualitatively describing

objects and their behavior. The important

but abstract ideas of science, such as atomic

structure of matter and the conservation of

Full inquiry involves asking a simplequestion, completing an investigation,answering the question, andpresenting the results to others.

See Program

Standard C

See Content

Standard G

(grades K-4)


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energy, all begin with observing and keeping

track of the way the world behaves. When

carefully observed, described, and measured,

the properties of objects, changes in

properties over time, and the changes that

occur when materials interact provide the

necessary precursors to the later

introduction of more abstract ideas in the

upper grade levels.

Students are familiar with the change of

state between water and ice, but the idea of

liquids having a set of properties is more

nebulous and requires more instructional

effort than working with solids. Most

students will have difficulty with the

generalization that many substances can

exist as either a liquid or a solid. K-4

students do not understand that water exists

as a gas when it boils or evaporates; they are

more likely to think that water disappears or

goes into the sky. Despite that limitation,

students can conduct simple investigations

with heating and evaporation that develop

inquiry skills and familiarize them with the

phenomena.

When students describe and manipulate

objects by pushing, pulling, throwing, drop-

ping, and rolling, they also begin to focus

on the position and movement of objects:

describing location as up, down, in front, or

behind, and discovering the various kinds

of motion and forces required to control it.

By experimenting with light, heat, electricity,

magnetism, and sound, students begin to

understand that phenomena can be

observed, measured, and controlled in

various ways. The children cannot under-

stand a complex concept such as energy.

Nonetheless, they have intuitive notions of

energy — for example, energy is needed to

get things done; humans get energy from

food. Teachers can build on the intuitive

notions of students without requiring them

to memorize technical definitions.

Sounds are not intuitively associated with

the characteristics of their source by

younger K-4 students, but that association

can be developed by investigating a variety

of concrete phenomena toward the end of

the K-4 level. In most children’s minds,

electricity begins at a source and goes to a

target. This mental model can be seen in

students’ first attempts to light a bulb using

a battery and wire by attaching one wire to a

bulb. Repeated activities will help students

develop an idea of a circuit late in this grade

range and begin to grasp the effect of more

than one battery. Children cannot distinguish

between heat and temperature at this age;

therefore, investigating heat necessarily must

focus on changes in temperature.

As children develop facility with language,

their descriptions become richer and

include more detail. Initially no tools need

to be used, but children eventually learn

that they can add to their descriptions by

measuring objects—first with measuring

devices they create and then by using

conventional measuring instruments, such

as rulers, balances, and thermometers. By

recording data and making graphs and

charts, older children can search for patterns

and order in their work and that of their

peers. For example, they can determine the

speed of an object as fast, faster, or fastest in

the earliest grades. As students get older,

they can represent motion on simple grids

and graphs and describe speed as the

distance traveled in a given unit of time.


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GUIDE TO THE CONTENT STANDARDFundamental concepts and principles


PROPERTIES OF OBJECTS AND

MATERIALS

■ Objects have many observable properties,

including size, weight, shape, color,

temperature, and the ability to react with

other substances. Those properties can be

measured using tools, such as rulers,

balances, and thermometers.

■ Objects are made of one or more materials,

such as paper, wood, and metal. Objects

can be described by the properties of the

materials from which they are made, and

those properties can be used to separate

or sort a group of objects or materials.

■ Materials can exist in different states—

solid, liquid, and gas. Some common mate-

rials, such as water, can be changed from

one state to another by heating or cooling.

POSITION AND MOTION OF

OBJECTS

■ The position of an object can be described

by locating it relative to another object or

the background.

■ An object’s motion can be described

by tracing and measuring its position

over time.

■ The position and motion of objects can

be changed by pushing or pulling. The

size of the change is related to the strength

of the push or pull.

■ Sound is produced by vibrating objects.

The pitch of the sound can be varied by

changing the rate of vibration.

LIGHT, HEAT, ELECTRICIT Y, AND

MAGNETISM

■ Light travels in a straight line until it

strikes an object. Light can be reflected

by a mirror, refracted by a lens, or

absorbed by the object.

■ Heat can be produced in many ways, such

as burning, rubbing, or mixing one sub-

stance with another. Heat can move from

one object to another by conduction.

■ Electricity in circuits can produce light,

heat, sound, and magnetic effects.

Electrical circuits require a complete

loop through which an electrical current

can pass.

■ Magnets attract and repel each other and

certain kinds of other materials.

