1. Section IX. Information for Mentors
Overview
As educators, we must be able to identify whether and how our instruction impacts student learning. The
Teacher Work Sample (TWS) creates a formal opportunity for interns to carefully examine the
relationship between planning, teaching, and assessing students’ learning in the fall semester.
To complete the TWS project, interns complete the following tasks:
gather contextual information from school and classroom data that could inform their planning;
plan a lesson or series of lessons where they (a) define clear goals for student learning; (b)
develop a pre- and post-assessment; (c) use pre-assessment data to develop a lesson plan; and (d)
explain why they selected particular instructional tools
teach those planned learning activities
collect and analyze evidence of student learning
analyze their instructional decision making and reflect on their practice
By completing the TWS project, interns will gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between
designing, teaching and assessing learning opportunities for students. They will also develop skills in
planning, teaching, and assessing. Finally, they will develop as a professional educator, gaining skill in
reflecting on their practice in order to learn and grow.
Mentor’s Role
In addition to providing ongoing support as interns designs learning opportunities and teach in the
classroom, we ask that you provide three formal means of assistance:
1. Analyze pre-assessment data with your intern – please use the protocol below to help your
intern make sense of students’ current understanding and act on that information in future
instruction;
2. Conduct a formal observation – when your intern is teaching from his/her TWS lesson plan(s),
please complete an observation while s/he is teaching then provide written feedback that the
intern can submit as part of this project;
3. Analyze evidence of student learning - again using the protocol below, help your intern
determine whether/what students learned from his/her instruction and how best to use these
results to determine next steps.

2. Assessing Students’ Work
The following process, which takes about an hour, is designed to help interns learn how to assess
students’ learning and act on that information in their future instruction. Mentor and intern sit down with
the work that students completed at the intern’s request during his/her Teacher Work Sample lesson(s).
Step One: Clarify why the intern assigned the task or homework.
What was s/he after?
What criteria will s/he use to evaluate the students’ work?
Step Two: Both intern and mentor read through the papers, sorting them into three piles
(approaches, meets, and exceeds expectations)
Step Three: Choose one paper from each pile. For each of the three chosen papers, consider:
What does the student seem to understand/not understand?
What’s going on here?
Step Four: Consider the learning needs of these three students.
What would the intern need to do to support each of these three
students’ learning?
Step Five: Looking ahead…
What are the intern’s next steps for planning/teaching based on
what s/he has learned from this careful examination of the
students’ learning?
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3. Framework for Interpreting Observation
Using your observation notes, consider the following questions about the lesson. Provide evidence to
support your interpretations.
Did the lesson have a clear purpose(s)? What was it?
INTERN did a great job planning for the topics she had for her 4 day takeover. We spent several
hours looking at the content she had to cover, and then she clarified the purpose of learning the
content. She knew that because investment is the key to helping countries grow in the future, it was
essential for them to know how to create more capital for investment. She also explained how
important it was to see how interest rates affect the way households and firms behave in the macro
economy. Both topics will be key for the students to understand when they conduct their
development project at the end of the semester.
How well did the learning activities support the purpose?
The learning activities helped to deepen students’ understanding of the concepts. The first day,
THE INTERN had the students read an excerpt from the book over the problems facing developing
countries. At the beginning of the day, she did not have questions for them to guide their reading;
however, she added some after the first half of the day, which helped to engaged students more in
their learning as they searched for the meaning behind the text. This day, the students were eager
about her choice to use four corners to see how students reacted to capitalism.
The second day INTERN taught students about how individual choices can affect the macro
economy. This day, she chose BINGO as the way to practice the concepts. The video clip she
showed at the beginning helped to show students how everyday decisions can actually be tied to
economics. Throughout the day, Melendy discovered that she might have needed to give the
students some practice problems before playing BINGO. This was a great epiphany, as she was able
to add this guided practice into the next day.
The final day of her take-over, she taught students about the Investment demand curve. This day,
she allowed students to review the material from the previous day, so as to clarify any ambiguity.
