Exam Preparation

ABCTE’s Prepare to Teach Workshops will not only help teaching candidates prepare for the Professional Teaching Knowledge Exam, but will also provide sound, practical advice to help teachers succeed once they are certified and in the classroom. In total, the workshops will consist of over 300 pages of content divided across ten topics, each with high-quality video case studies that demonstrate and reinforce the concepts discussed. These workshops are available online at any time so candidates can move at their own pace.

All enrolled candidates will receive complimentary access to ABCTE’s online Prepare to Teach Workshops. Access the workshops at http://www.abcte.org/courses/prepare-to-teach/index.html and login with your MyPass username and password.

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Preparing for the writing section of the ABCTE Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) examination can be challenging. The ABCTE PTK Practice Writing Package supports your preparation by affording you the opportunity to practice with up to four PTK writing samples for immediate evaluation. Powered by IntelliMetric®, within seconds you’ll receive a score that will allow you to better prepare yourself for the actual ABCTE exam. IntelliMetric® utilizes advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to score open-ended essays with unparalleled scoring accuracy.

The PTK Practice Package includes:

• 4 scored submissions on 2 different practice prompts
• Grammar and spell-checking features
• An online thesaurus and word bank
• Diagnostic feedback and score interpretation

"The success of standards-based education systems depends on two elements: strong standards, and assessments that measure what the standards expect. ... In general, [states'] individual test items are reasonably well matched to the standards they are meant to assess. But the collection of items in a test tend to measure only a few of the less challenging standards and objectives. As a result, few state tests can be said to be well-aligned assessments of challenging standards."

A graphic aid for using Bloom's taxonomy to design course activities.

This article emphasizes the importance of using assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. It introduces strategies that teachers can use to gain information about their students' learning and use this information to improve instruction.

This page on TeacherVision's website features many resources organized under the categories of "The Art of Teaching," "Assessment," "Behavior Management," "Classroom Organization" and "Working with Parents."

"Few issues in education raise emotions as much as the issue of school 'discipline.' Frequent newspaper accounts continually remind the public of the extreme behavioral issues that confront schools today. The issue becomes even more complex when children and youth with disabilities are brought into the picture. The purposes of this handbook are to provide a method to evaluate current discipline practices and a strategy for making decisions about adopting or adapting behavior change strategies from the professional literature. "

Despite continuing criticism of public education, experimentally demonstrated and field tested teaching methods have been ignored, rejected, and abandoned. Instead of a stable consensus regarding best teaching practices, there seems only an unending succession of innovations. A longstanding educational doctrine appears to underlie this anomalous state of affairs. Termed developmentalism, it presumes "natural" ontogenesis to be optimal and it requires experimentally demonstrated teaching practices to overcome a presumption that they interfere with an optimal developmental trajectory.

In this article Rick Wormeli makes the argument that, in order to differentiate instruction, teachers should be experts in four areas: the students, the curriculum, cognitive theory,and differentiated instruction practices.

ERIC provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text. ERIC is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

The practices described in this booklet can generally be applied to classroom subjects in primary and secondary schools. They show large, positive learning effects for students in widely varying conditions. Educators may find the many references valuable in investigating the applicability of the practices in their particular circumstances. As with all educational practices, of course, they can be effectively or ineffectively planned and conducted, and the results may vary accordingly.

A glossary of terms related to educational assessment practices.

Glossary of Education Terms

The five sections of this resource present a definition of graphic organizers, a sampling of different types and their applications, a discussion of the research evidence for their effectiveness, useful Web resources, and a list of referenced research articles.

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. Also see their resource on Principles of Composition.

The New Teacher Hotline features Dr. Glen Moulton, a supervisor of instruction and lifelong teacher trainer, and Michael Kelley, the author of Rookie Teaching for Dummies. These two hosts use their knowledge and experiences to provide straight-forward and practical tips and strategies to new teachers.

You can either listen right from the web site or download the podcast from iTunes and listen on the go! And best of all, this resource is absolutely free!

This issue of Noteworthy offers guidance to help local educators, teachers and administrators achieve the fundamental goal of the No Child Left Behind Act: improved learning for all students.

Paradigm is an interactive, menu-driven, online writer's guide and handbook.

The OWL website contains over one Gigabyte of writing-related material, with new material being added almost every month. The website contains hypertext workshops, subject tutorials, huge collections of links to help users find information on the Internet, PowerPoint presentations about all aspects of writing, and a voluminous quantity of web pages. The site covers all aspects of writing – from essay writing to establishing arguments to punctuation.

Schools are inundated with research that promises to improve achievement. Yet when programs are implemented results always seem to fall short. How can it be in school after school, year after year? The answer depends on whom you ask.

This lengthy document examines educational research and describes best practices in three major areas: effective teaching principles, effective lesson structures, and critical presentation techniques.

The Class Homepage Builder is a tool to help you create and post online news and information about your class. As a teacher, it's your personal online workspace for making a Class Homepage and Web-based materials to share with students and their parents. The Class Homepage Builder is free! Even if you have little computer experience, it's easy to use the Class Homepage Builder. The step by step tutorial will guide you throughout the process.

This site is intended to help K-12 educators work with raw student and school data. The tutorials on this site highlight many of the Excel skills that are helpful when working with building- and district-level data.

The online and free Electronic Statistics Textbook offers training in the understanding and application of statistics. The material was developed at the StatSoft R&D department based on many years of teaching undergraduate and graduate statistics courses and covers a wide variety of applications, including laboratory research (biomedical, agricultural, etc.), business statistics and forecasting, social science statistics and survey research, data mining, engineering and quality control applications, and many others.

This booklet is a synthesis of principles of effective teaching that have emerged from research in classrooms. It addresses generic aspects of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, as well as classroom organization and management practices that support effective instruction. It focuses on learning outcomes but with recognition of the need for a supportive classroom climate and positive student attitudes toward schooling, teachers, and classmates.