How will you supplement your curriculum? Part I

Last week 17 GVSU math majors completed their Secondary Teacher Assisting placement.  The final activity of the semester is an individual exit interview during which we meet with each teacher in training to go over his or her professional portfolio. Each portfolio includes 14 entries divided between three sections.

This series of posts focuses on the Outside Resources portion of the portfolio and what I learned about assessment and evaluation as a result of one Teacher Assistant’s entry in this category. Before we get to the TA’s work, however, here is some background information. The following details regarding the Outside Resources entry are given to the TAs at the start of the semester.

Objective: Select, use, and determine the suitability of the wide variety of available curricula and teaching materials for all students including those with special needs such as the gifted, challenged and speakers of other languages.

Task: Identify two outside resources that could be useful in the teaching of your unit.  At least one of these should be from the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics

Essential Questions: How does each resource fit into your unit? How does each resource aid in the planning, instruction or assessment of your unit?

Next, I want to share the rubric we use to evaluate our program for National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. This is based on TA’s work but it does not impact their grade. Consequently, we do not share this with the TAs.

Outside Resources: The candidate develops a collection of instructional resources (from NCTM) related to the topics of his or her unit that could strengthen the curriculum. An overview of the ideas along with how they might be implemented will accompany the resources

Indicator 8.1: Selects, uses, and determines the suitability of the wide variety of available mathematics curricula and teaching materials for all students including those with special needs such as the gifted, challenged and speakers of other languages.

Indicator 8.5: Participates in professional mathematics organizations and uses their print and on-line resources.

(0) Unsatisfactory	(1) Progressing	(2) Proficient	(3) Distinguished
The candidate provides no outside resources from professional mathematics organizations.	The candidate collects outside resources but they are not related to the mathematics of the unit.	Appropriate resources are collected and the candidate explains how they relate to the content of his or her math unit.	The outside resources selected by the candidate either effectively extend students’ learning of a topic in the unit or provide scaffolding to students in need of support.

In the next post, we will look at one Teacher Assistant’s Outside Resources entry and I will discuss how certain expectations on my part interfered with my ability to accurately evaluate this work.