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This page shares information I wish every National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) candidate knew about the entry 4 (documented accomplishments) portfolio instructions, based on the information I learned as a candidate, mentor, and especially as an assessor for entry 4 one summer. 2015 isuzu npr parts. I was trained by NBPTS to analyze this entry and have examined hundreds of them under the tutelage of National Board Certification trainers. I used this experience as a candidate in 2006 and earned a 4 on this entry. Rules do change from time to time, and all of the guidelines I give below are based on my own understanding of NBPTS’s expectations, so they should always be checked against current portfolio instructions. First things first: This entry is not all about you!
This page shares information I wish every National Board of Professional. And all of the guidelines I give below are based on my own understanding of NBPTS's. As possible–phrases like “the class did better”, “she liked reading more”, or 'I. Show what they have learned/accomplished (very similar to a science fair).
This entry is all about STUDENT IMPACT (SI). The purpose is not to show what a great teacher you are through all of your fabulous accomplishments: it’s to show that you are an accomplished teacher because your development as a learner/leader/collaborator and work with families and the community has a positive affect on student learning. I cannot over-stress this. For the purposes of e4, it does not matter if you have spent 25 hours a week for the past 10 years creating a free after-school tutoring program using $30,000 of your own funds if you cannot provide evidence that students benefited. Why some candidates score poorly The common misconception among candidates who don’t do well on e4 is that they failed to go above and beyond their teaching duties and contribute significant things in their schools. Many times they assume that if they had just served on that extra committee or helped create some spectacular fundraiser they would have done better on this entry. In my experience as an assessor, a lack of accomplishments is usually not the problem, because most candidates are dedicated professionals who go above and beyond normal teaching expectations.
Candidates who score poorly on this entry almost always do so because they failed to demonstrate student impact. The point they miss- that I really want you to get- is this: It’s better to have ordinary-sounding but solid accomplishments that show significant SI than to have extraordinarily creative accomplishments for which you do not provide evidence of increased student achievement. Keep your description and significance concise Most candidates have a tendency to focus too much on describing what they’ve done. When you do your write-up, picture e4 as a triangle with three parts: Description, Significance, and Impact.
Description is the smallest section because it is the least important. You should therefore use the least amount of space. Be clear and concise–tell what you did in a few short sentences. The details you feel like you have to include will become evident as you go on to explain the significance and impact, so you don’t need to chronicle everything in the first part. The second part is Significance, which tells why what you’ve described is important (in relation to your work as a learner/leader/collaborator and as a partner with students’ families/community). This section is a bit longer than the Description and can be used as the lead-in to the SI you describe in the third and most important section, which is student impact. How to keep your write-up focused on student impact Because the most important part of your accomplishments is the impact on students, you should elaborate on this section the most.
While the rubrics don’t require the SI to be specific in every case, the more detailed your examples, the stronger the entry. Your SI could be described using individual student examples, small or whole group achievements, or the impact on your entire grade level/ school/district/state, depending on the type of accomplishment. Be as specific as possible–phrases like “the class did better”, “she liked reading more”, or ‘I really felt like the kids learned a lot” are too ambiguous. If you have trouble describing the SI, you may not want to include the accomplishment. For the purposes of this entry, what you did is only an accomplishment if you can document SI. Choosing the strongest accomplishments Because ultimately we want to further the growth of the whole child, accomplishments that impact students on a socio-emotional level or contribute to the functionality of the family unit are certainly worthy of inclusion. However, in my opinion, the majority of your accomplishments should be focused on academic achievement, because our primary goal as teachers is to further students’ cognitive growth.
Include the things you’ve done that have had the largest impact on student learning. I would suggest listing possible accomplishments along with ideas for documentation, and then writing about those you think you could provide strong SI for. Afterwards, work with your mentors to choose the strongest accomplishments and get rid of the rest. Is it better to have more accomplishments? You can have up to 8.
I have seen successful entries that had only 3. This decision is entirely up to you. I do want to clarify that the number of things you’ve done is NOT necessarily the same as the number of accomplishments you write. The portfolio directions clearly state, ‘An accomplishment may be a single activity or event, or a set of related activities and events that are logically related in a unified goal or outcome”. I felt I had accomplished more than 8 things during my career that should be included my entry. I used only 4 accomplishments, but each contained multiple related achievements/events.
For example, one of my accomplishments was about family outreach and communication. I described 4 or 5 different things I did to establish 2-way communication and relevant outreach to family members and included them altogether in one accomplishment.
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(I wrote the first activity/event’s description, significance, and impact in one paragraph, the second activity/event’s description, significance, and impact in the second paragraph, and so on). Many candidates choose to include related activities in one accomplishment–this is absolutely allowed, and if you’ve done a lot of significant things, I recommend this strategy. However, if you have difficulty coming up with accomplishments, you may want to stick to the one activity per accomplishment formula, and really elaborate on the things you have done. Do you r eally have TWO-WAY communication with families?
