A professional teaching portfolio serves many purposes. Often, educational institutions require portfolios to document student success in learning the teacher education content. These “learning portfolios” usually focus on specific types of artifacts or samples: a collection of a teacher’s best work, a sample of a teacher’s accomplishments over time and involvement in professional development, reflections on lesson plans, assessments, classroom practices, and management, and personal philosophy statements which focus on a teacher’s attitudes and beliefs.
A professional teaching portfolio usually includes different artifacts which might include some samples of a teacher’s best work, but more frequently focuses on the traditional hiring tools such as a resume, certification documents, transcripts, and letters of recommendation, while also including a classroom management plan and a statement of teaching philosophy.
A portfolio, whether for the purposes of evaluating your academic abilities and demonstrating the concepts you have obtained throughout your #T.E.A.C.H. program or for hiring/interviewing purposes, should remain a living, constantly changing, and improving entity. Your portfolio should reflect who you are as an educator and as such, it will likely change over time as you change with experience, knowledge, and growth.
Many of the assignments throughout this course and your previous #T.E.A.C.H. courses will guide you as you choose already existing artifacts or design them for your portfolio. In addition to your philosophy statement, your portfolio provides additional evidence of reflection and your personal history. Your artifacts should clearly demonstrate your abilities to plan effective, engaging, and purposeful lessons and assessments for your students. Your portfolio for this course will include a thematic unit plan consisting of five lessons related to the same topic in your content area which will demonstrate the following:
- Your ability to create content-specific lessons that align with state standards
- Your ability to promote creativity and analytical thinking
- Your ability to modify lessons to support the needs of diverse learners, including those with special needs
- Your ability to know the ways in which learning takes place, know the appropriate levels of intellectual, physical, social, and emotional development of your students, and make the content relevant to them
- Your ability to create and utilize formative and summative assessments to measure student learning, which demonstrates your understanding of assessment terminology
- Your ability to create and utilize traditional and digitally enhanced formative and summative assessments to measure student learning
The unit plan portion of your portfolio should embed the following components from previous #T.E.A.C.H. courses:
- Classroom environment
- Inquiry strategies and best practices
- Community/family
- Differentiation
- Restorative practices
- English Language Learner (ELL) instruction
As indicated in the #T.E.A.C.H. Assessment Guide, the work produced throughout the three-year journey is evaluated based on our organizational rubrics. Due to the complexity, authenticity, and applicability of the portfolio, it will be scored using the #T.E.A.C.H. Assessment of Resident Learning: Planning Rubric.
To maintain uniformity and to ensure all required components are in each lesson, the #T.E.A.C.H. lesson plan format is required for all five lessons. The unit plan should include two formative assessments and one summative assessment. A copy of the summative assessment should be attached, including a rubric if applicable.
Assignment:
To maintain uniformity and to ensure all required components are in each lesson, the #T.E.A.C.H. lesson plan format is required for all five lessons.
Click on the resource link to download and save a copy of the lesson plan format in MS Word (.docx) format. You will use this to create and submit your unit plan.
The portfolio will be scored using the #T.E.A.C.H. Assessment of Resident Learning: Planning Rubric. Please click on the link to download a copy in PDF format.
Once you have completed your portfolio including the five-lesson unit plan assignment, save a copy in MS Word format (.doc or .docx) and use the tool below to upload a copy of your work. Supplemental documents and assessments can be uploaded in MS Word (.doc or .docx) or Personal Document Format (.pdf).
Note: You can upload more than one file for this assignment, but they must be uploaded one at a time. Simply use the upload tool as many times as necessary until your entire portfolio has been uploaded. You will not be able to move forward in this course until your Instructional Coach has approved your portfolio assignment.
