Support For National Board Candidates
General Resources
Debunking the Myths about National Board Certification
National Board Resource Center at Illinois State University --Use this site to learn about National Board Certification and access resources to help you prepare your portfolio and study for the assessment center exercises.
NBPTS WSU Online -- blog for WSU candidates, but contains lots of useful information and sample videos
National Standards
Education World-- lists of national standards for mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies. Also links to the national professional groups responsible for creating the standards.
Portfolio Entries
Book: Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools
by Steven Zemelman. Identifying the teaching methods that help students learn, explaining how to implement them in the classroom, and showing what exemplary instruction really looks like.
Book: Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom
Opening Classroom Doors. These videos of teaching practice feature National Board Certified Teachers from the Digital Edge project in minimally edited video from their classrooms. Each video segment and its accompanying text and commentary provide a peek into the classrooms of these accomplished teachers. These are not examples of portfolio lessons, but they do show accomplished teachers in action, teaching, questioning, explaining, modeling, collaborating and demonstrating their art at the highest level of proficiency. There also lots of written examples of reflection, and "Candidate Support" questions at the end of each exhibit to help candidates strengthen their analytic and reflective writing.
A Guide to Understanding National Board Certification: 2008 Candidacy Cycle -- This publication, intended to complement the materials provided by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, capitalizes on the experiences of those who have already earned this credential. It includes tips for staying organized, creating a schedule, understanding the National Board standards, assembling your portfolio, creating your videotapes, and documenting your accomplishments. The guide also includes exercises designed to help you practice the skills you will need to complete the National Board Certification Process. You also will find hints and advice from National Board Certified Teachers.
Writing Tips for Portfolio Entries
Writing Your Commentaries: Points to Consider
Writing Samples Showing Evidence and No Evidence of Accomplished Practices --organized by certificate area and entry. These are excellent examples for showing the depth of writing necessary to provide "clear and convincing" evidence in your entries.
Videotaping
Video Production 101 -- Tips for using a tripod, camera placement, basic instruction on using a video camera.
Entry 1: Writing: Thinking Through the Process
NAEP Writing Achievement Levels-- The achievement levels descriptions are statements of what students should know and be able to do at each level. Sample items provide illustrations of student knowledge and skills required within each level of achievement.
Book: Scaffolding Young Writers: A Writer's Workshop Approach
Entry 2: Building Classroom Community Through Social Studies
Book: The Morning Meeting Book
Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: II. Thematic Strands --This section defines and explains the ten thematic strands that form the basis of the social studies standards. The explanations give examples of questions that are asked within each thematic strand, as well as brief overviews of the application of each strand in the early grades, middle grades, and high school.
Social Studies in Action --This video workshop provides a methodology framework for teaching social studies, with a focus on creating effective citizens. The eight video programs feature K-5 teachers exploring social studies themes, theories of learning, teaching strategies, and ways to connect social studies to the world beyond the classroom. Led by social studies educator Mary A. McFarland, the onscreen participants reflect on fundamental issues in teaching and learning social studies through discussions, debates, and activities that can be adapted to a K-5 curriculum.
Entry 3: Integrating Mathematics with Science
Book: Science as Inquiry
Inquiry Strategies for Science and Mathematics Learning: It’s Just Good Teaching --provides guidelines for creating an inquiry-based classroom. The publication also includes chapters on curriculum implications, planning an inquiry lesson, classroom discourse and questioning, and challenges of inquiry-based teaching.
Inquiry: Thoughts, Views, and Strategies for the K-5 Classroom --A 117 page book you can read online (or print as a pdf) Designed as a resource for teachers and administrators who are interested in investigating inquiry-based science education, this book is rather a short introduction to the philosophy and practical applications behind science inquiry learning in the K-5 classroom. This publication brings together the thoughts and skills of many experts in the field. It focuses on the real experiences of teachers and teacher educators.
Learning Science Through Inquiry--Inquiry-based teaching, central to the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, should not be an isolated occurrence, but a comprehensive and ongoing approach. However, many teachers hesitate to teach science through inquiry because they did not learn this way themselves, when they were students or during their preparation to become teachers. This workshop shows inquiry teaching and learning in action, with real teachers and students in real classrooms. Whether you have already experimented with inquiry teaching and want to enhance your practice, or are new to the approach and want to know how to make it work, this workshop will help you understand the process and how it benefits students, and give you strategies to use in your classroom.
Teacher Tools to Facilitate Science Learning --Information about science knowledge, pedagogy, inquiry, instructional models, and assessment.
Science Concepts Directory-- The Big Ideas are listed under "Unifying Concepts." Also has concepts for all science topics.
The Essential Science for Teachers courses are designed to help K–6 teachers gain an understanding of some of the bedrock science concepts they need to teach today’s standards-based curricula. The series of courses will include Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Physical Science. Real-world examples, demonstrations, animations, still graphics, and interviews with scientists compose content segments that are intertwined with in-depth interviews with children that uncover their ideas about the topic at hand. Each program also features an elementary school teacher and his or her students exploring the topic using exemplary science curricula.
Unifying Concepts -- chart showing the Big Ideas and examples of each.
National Science Standards' Unifying Concepts of Science -- Descriptions of the five "big ideas"
Entry 4: Documented Accomplishments
Tips for Completing Entry #4 Documented Accomplishments: Contributions to Student Learning --a reference guide to the instructions as well as a compendium of hints and tips for candidates
National Board Summer Academy Videos -- a series of 5 videos with tips on completing Entry 4
Entry 4: Getting Started on Your Portfolio
Assessment Center
National Board Assessment Center Simulation --This site assists candidates in becoming familiar with a timed written test presented in a three pane format. The sample prompts were written by NBCTs using the scoring rubrics and actual classroom examples.
Exercise 1: Supporting Reading Skills
Strategies for Correcting Student Errors
Book: Miscue Analysis Made Easy: Building on Student Strengths
Exercise 2: Analyzing Student Work
Book: Error Patterns in Computation: Using Error Patterns to Improve Instruction
Misconceptions in Mathematics --problems and examples for many, many math topics, showing a wrong answer that the student may obtain, why they obtained that wrong answer, and ways to explain the correct process to the student.
Exercise 3: Knowledge of Science
Book: Everything You need to Know about Science Homework by Anne Zeman. A quick refresher to 4th through 6th grade curriculum topics.
Science Misconceptions --broken down by science topics
Exercise 4: Social Studies
Book: Everything You need to Know about American History Homework
Exercise 5: Understanding Health
Exercise 6: Integrating the Arts
Book Art Matters: Strategies, Ideas, and Activities to Strengthen Learning Across the Curriculum
Book: Lively Learning: Using the Arts to Teach K-8 Curriculum
The Arts in Every Classroom: A Workshop for Elementary School Teacher--This video workshop provides new ideas about working with the arts for K-5 classroom and arts specialist teachers. The eight one-hour video programs show workshop leaders from the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts working with Learner Teams — teachers, principals, and arts specialists — from three elementary schools.
Connecting With the Arts: A Workshop for Middle Grades Teachers --The video workshop shows middle school teachers why and how to integrate the arts (dance, music, theatre, and visual art) with other subjects (language arts, social studies, science, and math). Extensive classroom examples present teachers working together to create rich integrated learning experiences for their students. The eight programs guide viewers in discussing key elements of arts integration, enabling them to begin integrating the arts more effectively in their own schools. Participants define what arts integration means, plan collaborations with colleagues, clarify student roles in the artistic process, work on designing instruction that helps students explore connecting concepts and big ideas, and examine assessments to determine what students are learning.
