The Art of TPA Lesson Plans

The edTPA is very strictly laid out and if done correctly and according to the guidelines a teacher candidate should have no issues. Three things to always consider while working on the edTPA is 1) Planning, 2) Instruction, and 3) Assessment Tasks. Each of these tasks will be working together to form the overall binder. When planning one part you must always consider all the parts. Artifacts that are going to be considered part of the edTPA are exactly what we do as part of lesson planning. We need to have the lesson plan, content, context, video clips of the teacher candidate teaching, assessments, and materials needed to teach the lesson plans.

What we learn going through the education program is how to write a lesson plan and prepare all the materials to teach. We learn how to focus our lesson but also to always consider how to make the lesson better. We do research and understand deeper how a lesson plan can be helpful to the students. All our learning throughout the education program helps us learn how to be teachers and how what we plan and organize can impact our students. No first-time teacher is perfect but if we follow our guidelines and what we are taught throughout the process we can slowly adapt and learn how to better serve our students.

When looking through the TPA lesson plan guidelines it is all clearly laid out so that someone can pick up the lesson plan, read it, and teach it. The lesson plan goes over in detail how long it should take for the lesson to what Common Core State Standards we are teaching to. Further analysis of the lesson plan would show a break down of the lesson during the class period; telling exactly how the class should move through the information they are learning that day. This process makes it easy for the student teacher to walk into a classroom well prepared for what may come at them that day.