About Education Specialist CalTPA

Instructional Cycle 1 focuses on developing an engaging content-specific lesson for students based on what you learn about their diverse assets and learning needs, including their prior knowledge, interests, age, and developmental considerations. In this cycle, you will demonstrate how you select an appropriate grade-level content-specific learning goal(s), determine what you expect your students to know and be able to do, and show how you assess that learning. You will develop content-specific student activities and instructional strategies to develop your students' thorough understanding of the content you are teaching. This cycle also focuses on how you monitor student learning during the lesson and make appropriate adaptations (accommodations and/or modifications) to support individual student learning needs and promote equitable learning environments for students with IEPs. As you teach and video record the lesson, you will demonstrate how you establish a positive and safe learning environment; provide social and emotional supports through positive interactions with students; use resources and materials to promote content-specific, age and/or developmentally appropriate higher-order thinking skills (i.e., analysis, synthesis, evaluation, interpretation, and transfer/generalization); develop student academic language; and enhance deeper learning of content for students with IEPs.

Instructional Cycle 2 emphasizes the interaction among the student's(s') IEP(s), grade-level standards, assessment, and instructional decision making. An Individual Education Plan (IEP) establishes the learning goals for a student. While standards describe what students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do, assessment is the ongoing process of gathering evidence from multiple sources to determine what each student knows, understands, and can demonstrate. Assessment results are then used to improve instruction and provide meaningful feedback to families and/or guardians. Effective assessment will evaluate a student's academic progress but may also include measures that examine other aspects of educational development. Assessments should provide valid, reliable, and fair data to support high-quality teaching and lessons for teachers as well as instructional support personnel, students, and families and/or guardians. Assessments help teachers and instructional support personnel make informed decisions about which curricular goals or strategies need to be strengthened, how instructional strategies can be adapted or expanded depending on what students are understanding or misunderstanding during instruction, and whether a particular sequence of instruction has been successful. (For additional information on assessment, refer to the California Department of Education Special Education Division website.) In this cycle, you will provide feedback to your student(s) and their families and/or guardians about their content-specific academic performance(s) based on classroom informal assessment(s), student self-assessment, and formal assessment results.