Life ScienceCONTENT STANDARD C:

As a result of activities in grades

K-4 , all students should develop

understanding of

■ The characteristics of organisms

■ Life cycles of organisms

■ Organisms and environments


During the elementary grades, children

build understanding of biological concepts

through direct experience with living things,

their life cycles, and their habitats. These

experiences emerge from the sense of

wonder and natural interests of children who

ask questions such as: “How do plants get

food? How many different animals are there?

Why do some animals eat other animals?

What is the largest plant? Where did the

dinosaurs go?” An understanding of the

characteristics of organisms, life cycles of


6

organisms, and of the complex interactions

among all components of the natural

environment begins with questions such as

these and an understanding of how individual

organisms maintain and continue life.

Making sense of the way organisms live in

their environments will develop some

understanding of the diversity of life and how

all living organisms depend on the living and

nonliving environment for survival. Because

the child’s world at grades K-4 is closely

associated with the home, school, and

immediate environment, the study of

organisms should include observations and

interactions within the natural world of the

child. The experiences and activities in grades

K-4 provide a concrete foundation for the

progressive development in the later grades of

major biological concepts, such as evolution,

heredity, the cell, the biosphere,

interdependence, the behavior of organisms,

and matter and energy in living systems.

Children’s ideas about the characteristics of

organisms develop from basic concepts of

living and nonliving. Piaget noted, for

instance, that young children give

anthropomorphic explanations to organisms.

In lower elementary grades, many children

associate “life” with any objects that are active

in any way. This view of life develops into one

in which movement becomes the defining

characteristic. Eventually children incorporate

other concepts, such as eating, breathing, and

reproducing to define life. As students have a

variety of experiences with organisms, and

subsequently develop a knowledge base in the

life sciences, their anthropomorphic

attributions should decline.

In classroom activities such as classification,

younger elementary students generally use

mutually exclusive rather than hierarchical

categories. Young children, for example, will

use two groups, but older children will use

several groups at the same time. Students do

not consistently use classification schemes

similar to those used by biologists until the

upper elementary grades.

As students investigate the life cycles of

organisms, teachers might observe that

young children do not understand the

continuity of life from, for example, seed to

seedling or larvae to pupae to adult. But

teachers will notice that by second grade,

most students know that children resemble

their parents. Students can also differentiate

learned from inherited characteristics.

However, students might hold some naive

thoughts about inheritance, including the

belief that traits are inherited from only one

parent, that certain traits are inherited

exclusively from one parent or the other, or

that all traits are simply a blend of

characteristics from each parent.

Young children think concretely about

individual organisms. For example, animals

are associated with pets or with animals kept

in a zoo. The idea that organisms depend on

their environment (including other organ-

isms in some cases) is not well developed in

young children. In grades K-4, the focus

should be on establishing the primary associ-

ation of organisms with their environments

and the secondary ideas of dependence on

various aspects of the environment and of

behaviors that help various animals survive.

Lower elementary students can understand

the food link between two organisms.


7



THE CHARACTERISTICS OF

ORGANISMS

■ Organisms have basic needs. For example,

animals need air, water, and food; plants

require air, water, nutrients, and light.

Organisms can survive only in environ-

ments in which their needs can be met.

The world has many different environ-

ments, and distinct environments support

the life of different types of organisms.

■ Each plant or animal has different

structures that serve different functions

in growth, survival, and reproduction.

For example, humans have distinct body

structures for walking, holding, seeing,

and talking.

■ The behavior of individual organisms is

influenced by internal cues (such as

hunger) and by external cues (such as a

change in the environment). Humans and

other organisms have senses that help

them detect internal and external cues.

LIFE CYCLES OF ORGANISMS

■ Plants and animals have life cycles that

include being born, developing into

adults, reproducing, and eventually

dying. The details of this life cycle are

different for different organisms.

■ Plants and animals closely resemble

their parents.

■ Many characteristics of an organism are

inherited from the parents of the organ-

ism, but other characteristics result from

an individual’s interactions with the

environment. Inherited characteristics

include the color of flowers and the

number of limbs of an animal. Other

features, such as the ability to ride a

bicycle, are learned through interactions

with the environment and cannot be

passed on to the next generation.

ORGANISMS AND THEIR

ENVIRONMENTS

■ All animals depend on plants. Some

animals eat plants for food. Other

animals eat animals that eat the plants.

■ An organism’s patterns of behavior are

related to the nature of that organism’s

environment, including the kinds and

numbers of other organisms present, the

availability of food and resources, and

the physical characteristics of the

environment. When the environment

changes, some plants and animals survive

and reproduce, and others die or move to

new locations.