This is a critical component of e4. You need clear evidence of ongoing, consistent two-way communication. Newsletters and websites are NOT two-way unless you specifically detail how parents use these tools to communicate with you provide and feedback to you. That’s not to say you should leave those kind of things out of your entry if you use them as only one-way communication tools: they are still significant if you can show SI. You just need to show two-way communication in some other method.
Most candidates do this with communication logs, either in the form provided by NB or in one they created. I’m going to debunk a huge myth here- you do not HAVE to use a communication log! If you can show strong evidence of TWO-WAY communication with families without using a log, then consider it optional. Remember that according to the level 4 rubric, two-way communication should be PRIMARILY focused on academics (‘substantive teaching and learning issues and individual student progress’). A communication log that chronicles phone calls about behavior problems is not as strong as one that also records conversations about academic progress. Assessors are looking not only for frequency in communication, but also variety.
Some of the highest-quality communication you can document would include new information you learn about a child (communicated from the parent), followed by changes to your teaching practice you make as a result of that new knowledge (communicated to the parent), and growth on the part of the child as a result (also communicated to the parent). The purpose of documentation (it’s not just proof that you ‘did it’) UPDATE MAY 2014: Please see comment section: it appears that assessors are no longer evaluating documentation. Remember that the purpose of your accomplishments is to show the impact on student learning; therefore, documentation that supports your claims about SI is ideal. The strongest documentation focuses on students’ growth and achievement as the RESULT of the achievement, rather than on proving that you did the accomplishment.
This is not always possible, depending on the nature of the accomplishment. However, in general, a verification form from your administrator stating that you ran an after-school tutoring program is not as strong as data showing student growth as a result of that program. The former proves that you did the things you say you did; the later proves the student impact from the things you did, which is what this entry is all about. Do I have to document e verything? You will need to back up every accomplishment with a documentation of some sort. You do NOT have to document every single thing you say! (This is especially true when you include multiple achievements/events inside a single accomplishment–pick the strongest evidence of SI and include that for your documentation.) However, you DO have to describe everything you document.
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For example, you cannot write about a workshop you took and then document it with a certificate from another workshop in hopes of getting ‘credit’ from the assessor for both workshops. There must be a tight alignment between your description and your documentation. Getting the most out of your documentation pages NB provides a verification form, which in my personal opinion is not usually the strongest evidence of an accomplishment, especially when all the form says is “this person did this thing.” As a candidate myself, I liked to use every inch of space available to me to provide as much evidence and as possible of what I’d done, so most of my documentation pages were collages of different yet related materials. For example, to document family workshops, I included photos and parent feedback forms on the same page. You are allowed by NB to include multiple items on one page as long as they are related and you do not shrink the text. (I included only small pictures and cut off part of the feedback form, then put it all together on one page and made a photocopy so it looked cleaner). On another documentation page (for leadership and collaboration), I printed emails (from teachers I helped through this website), cut them out, pasted them onto one page, then photocopied it for a clean look.
So, there were multiple emails on one page. I tried to make each page of my documentation different, which is not required, of course, but I think this method provided a more holistic picture of my accomplishments. Final thoughts Think creatively, and let your personality and unique interests in particular aspects of your work as teacher show through your entry! Be encouraged- you can do this!! March 19, 2013 I am having trouble with the 2-way communication.
I am an exceptional needs teacher and have many emails/phone calls from 2 separate parents and how they appreciate my communication with them both in order better assist their child both in and out of school. I was told by another NBCT that I couldn’t use either of those because I was only doing my job. I do have one entry where I have worked with community partners of my school for tech parent nights and math nights to involve our parental community. It isn’t individual communication, but will that give some demonstration of community communication? March 24, 2013 Hi, Lisa. I’m not sure I feel qualified to give advice on that. I think you should check with NB or at least with an official NB support group.
I would hate to advise you incorrectly. That said, my understanding is that student impact refers to students, though not necessarily your own (hence the work with colleagues and other educators.) My NB certification work was as an early childhood specialist, so all the student impact I tried to show was based on early childhood students (K-3). I would imagine that the purpose of your parent nights was, at some level, to increase student achievement in your class/school, and therefore, I’d try to tie the student impact into that. What did parents do differently after the parent nights that had a positive affect on student achievement? Again, check with someone more official than me on this, but my understanding is that it’s best to keep your student impact focused tightly on your students whenever possible. March 26, 2013 Hi, Alisa, the student impact doesn’t have to be YOUR students, necessarily.
You can talk about how the strategies you showed the teachers impacted their students. I know that’s difficult to quantify, but try to identify the need (why you spoke about a particular topic) and how helping teachers improve in that area would affect their students’ learning.
Presumably the things you showed the teachers are things you’ve tried in your own classroom, so you can speak to how the strategies impacted your students and therefore why you wanted to share those strategies with other teachers. I hope that makes sense. I do think this is something you should ask a mentor in your area or online. I haven’t done any work with NB in 7 years, so I’m pretty rusty on the whole process. This page was written in 2006.
