TPA

From my limited work with the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) I have found that I really like it. The way that it lays everything you need out in such a concise way that anyone can pick it up and use it. The TPA lays everything out for you starting with what are the goals and what the students should already know to how to assess the lesson at the end. Two things that are really becoming more important in lesson planning are the students and their world around them. We really need to know who are students are. Once we know who we are teaching we can find out how they learn and what drives them to learn. If you just go in with a lesson and don’t understand who you are teaching then you will fall short in conveying the information to them and possibly have to repeat yourself a few times. Students are not robots and they don’t all learn the same way. Some students may have similar learning styles but not every student will learn the assignment or lesson the same exact way.

The second thing is the conditions that might be around the planning and delivering. A student might understand what you are saying in class but when they get home they may not have time to do the work you assign or they might pick up the book and try to get a deeper meaning and will get completely lost. What teachers have to understand is that no matter what our students are doing their minds are not always right there. I am as guilty of this as any because I am thinking of the fight I had with my husband while reading a book for class and by the end of it I don’t understand what I read or what we are even supposed to being doing with the information. Our students have similar issues as this. They have things that are more important to them than a silly assignment.