■ All organisms cause changes in the

environment where they live. Some of

these changes are detrimental to the

organism or other organisms, whereas

others are beneficial.

■ Humans depend on their natural and

constructed environments. Humans

change environments in ways that can be

either beneficial or detrimental for

themselves and other organisms.

See Content

Standard F

(grades K-4)


8

Earth and SpaceScienceCONTENT STANDARD D:

As a result of their activities in

grades K-4, all students should

develop an understanding of

■ Properties of earth materials

■ Objects in the sky

■ Changes in earth and sky


Young children are naturally interested in

everything they see around them—soil,

rocks, streams, rain, snow, clouds, rainbows,

sun, moon, and stars. During the first years

of school, they should be encouraged to

observe closely the objects and materials in

their environment, note their properties,

distinguish one from another and develop

their own explanations of how things

become the way they are. As children

become more familiar with their world, they

can be guided to observe changes, including

cyclic changes, such as night and day and the

seasons; predictable trends, such as growth

and decay, and less consistent changes, such

as weather or the appearance of meteors.

Children should have opportunities to

observe rapid changes, such as the

movement of water in a stream, as well as

gradual changes, such as the erosion of soil

and the change of the seasons.

Children come to school aware that

earth’s surface is composed of rocks, soils,

water, and living organisms, but a closer

look will help them identify many additional

properties of earth materials. By carefully

observing and describing the properties of

many rocks, children will begin to see that

some rocks are made of a single substance,

but most are made of several substances. In

later grades, the substances can be identified

as minerals. Understanding rocks and

minerals should not be extended to the

study of the source of the rocks, such as

sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic,

because the origin of rocks and minerals has

little meaning to young children.

Playgrounds and nearby vacant lots and

parks are convenient study sites to observe a

variety of earth materials. As students

collect rocks and observe vegetation, they

will become aware that soil varies from

place to place in its color, texture, and

reaction to water. By planting seeds in a

variety of soil samples, they can compare

the effect of different soils on plant growth.

If they revisit study sites regularly, children

will develop an understanding that earth’s

surface is constantly changing. They also

can simulate some changes, such as erosion,

in a small tray of soil or a stream table and

compare their observations with photo-

graphs of similar, but larger scale, changes.

By observing the day and night sky

regularly, children in grades K-4 will learn

to identify sequences of changes and to look

for patterns in these changes. As they

observe changes, such as the movement of

an object’s shadow during the course of a

day, and the positions of the sun and the

moon, they will find the patterns in these

movements. They can draw the moon’s

shape for each evening on a calendar and

then determine the pattern in the shapes

over several weeks. These understandings

should be confined to observations,

descriptions, and finding patterns.

Attempting to extend this understanding

into explanations using models will be

limited by the inability of young children to

understand that earth is approximately

spherical. They also have little


9

understanding of gravity and usually have

misconceptions about the properties of light

that allow us to see objects such as the

moon. (Although children will say that they

live on a ball, probing questions will reveal

that their thinking may be very different.)

Students can discover patterns of weather

changes during the year by keeping a journal.

Younger students can draw a daily weather

picture based on what they see out a window

or at recess; older students can make simple

charts and graphs from data they collect at a

simple school weather station.

Emphasis in grades K-4 should be on

developing observation and description

skills and the explanations based on

observations. Younger children should be

encouraged to talk about and draw what

they see and think. Older students can keep

journals, use instruments, and record their

observations and measurements.



PROPERTIES OF EARTH MATERIALS

■ Earth materials are solid rocks and soils,

water, and the gases of the atmosphere.

The varied materials have different

physical and chemical properties, which

make them useful in different ways, for

example, as building materials, as sources

of fuel, or for growing the plants we use

as food. Earth materials provide many of

the resources that humans use.

■ Soils have properties of color and texture,

capacity to retain water, and ability to

support the growth of many kinds of

plants, including those in our food supply.

■ Fossils provide evidence about the plants

and animals that lived long ago and the

nature of the environment at that time.

OBJECTS IN THE SKY

■ The sun, moon, stars, clouds, birds, and

airplanes all have properties, locations,

and movements that can be observed

and described.

■ The sun provides the light and heat

necessary to maintain the temperature

of the earth.

CHANGES IN THE EARTH AND SKY

■ The surface of the earth changes. Some

changes are due to slow processes,

such as erosion and weathering, and

some changes are due to rapid processes,

such as landslides, volcanic eruptions,

and earthquakes.