She introduced them to the concept of Investment Demand, and then she allowed the students to
craft ways to remember the ways that this demand can be changed. As she moved through the day,
she tweaked each class period’s lesson to better meet the needs of students.
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4. How well did the intern understand the subject matter/content being taught? Evidence?
Considering the fact that THE INTERN has not taken as many Economics classes as History
classes, she did a wonderful job of understanding the content of the lesson. She was very clear about
the relationship between interest rates and household and firm decisions. THE INTERN had never
taught math before, and one of the days was very much based on the instruction of mathematical
concepts, so she was able to grow as she saw the difficulties in teaching math.
The second day that she taught about the Money Multiplier, her speed through one of the power
point slides seemed as if she might have been unclear about one of the topics; however, after she
taught the objective more than once, she no longer seemed as if she didn’t understand the topic. She
did a great job presenting a topic that was new to her for the first time!
Did the lesson build on students’ prior knowledge? If so, how?
All of the economic concepts throughout the content grow, and throughout the lead teach, THE
INTERN would specifically describe ways some of the topics connected to content covered in
previous classes. She mentioned the connection to Real and Nominal GDP when she described the
Real and Nominal Interest Rates. She also reminded students about the factors of production when
she discussed capital. She also connected information to the Webquest that students had done to
research developing countries the previous week.
How did the lesson accommodate individual differences?
Before students began the unit, THE INTERN placed students into heterogeneous groups to enable
students to learn from one another. As assignments were given, students who had mastered the
content on previous assessments served as aids to her as they helped to re-explain difficult concepts
to their peers—a great usage of the zone of proximal development. She also implemented multiple
activities that reached several intelligences in the classroom—kinesthetic and verbal linguistic (four
corners), musical (chant or rap), logical-mathematical (BINGO math problems), interpersonal
(group problem practice), intrapersonal (reflection questions over the reading excerpt). Her
repertoire of activities enabled her to facilitate learning among all learners.
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5. Did the opening of the lesson motivate students and focus their attention on the content or task?
THE INTERN did a great job of selecting “hooks” to get the kids attention. She used her question
of the day to find out what kids would do with their money. Also, she had a video clip to grap their
attention on another day.
How did the management of materials, time, space, behavior support the learning?
As is common among novice teachers and was seen in my first year teaching, THE INTERN
discovered that students don’t always immediately stop talking when teachers talk. As the week
progressed, she did a better job of redirecting students and getting their attention with a louder
voice.
At the beginning of the take-over, she sometimes ran overtime with the lesson, but when she got a
watch, she improved greatly on her timing and pacing of each lesson cycle. This enabled her to fully
maximize the fifty minutes of instruction.
She did a great job of constantly refining her lessons to better accommodate the needs of students.
Every lesson cycle, she would come to ask how she could improve before the next lesson. She
discovered clear directions and assertiveness can minimize confusion and distracting conversations
in the classroom.
Was there evidence of student learning?
All of the material taught to the students was new to them. Economics is fairly intuitive to most
students, but they have not ever been exposed to the material. Therefore, students clearly showed
an understanding of the material that she taught them. Some of the struggling students still had
difficulties understanding the content, but one student in particular came in for help and improved
his score on this assessment of THE INTERN’S (a C) to an A+ for the following assessment after
this one.
Based on your analysis of the lesson and what you know about the intern and the context, what would be
an appropriate focus or goal for the intern’s development? Why? How would you go about helping her
learn?
Experience and confidence are two keys for growing as a teacher. I believe that with more practice
THE INTERN can learn to redirect students quicker and minimize the side conversations.
Managing our loud classes is a challenge, but by using appropriate classroom management
strategies more frequently, I believe her command in the classroom will greatly improve. Also, as
she teaches more, her confidence will increase and enable her to feel more comfortable in front of
the class (although she already seems to feel more at ease in front of students than most new
teachers). Both of these two focuses will enable her to be a more effective teacher who can easily
express herself in front of students. She will better connect with students and engage them. I will
strive to help THE INTERN practice with classroom management techniques throughout the next
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6. few weeks in our larger classes to better prepare her for her lead teach and equip her with a
playbook to use when situations arise next semester.
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