Hooray! You’ve made it to student teaching! Your professors in the School of Education wish you well in this capstone experience. You will be required to complete a Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in one of your two placements. You have already completed a practice teacher work sample in your Inclusion course us- ing your clinical assignments. The components for your student teaching work sample are the same, but based upon a complete unit plan.
PURPOSE
The Viterbo University Teacher Education program is accredited by National Council for the
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Continued accreditation mandates that Viterbo’s teacher education program address the question, “When Viterbo student teachers are in the classroom, how do we know that the PK–12 pupils are really learning?” It’s a timely and important question. As a teacher in the 21st century you will want to be able to have documented evidence that shows pupils learn when you teach.
Viterbo has chosen the TWS as the project by which you will document whether pupils learn while you are teaching and what they learn (or don’t learn) when you are teaching. The information will be useful to you as you plan instruction, as you plan for future classes and as you meet with parents and caregivers of your students. The ability to develop a TWS from start to finish will provide a substantial foundation throughout your teaching career. Once you acquire the skills of completing a TWS, you will always have this tool by which you can know how well you are teaching and how well your students are learning.
COMPONENTS
The Teacher Work Sample (TWS) will include three components:
• Contextual factors
• Instructional unit planning and delivery
• Analysis and reflection
Complete the TWS during the student teaching placement of your choice. You will want to discuss the requirement with your cooperating teacher. Some grade levels and content areas may be more conducive to a TWS than others. Discuss the requirement with Val Krage if you have any questions.
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS
For this component you will address contextual factors on three levels: the community and school dis- trict, school and classroom. The use of the WINNS website from the Department of Public Instruction
( http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/sig/index.html
) and any other information from community and school web- sites, brochures, reports and literature will provide information.
The information on the community will be the most general and will include information regarding population, socioeconomic status (SES), employment opportunities and community services. The school district data will yield information about the general organization of the schools . Information about the school and classroom in which you are student teaching will be the most developed section of
contextual factors and will receive the most emphasis. Include data about grade levels, school-wide poverty, and ethnic diversity. The classroom data will be even more comprehensive than the school data and include specific facts about this particular classroom (or a particular content class in a middle/secondary school).
Information about the specific class might include: (See score sheet for emphasis areas)
Socio-economic status (SES)
Ethnic diversity
Gender
Teacher’s perception of the class
Approaches and procedures regularly employed by the teacher

Number and type of special learners
Additional support personnel (e.g., guidance, Title I, S&L, etc.)
Transience of the population
The ultimate purpose of this component is to use the demographic information to plan appropriate instruction that matches the needs of your learners. As you proceed in your student teaching
experience you will learn more about your individual students as well as the class as a whole. Add these
new understandings to this part of the TWS. By the end of the placement you will have enough
information to paint a descriptive picture of this class. As well, you will have specific understandings of
individual students who clearly do impact learning in your classroom.
*Refer to Attachment I for guiding questions that may be useful in developing the contextual factors section of the TWS.
UNIT PLANNING AND DELIVERY
During your student teaching placement you will be required to take over the class and be the teacher. In preparation for that time you will need to develop instructional units to teach. An instructional unit is a sequential set of lessons related to general goals and a specific topic. Characteristics of instructional units include:
• Goals of the unit
TSWBAT identify, define and use eight parts of speech
TSWBAT describe the major events of the Civil War
• Individual lessons with specific objectives
TSWBAT to identify, define and use common and proper nouns
TSWBAT to explain the use of the Underground Railroad
•
Assessment at the beginning and conclusion of the unit and/or each lesson
A pre-assessment identifies students’ prior knowledge and experiences
A post-assessment identifies new knowledge
•
Instructional Activities
The various methods for teaching and practicing the content
• Adaptations for specific contextual factors
Your cooperating teacher will be a valuable resource in deciding the topic that matches the requirements of the curriculum and within your range of ability. Develop the instructional unit (six days or more) and component lesson plans using the Viterbo Essential Elements of a Lesson Plan template as your guide.
All of your lesson plans will be developed according to the template so you will be very familiar with the procedure. As a veteran teacher you will not need to use the template as often because the process will become internalized for you. But during the student teaching experience, the university supervisors will expect to find all lesson plans developed according to the template and placed in a binder for them to review at each visit.
Teacher Work Samples are due at the conclusion of student teaching.