■ Weather changes from day to day and

over the seasons. Weather can be

described by measurable quantities, such

as temperature, wind direction and

speed, and precipitation.

■ Objects in the sky have patterns of

movement. The sun, for example,

appears to move across the sky in the

same way every day, but its path changes

slowly over the seasons. The moon moves

across the sky on a daily basis much like

the sun. The observable shape of the

moon changes from day to day in a cycle

that lasts about a month.


10

Science andTechnologyCONTENT STANDARD E:


K-4, all students should develop

■ Abilities of technological design

■ Understanding about science and

technology

■ Abilities to distinguish between

natural objects and objects made

by humans

DEVELOPING STUDENT ABILITIESAND UNDERSTANDING

The science and technology standards

connect students to the designed world, offer

them experience in making models of useful

things, and introduce them to laws of nature

through their understanding of how

technological objects and systems work.

This standard emphasizes developing the

ability to design a solution to a problem and

understanding the relationship of science and

technology and the way people are involved

in both. This standard helps establish design

as the technological parallel to inquiry in

science. Like the science as inquiry standard,

this standard begins the under-standing of

the design process, as well as the ability to

solve simple design problems.

Children in grades K-4 understand and

can carry out design activities earlier than

they can inquiry activities, but they cannot

easily tell the difference between the two,

nor is it important whether they can. In

grades K-4, children should have a variety of

educational experiences that involve science

and technology, sometimes in the same

activity and other times separately. When

the activities are informal and open, such as

building a balance and comparing the

weight of objects on it, it is difficult to

separate inquiry from technological design.

At other times, the distinction might be

clear to adults but not to children.

Children’s abilities in technological

problem solving can be developed by

firsthand experience in tackling tasks with a

technological purpose. They also can study

technological products and systems in their

world—zippers, coat hooks, can openers,

bridges, and automobiles. Children can

engage in projects that are appropriately

challenging for their developmental level—

ones in which they must design a way to

fasten, move, or communicate. They can

study existing products to determine

function and try to identify problems

solved, materials used, and how well a

product does what it is supposed to do. An

old technological device, such as an apple

peeler, can be used as a mystery object for

students to investigate and figure out what it

does, how it helps people, and what

problems it might solve and cause. Such

activities provide excellent opportunities to

direct attention to specific technology—the

tools and instruments used in science.

Suitable tasks for children at this age

should have clearly defined purposes and be

related with the other content standards.

Tasks should be conducted within

immediately familiar contexts of the home

and school. They should be straightforward;

there should be only one or two well-

defined ways to solve the problem, and there

should be a single, well-defined criterion for

success. Any construction of objects should

require developmentally appropriate

manipulative skills used in elementary

school and should not require time-

consuming preparation and assembly.


11

Over the course of grades K-4, student

investigations and design problems should

incorporate more than one material and

several contexts in science and technology.

A suitable collection of tasks might include

making a device to shade eyes from the sun,

making yogurt and discussing how it is

made, comparing two types of string to see

which is best for lifting different objects,

exploring how small potted plants can be

made to grow as quickly as possible,

designing a simple system to hold two

objects together, testing the strength of

different materials, using simple tools, testing

different designs, and constructing a simple

structure. It is important also to include

design problems that require application of

ideas, use of communications, and

implementation of procedures—for instance,

improving hall traffic at lunch and cleaning

the classroom after scientific investigations.

Experiences should be complemented by

study of familiar and simple objects through

which students can develop observation and

analysis skills. By comparing one or two

obvious properties, such as cost and

strength of two types of adhesive tape, for

example, students can develop the abilities

to judge a product’s worth against its ability

to solve a problem. During the K-4 years, an

appropriate balance of products could come

from the categories of clothing, food, and

common domestic and school hardware.

A sequence of five stages—stating the

problem, designing an approach,

implementing a solution, evaluating the

solution, and communicating the problem,

design, and solution—provides a framework

for planning and for specifying learning

out-comes. However, not every activity will

involve all of those stages, nor must any

particular sequence of stages be followed.

For example, some activities might begin by

identifying a need and progressing through

the stages; other activities might involve

only evaluating existing products.

GUIDE TO THE CONTENT STANDARDFundamental abilities and concepts


ABILITIES OF TECHNOLOGICAL

DESIGN

IDENTIFY A SIMPLE PROBLEM. In

problem identification, children should

develop the ability to explain a problem in

their own words and identify a specific task

and solution related to the problem.