April 7, 2013 I have finally made the decision to pursue National Board Certification, and I have been looking into Entry 4 A LOT! As for some of my accomplishments, I am considering the following: 1. As our schools National Honor Society adviser, my students organize and participate in a Tree of Sharing and Food Drives to help out the local community (impacts the students by teaching them civic duty) 2. I participated in a grant program to help further my content knowledge (social studies/history) in which the overall goal was the creation of a unit of study that would be utilized in my classroom that would directly impact student learning.
I led a campaign to help increase and improve the social studies department at my school, resulting in the addition of new course offerings. This next school year I am organizing a History Day competition at our school in which students will become historians and research a topic of their choosing, and create a presentation to help show what they have learned/accomplished (very similar to a science fair). As an element of this, I plan to encourage parents to participate and I also plan on having a panel of judges, made up of local community members.
My big questions to you.do you think these examples would workand if so, what should I be looking for in terms of documentation? August 16, 2013 I need to recertify, and just realized I only have one shot at it, this year is the last chance. I got my initial certification on the first try, but that seems like a lifetime ago. Since then, I took a few years off to be home with my then small children, and have moved to another state because of my husband’s job.
I have been at my new teaching position for a year. I’m wondering if there are others in this position and what percentage of teachers have been able to recertify in the last year (no chance for resubmission). Any advice/information would be greatly appreciated! October 10, 2013 As you are gathering your evidence and documentation for your Entry 4 accomplishments, you might find the information and link below useful. Angela Wastson, a National Board Certified Teacher and National Board assessor, states that, from her experience as an assessor, “candidates who score poorly on this entry almost always do so because they failed to demonstrate student impact. The point they miss- that I really want you to get- is this: It’s better to have ordinary-sounding but solid accomplishments that show significant SI than to have extraordinarily creative accomplishments for which you do not provide evidence of increased student achievement.” Here is a link to Tips from her that you may find helpful, as they come from someone who has scored several Entry 4 Assessments:.
March 7, 2014 Hi! I was hoping for a little professional guidance. I am currently working on Entry 4 in Adolescence and Young Adulthood/English Language Arts. One of the things I would like to include as an accomplishment is my work in creating and coordinating a group of student tutors at my high school. They tutor in a middle school next door after school two days a week, and their participation has positively affected academic growth in those middle school students.
My issue is that they tutor in math, not language arts. That is the area of greatest need in the sixth grade. Can I still use this? It has an impact on student academic growth in the kids that will attend the school in which I work (so definitely shows community involvement), just not in my subject.
I think it is a significant accomplishment, but I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot. May 3, 2017 I wasn’t sure where to put my question but it looks similar to what you are discussing. I am doing my nb in literacy. However this year I have been put on the district math group been part of a special math study group had lots of math p.d. Even ran an after school club in math. As you can see Lots of math stuff but not as much literacy. I have seen great impacts in students from changed I have implemented.
Is this going to hurt me if I focus on math or do I have to only focus on the literacy accomplishments? March 25, 2014 Hey! I am currently working on my NB certification as an early childhood generalist.
I taught in the classroom for 6 years, but have been a math interventionist for the last 4 years. One of the things I have done this year is create an edmodo group for the parents at my school. This allows me to post information in the form of videos, texts, documents, etc.
And allows parents to respond with questions or requesting help with certain topics. Could I also use this as two-way communication? I can print off pages showing were I have communicated with parents to address their questions or give them resources to help their children. May 7, 2014 I’m really glad you shared this, Katie! The information they gave you is definitely contradictory to the way I was taught to score. I’m wondering if their approach has changed since I was a scorer.
I just took a quick look at the current instructions for Entry 4 and found this: “Assessors do not evaluate the documentation; they are looking only for a clear connection between documentation and your accomplishment.” This was definitely NOT true when I was a scorer, unless I am remembering incorrectly. So, I will amend what I have written above. I’m so glad you brought this to my attention!
May 3, 2015 Hello, I am working on entry 4 and I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on my accomplishments I am considering using. Meeting with each parent in January regardless of the academic need to show them where their students are in correlation with other students nationally. I created a checklist and form that showed parents what was the strengths and weaknesses of their child. Meeting with each parent is not required at my school. We are only required to meet with the parents of at risk learners.
I was the only one in first grade who did this. As I was meeting with each parent, the parent, student and I came up with a plan as to how we could re mediate or accelerate their learning. For example, I have a student who is on a third grade math level. The parent, student, and I decided that it would be a great idea to pull work from a third grade teacher and allow the student to complete this work and challenge the student. Over a course of time the student continued to grow in math and the parents are thrilled that their student was pushed. On the other end I have met with a students parents who are recently divorced. They keep me up to date through phone calls, quick visits, and emails about what is going on in the students life.
Over the course of the year I have had to change the way I taught the student based on what was going on at home. At one of the meetings the parent, student, and I came up with a plan to help the student become successful in reading.
The student is not in my reading group so therefore I did not get the amount of time needed to spend with this student in reading. In order to help the student I volunteered to come in twice a week 30 minutes early before class starts to tutor the student in reading. The student was assessed not too long ago and since the differentiation in instruction and tutoring the student has come up three reading levels. Am I on the right track? Or do you feel I need to revisit my ideas?
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