KEY COMPONENTS OF A TWS ARE THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS:
PRE-ASSESSMENT AND POST-ASSESSMENT
Within your instructional unit, plan a way to pre-assess what your students know (or don’t know) about the topic as well as a post-assessment to discover what your students learned (or didn’t learn) while you taught the unit. Consider all of the assessment options that have been presented to you in various courses. Choose a pre and post assessment that matches your unit goals and lesson objectives. Formal assessments may be used but most teachers use informal but authentic assessments on a regular basis.
Create charts or graphs to display your findings to provide information that your students learned what you taught them. You will also need to show the percent difference in grades on your pre and post- tests.
The use of mean, median, mode is ideal, but not required. Advanced statistics is not required for this project.
ANALYSIS AND REFLECTION
At the conclusion of your instructional unit, gather all of your information together to be considered for analysis and reflection.
Analysis: Examine the pre- and post- assessment to discover what students learned during the teaching of the instructional unit. If you have quizzes or tests you will find that quantitative data will be easy to generate. If you have used checklists, anecdotal notes, retellings, reflections, scoring rubrics for projects, etc., you will have more qualitative information. Present the information objectively and factually. This is the presentation of the truth of what happened while you were teaching this unit.
Sample questions to consider:
1. Explain how the contextual factors of your class influenced your choice of instructional activities in your lesson.
2. What prior knowledge and skills did your students need to have to master the lesson objectives?
3. Did your students master the objectives you wrote for your lesson? If yes, what evidence do you have?
If no, why not?
4. Give a brief description of the strategies you used in the unit and explain how they contributed to the students learning in your lessons.
5. What do you believe your students thought of the unit? Explain.
6. What did your cooperating teacher see as the strengths and weaknesses of your unit?
7. What do you think of your delivery of the unit and the unit itself?
Reflection : The reflection part is your opportunity to consider why the analysis results occurred as they appear. Given your results as presented, did your students learn? What implications do the results have for how to teach this unit next time? What would you change or retain? Would it be the same length or cover the same material?
You must include both copies of your student teaching evaluations to your final Teacher Work Sample before a student teaching grade can be determined.

ATTACHMENT I
Guiding Questions for Contextual Factors
Your student teaching placement is in a unique classroom with an interesting group of students who have never been in this same classroom before and will never be there again. Similarities exist with other classes but each class of students is unique. This class of unique individuals along with the teacher will form a learning community with a definite personality and create a particular climate for this classroom. The classroom is contained in a particular school within a particular school district, all funded by a particular community and state. (We could go all the way to the universe but let’s stop with the community!)
Begin your contextual factors section using the questions below. The questions provide guidelines for your thinking. Not all questions need an answer. You may think of additional questions.
COMMUNITY
Who lives in this community?
How many live here?
Are the residents elderly, middle-aged, young with families?
Where do the residents work?
What corporations, manufacturing plants and companies are located here?
What is the average income of the residents?
What services are provided for residents?
What is the poverty rate?
Which ethnic groups live here?
Is this a rural, suburban or urban location?
SCHOOL DISTRICT
What is the K–12 population?
How many schools?
What academic programs are available?
What extracurricular programs are available?
Who are the leaders?
How many specialists are provided?
SCHOOL
How many students attend this school? What grades are included?
What is the poverty level?
What academic programs and extracurricular activities are available?
What is the average class size?
YOUR CLASSROOM
What approaches does your teacher use to create a positive learning environment?
What is the climate of the classroom?
What is the academic range of this class
What is the personality of this class?
What special needs are present in the class?
What ethnic groups are represented in the class?
How active is the teacher in engaging parents in the class?
What teaching techniques does the teacher use?
What resources and specialists are available to the teacher?
Describe specific students whose needs create particular situations in the class.
( Ex., An ADHD students who has violent eruptions of rage and distracts others.)

ATTACHMENT 2
Pre/Post Test Data Sample
The following data analysis sample is from a previous student and reflects a quality analysis. It would include the pre- and post- tests given, but they were not included here due to length.
Twenty-seven eighth grade students took a pre-test consisting of the nine matching problems from the first page of the summative assessment.
The order of questions, arrangement of answers, and some wording was changed. Thus, the actual summative assessment was not an exact replica of the pre-test, although it tested the same knowledge. I think this makes the final assessment an even more accurate measure of student progress. First, here were the results of the pre-test.
Since students have had little exposure to this material, I did not expect anyone to demonstrate proficien- cy, and my hypotheses was correct. Results are from a matching section consisting of nine items.
The mean score was 3.1 out of nine possible points, or about 34 percent, on the pre-test. As one would expect, scores on the summative assessment improved significantly from this figure. The assessment con- sisted of mostly objective matching and multiple choice questions, but there were some short answer and paragraph problems toward the end of the exam. The following graph is of student grades for the entire exam, as this provides the most accurate picture of their learning.
The mean score was 24.3 out of 28 possible points, or 87 percent, on the summative assessment.
Grades were broken down on a 90-80-70-60 scale, such that an A on the graph represents those scores that fell between
90 and 100 percent. For a neat visual representation, grades were much more effective than having bars for each point value.
Students clearly demon- strated a significant increase in knowledge between the pre- and post-tests. On a percentage basis, their scores increased 250 percent. Granted, that should be expected when comparing results from no prior instruction to results after six full days plus review.
Rev. 9/12