PROPOSE A SOLUTION. Students should

make proposals to build something or get

something to work better; they should be

able to describe and communicate their

ideas. Students should recognize that

designing a solution might have constraints,

such as cost, materials, time, space, or safety.

IMPLEMENTING PROPOSED SOLUTIONS.

Children should develop abilities to work

individually and collaboratively and to use

suitable tools, techniques, and quantitative

measurements when appropriate. Students

should demonstrate the ability to balance

simple constraints in problem solving.

EVALUATE A PRODUCT OR DESIGN.

Students should evaluate their own results

or solutions to problems, as well as those of

other children, by considering how well a

product or design met the challenge to solve

a problem. When possible, students should

use measurements and include constraints

and other criteria in their evaluations. They

should modify designs based on the results

of evaluations.

See Content

Standard A

(grades K-4)


12

COMMUNICATE A PROBLEM, DESIGN,

AND SOLUTION. Student abilities should

include oral, written, and pictorial

communication of the design process and

product. The communication might be

show and tell, group discussions, short

written reports, or pictures, depending on

the students’ abilities and the design project.

UNDERSTANDING ABOUT SCIENCE

AND TECHNOLOGY

■ People have always had questions about

their world. Science is one way of

answering questions and explaining the

natural world.

■ People have always had problems and

invented tools and techniques (ways of

doing something) to solve problems.

Trying to determine the effects of solutions

helps people avoid some new problems.

■ Scientists and engineers often work in

teams with different individuals doing

different things that contribute to the

results. This understanding focuses

primarily on teams working together and

secondarily, on the combination of

scientist and engineer teams.

■ Women and men of all ages, back-

grounds, and groups engage in a variety

of scientific and technological work.

■ Tools help scientists make better observa-

tions, measurements, and equipment for

investigations. They help scientists see,

measure, and do things that they could not

otherwise see, measure, and do.

ABILITIES TO DISTINGUISH

BET WEEN NATURAL OBJECTS AND

OBJECTS MADE BY HUMANS

■ Some objects occur in nature; others

have been designed and made by

people to solve human problems and

enhance the quality of life.

■ Objects can be categorized into two

groups, natural and designed.

Science in Personaland SocialPerspectivesCONTENT STANDARD F:



understanding of

■ Personal health

■ Characteristics and changes

in populations

■ Types of resources

■ Changes in environments

■ Science and technology in

local challenges


Students in elementary school should have

a variety of experiences that provide initial

understandings for various science-related

personal and societal challenges. Central

ideas related to health, populations,

resources, and environments provide the

foundations for students’ eventual

understandings and actions as citizens.

Although the emphasis in grades K-4 should


13

be on initial understandings, students can

engage in some personal actions in local

challenges related to science and technology.

Teachers should be aware of the concepts

that elementary school students have about

health. Most children use the word “germs”

for all microbes; they do not generally use

the words “ virus” or “bacteria,” and when

they do, they do not understand the

difference between the two. Children

generally attribute all illnesses to germs

without distinction between contagious and

noncontagious diseases and without

understanding of organic, functional, or

dietary diseases. Teachers can expect

students to exhibit little understanding of

ideas, such as different origins of disease,

resistance to infection, and prevention and

cure of disease.

Children link eating with growth, health,

strength, and energy, but they do not under-

stand these ideas in detail. They understand

connections between diet and health and that

some foods are nutritionally better than

others, but they do not necessarily know the

reasons for these conclusions.

By grades 3 and 4, students regard pollu-

tion as something sensed by people and know

that it might have bad effects on people and

animals. Children at this age usually do not

consider harm to plants as part of environ-

mental problems; however, recent media

attention might have increased students

awareness of the importance of trees in the

environment. In most cases, students recog-

nize pollution as an environmental issue,

scarcity as a resource issue, and crowded

classrooms or schools as population

problems. Most young students conceive of

these problems as isolated issues that can be

solved by dealing with them individually. For

example, pollution can be solved by cleaning

up the environment and producing less waste,

scarcity can be solved by using less, and

crowding can be solved by having fewer

students in class or school. However,

understanding the interrelationships is not

the priority in elementary school.

As students expand their conceptual

horizons across grades K-12, they will

eventually develop a view that is not

centered exclusively on humans and begin

to recognize that individual actions

accumulate into societal actions. Eventually,

students must recognize that society cannot

afford to deal only with symptoms. The

causes of the problems must be the focus of

personal and societal actions.



