I. Course Title: Student Teaching in English Grades 6-12
II. Course Number: EDUC 666
III. Credit Hours: 6 credits
IV. Prerequisites: Successful completion of Early Field Experiences in Teaching English
Grades 6-12 (EDUC 648) as demonstrated on the final early field experience evaluation;
recommendation of the candidate鈥檚 university field supervisor.
V. Course Description:
This semester-long full-time field experience provides graduate teacher candidates
extensive clinical experience in a grade level appropriate for licensure in teaching
English at the middle level (grades 6-8) or secondary level (grades 6-12). Candidates
design and deliver a wide variety of learning experiences in their placement with
the advantage of mentorship and coaching provided by schools, licensed teachers, and
university faculty. Candidates begin by observing and co-teaching with their cooperating
teachers and then transition to assume full responsibility for appropriate English
classes. Regularly scheduled seminars enhance professional development of the candidate
and are included as a weighted percentage of the student teaching grade.
VI. Detailed Description of Content of the Course:
This is a clinical, field-based course. Students will spend 35 hours per week at their
school placement site. Weekly seminars are scheduled to enhance the professional development
of candidates enrolled in this field experience and include, but are not limited to
the following topics:
- Classroom management and student motivation
- Teaching diverse learners in the English classroom
- Professional growth, reflection, and evaluation
- Communicating with families
- Tools and resources for inquiry-driven English classrooms
- Applications of instructional planning, pedagogy, and assessment
VI. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course:
Candidate placements are made in appropriate scientific discipline classrooms in grades
6-12. Candidates practice teaching diverse learners under the supervision of approved
cooperating teachers and university supervisors. Candidates are embedded in schools
full-time throughout the semester. Effective lesson planning, assessment, instructional
delivery, and classroom management are key focus areas. The experience begins with
observation and culminates in assumption of full teaching responsibility. The student
teaching experience provides for a minimum of 300 clock hours with at least 150 hours
spent supervised in direct teaching activities.
VII. Goals and Objectives of the Course:
Goals, objectives, and assignments address the Virginia Department of Education regulations
for preparing middle/secondary (grades 6-12) English educators. Candidates successfully
completing this course will be able to demonstrate proficient knowledge, skills, and
dispositions of the following:
Goal 1: Apply theories of learning and integration to English instruction and incorporate
state and national standards
- Design and implement structured, differentiated, original lessons that address multiple
aspects of the English curriculum.
Goal 2: Plan evidence-based instruction and assessments to include differentiated
instruction for diverse learners and select appropriate objectives, activities and
teaching materials for English instruction.
- Apply theories of learning and integration to English instruction and incorporating
technologies in learning. Candidates will learn to contextualize teaching and draw
effectively on representations from the students鈥� own experiences and cultures.
- Design and implement lessons that use the NCTE best practices as foundational to students鈥�
learning.
Goal 3: Demonstrate understanding of evidence-based literacy strategies in developing
instructional tasks, activities, and/or lessons.
- Design instruction using reading strategies and techniques used to enhance reading
comprehension skills in both fiction and nonfiction texts.
- Explain critical literacy and its potential impact on helping students learn English
content and critical thinking.
- Design and implement lessons that incorporate instructional strategies to advance
students鈥� content knowledge and encourage critical thinking skills
- Design instruction to teach research including ethical accessing, evaluating, organizing,
crediting, and synthesizing information.
Goal 4: Meet the diverse needs of learners to engage them in English content learning.
- Identify technology, materials, manipulatives, and activities that engage all literacy
learners across ability and achievement levels and support student knowledge of communication
and media literacy skills
- Demonstrate an understanding of and proficiency in pedagogy to incorporate writing
as an instructional and assessment tool for candidates to generate, gather, plan,
organize, and present ideas in writing to communicate for a variety of purposes.
Goal 5: Candidates demonstrate knowledge of English language arts subject matter
content that specifically includes literature and multimedia texts as well as knowledge
of the nature of adolescents as readers.
- Design instruction incorporating reading strategies and techniques used to enhance
reading comprehension skills in both fiction and nonfiction texts using fiction and
non-fiction texts from young adult, British, American, world, and ethnic and minority
texts appropriate for English instruction.
- Design instruction incorporating writing as an instructional and assessment tool.
Goal 6: Apply classroom [and behavior] management techniques and individual interventions,
including techniques that promote the emotional well-being of learners.
- Plan instruction using strategies to maintain student behavioral conduct consistent
with norms, standards and rules of the educational environment.
- Design instruction to address diverse approaches based upon behavioral, cognitive,
affective, social and ecological theory and practice.
Goal 7: Understand how to develop effective lessons, activities, and assessments.
- Interpret and analyze valid, standards-based assessments to make decisions about how
to improve instruction and student performance.
- Design instruction with evidence of understanding the relationships among assessment,
instruction, and student progress, as well as the ability to interpret valid assessments
in order to measure student attainment of essential skills in a standards-based environment.
Goal 8: Develop skills as reflective practitioners.
- Describe how adolescent development, school culture, and community intersect with
the English instructional methods occurring in field placement sites.
- Examine and use student data to reflect upon their lessons.
Goal 9: Build a repository of rigorous, meaningful teaching strategies and material
for bringing ELA content to life for diverse learners.
- Write a yearlong plan for teaching an English course of the candidate鈥檚 choice. This
plan will include a description of a teaching context, a rationale justifying chosen
teaching and assessment approaches, detailed overviews of 6-9 units suitable for the
teaching context, and additional elements.
Goal 10: Use multimodal composition and communication technologies to facilitate reflection
and instruction.
- Write a unit of study that allows for a variety of means of expression, including
writing, speaking and listening, and multiliteracies (e.g., artistic responses, film-making,
digital narratives, podcasts, or whatever else you feel will promote understanding
of the concepts at hand).
Goal 11: Teach a range of lessons, reflecting on and using feedback for continued
growth, inquiry, and pedagogical skill.
- Write a teaching unit encompassing about 4-6 weeks of instruction organized around
a specific theme or principle and should be derived from the theories of learning
and teaching discussed as part of this course.
VIII. Assessment Measures:
Assessment of teaching in the early field experience is both formative and summative
and is collaboratively completed by the by the classroom teacher and University faculty.
Evaluation is based upon the INTASC Standards for Beginning Teachers which are embedded
in the Teacher Candidate Evaluation forms. Assessments will include but are not limited
to:
- Key CAEP Performance Assessments: Lesson Planning
- Key CAEP Performance Assessments: Observation
- Key CAEP Performance Assessment: Impact on Student Learning Project
- Key CAEP Performance Assessment Final Evaluation
- Key CAEP Performance Assessment: Professional Characteristics and Dispositions form
- 150 successful teaching hours
- Participation in seminar (discussions and small-group activities; reflective writings
as appropriate)
- Completion of a student teaching portfolio that includes information about the community,
school, students, instructional practices, assessments, analysis, and reflection on
the student teaching experience.
Other Course Information
Review and Approval
March 01, 2021