PERSONAL HEALTH

■ Safety and security are basic needs of

humans. Safety involves freedom from

danger, risk, or injury. Security involves

feelings of confidence and lack of anxiety

and fear. Student understandings include

following safety rules for home and

school, preventing abuse and neglect,

avoiding injury, knowing whom to ask

for help, and when and how to say no.

Central ideas related to health,populations, resources, andenvironments provide the foundationsfor students’ eventual understandingsand actions as citizens.

See Content

Standard C

(grades K-4)


14

■ Individuals have some responsibility for

their own health. Students should engage

in personal care—dental hygiene, cleanli-

ness, and exercise—that will maintain

and improve health. Understandings

include how communicable diseases,

such as colds, are transmitted and some

of the body’s defense mechanisms that

prevent or overcome illness.

■ Nutrition is essential to health. Students

should understand how the body uses

food and how various foods contribute

to health. Recommendations for good

nutrition include eating a variety of foods,

eating less sugar, and eating less fat.

■ Different substances can damage the

body and how it functions. Such

substances include tobacco, alcohol, over-

the-counter medicines, and illicit drugs.

Students should understand that some

substances, such as prescription drugs,

can be beneficial, but that any substance

can be harmful if used inappropriately.

CHARACTERISTICS AND CHANGES

IN POPULATIONS

■ Human populations include groups of

individuals living in a particular location.

One important characteristic of a human

population is the population density—

the number of individuals of a particular

population that lives in a given amount

of space.

■ The size of a human population can

increase or decrease. Populations will

increase unless other factors such as dis-

ease or famine decrease the population.

T YPES OF RESOURCES

■ Resources are things that we get from the

living and nonliving environment to

meet the needs and wants of a population.

■ Some resources are basic materials, such

as air, water, and soil; some are produced

from basic resources, such as food, fuel,

and building materials; and some

resources are nonmaterial, such as quiet

places, beauty, security, and safety.

■ The supply of many resources is limited.

If used, resources can be extended

through recycling and decreased use.

CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENTS

■ Environments are the space, conditions,

and factors that affect an individual’s and

a population’s ability to survive and their

quality of life.

■ Changes in environments can be natural

or influenced by humans. Some changes

are good, some are bad, and some are

neither good nor bad. Pollution is a

change in the environment that can

influence the health, survival, or activities

of organisms including humans.

■ Some environmental changes occur

slowly, and others occur rapidly. Students

should understand the different

consequences of changing environments

in small increments over long periods as

compared with changing environments

in large increments over short periods.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN

LOCAL CHALLENGES

■ People continue inventing new ways of

doing things, solving problems, and

getting work done. New ideas and

inventions often affect other people;

sometimes the effects are good and

sometimes they are bad. It is helpful to

try to determine in advance how ideas

and inventions will affect other people.

See Content

Standard D

(grades K-4)

See Content

Standard E

(grades K-4)

See Content

Standard C

(grades K-4)


15

■ Science and technology have greatly

improved food quality and quantity,

transportation, health, sanitation, and

communication. These benefits of

science and technology are not available

to all of the people in the world.

History andNature of ScienceCONTENT STANDARD G:



understanding of

■ Science as a human endeavor


Beginning in grades K-4, teachers should

build on students’ natural inclinations to

ask questions and investigate their world.

Groups of students can conduct

investigations that begin with a question

and progress toward communicating an

answer to the question. For students in the

early grades, teachers should emphasize the

experiences of investigating and thinking

about explanations and not overemphasize

memorization of scientific terms and

information. Students can learn some things

about scientific inquiry and significant

people from history, which will provide a

foundation for the development of

sophisticated ideas related to the history and

nature of science that will be developed in

later years. Through the use of short stories,

films, videos, and other examples,

elementary teachers can introduce

interesting historical examples of women

and men (including minorities and people

with disabilities) who have made

contributions to science. The stories can

highlight how these scientists worked—that

is, the questions, procedures,and

contributions of diverse individuals to

science and technology. In upper elementary

grades, students can read and share stories

that express the theme of this standard—

science is a human endeavor.



SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ENDEAVOR

■ Science and technology have been

practiced by people for a long time.

■ Men and women have made a variety of

contributions throughout the history of

science and technology.

■ Although men and women using

scientific inquiry have learned much

about the objects, events, and

phenomena in nature, much more

remains to be understood. Science will

never be finished.

■ Many people choose science as a career

and devote their entire lives to studying

it. Many people derive great pleasure

from doing science.


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