CalTPA 2.0 Templates

The CalTPA 2.0 templates have been revised for the 19-20 administration cycle. We are no longer able to provide the CalTPA 2.0 templates on our website. If you are student teaching, you can obtain the templates from the EDSS 473 instructor (SSCP) or your University Supervisor (MSCP).  Candidates will need to register to complete and submit their CalTPA cycles with Pearson.  

Changes to the CalTPA as of August 23, 2019:

  • New Passing Standard
  • Revised Submission Templates
  • Clarified Instructions
  • Revised Rubrics
  • Cycle 1 & Cycle 2 AY18-19 templates will no longer be accepted

Be sure to sign up to attend the Cracking the CalTPA 2.0 Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 workshops to get more information.

This glossary contains terms as used in this version of the CalTPA Performance Assessment Guide. Reference this glossary to determine if you are using the terms appropriately in your responses to the cycle directions.

  • 504 Plan: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities, protects students from being denied participation in school programs, services, or activities solely on the basis of disability. Much like an IEP, a 504 Plan is a written document detailing the services, accommodations, and modifications that can help students with learning and attention issues learn and participate in the general education curriculum. Section 504 defines disability on a broader basis than does IDEA. That’s why students who aren’t eligible for an IEP may qualify for a 504 Plan. Students who meet the definition of a person with a disability under Section 504 are those who have a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; have a record of such an impairment; or are regarded as having such an impairment. The 504 Plan should include a description of the disability; the major life activity limited; the basis for determining the disability and its educational impact; necessary accommodations; and placement in the least restrictive environment.
 
  • Academic language: Refers to the oral, written, auditory, and visual language proficiency required to learn effectively in schools and academic programs—i.e., it’s the language used in classroom lessons, books, tests, and assignments, and it’s the language that students are expected to learn and achieve fluency in. Frequently contrasted with “conversational” or “social” language, academic language includes a variety of formal-language skills—such as vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, syntax, discipline-specific terminology, or rhetorical conventions—that allow students to acquire knowledge and academic skills while also successfully navigating school policies, assignments, expectations, and cultural norms. Even though students may be highly intelligent and capable, for example, they may still struggle in a school setting if they have not yet mastered certain terms and concepts, or learned how to express themselves and their ideas in expected ways.
 
  • Accommodation: Service or support related to a student’s disability that allows the student to fully access a given subject matter and to accurately demonstrate knowledge without requiring a fundamental alteration to the assignment’s or test’s standard or expectation.
 
  • Adaptations: Changes made by a teacher to lesson or assessment components, usually to the lesson format or to a test, that allow students to participate effectively in the lesson or the assessment. For example, adaptations can include use of different or additional resources, assistance from another student or adult, or additional time.
 
  • Annotations: Notes added by way of comment or explanation.
 
  • Assessment: The formal or informal process of collecting evidence about student progress, analyzing and evaluating progress, communicating about progress, and adjusting teaching practices based on reflection on a teacher’s practice. There are multiple forms of assessment, including achievement or other standardized tests, exercises or assignments that enable teachers to measure student progress, and student work, and assessments may include feedback from parents or other family members. For additional information, see “Assessment” on the California Department of Education website.
 
  • Assistive technology: Any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities.
 
  • California English Language Development Test (CELDT): An examination for K–12 students administered through the California Department of Education. The purpose of the CELDT is to identify students who are English learners, determine their level of English proficiency, and annually assess their progress in learning English. Four skill areas are measured: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. There are five levels of proficiency: beginning, early intermediate, intermediate, early advanced, and advanced. NOTE: California is in the process of transitioning from the CELDT to the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC, see definition below). The CELDT will continue to be administered until the ELPAC becomes operational (expected in 2018).
 
  • California state standards and/or curriculum frameworks: These specify and define the knowledge, concepts, and skills that students should acquire at each grade level in each content area.
 
  • Content-specific instructional strategies: Instructional strategies that are effective for the content area as defined by the Teaching Performance Expectations (TPE) and the State Board of Education framework and/or equivalent.
 
  • Content-specific pedagogy: Content-specific pedagogy is the specific methods or practices that are used to teach a certain subject. Its focus is on the best-practices for that subject, which are most likely derived through research of the methods or practices.
 
  • Deep understanding: Knowledge that is beyond attending to or recalling factual pieces of information and, instead, is characterized by the ability to put those pieces together to evaluate, solve complex problems, and generate new ideas. See also “higher-order thinking skills.”
 
  • Demonstrations: Refer to a wide variety of potential educational projects, presentations, or products through which students “demonstrate” what they have learned, usually as a way of determining whether and to what degree they have achieved expected learning standards or learning objectives for a course or learning experience. A demonstration of learning is typically both a learning experience in itself and a means of evaluating academic progress and achievement.
 
  • Developmental level: Refers to the stages or milestones in children’s/adolescents’ cognitive, psychological, and physical development. While children/adolescents may be expected to progress through the same specified stages and in the same order, they proceed at different rates through these stages. Thus, children/adolescents of the same chronological age may be observed to be at different "levels."
 
  • Differentiate: Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing different students with different avenues to learning (often in the same classroom) in terms of acquiring content; processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability.
 
  • Discrimination: Treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit. Discrimination may occur, for example, on the basis of race, religion, gender, socio-economic class, physical ability, or sexual orientation.
 
  • Educational technology: Any digital/virtual tool used to impact the teaching/learning process within an educational environment.
 
  • English language proficiency: The level of knowledge, skills, and ability that students who are learning English as a new language need in order to access, engage with, and achieve in grade-level academic content. For California, these are delineated in the California English Language Development (CA ELD) Standards.
 
  • English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC): The ELPAC, which will replace the California English Language Development Test (CELDT, defined above) in 2018 as the required state test for English language proficiency (state and federal law require that local educational agencies administer a state test of English language proficiency [ELP] to eligible students in kindergarten through grade twelve). The ELPAC will be aligned with the 2012 California English Language Development Standards and will comprise two separate ELP assessments: one for the initial identification of students as English learners (ELs), and a second for the annual summative assessment to measure a student’s progress in learning English and to identify the student's level of ELP.
 
  • English learner: Students for whom there is a report of a primary language other than English on the state-approved Home Language Survey or district criteria and who, on the basis of the state approved oral language assessment procedures, have been determined to lack the clearly defined English language skills of listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing necessary to succeed in the school's regular instructional programs.
 
  • Face-to-face classroom: A face-to-face classroom is where the teacher and students are in the same location together, and instruction occurs through face-to-face interactions between and among the candidate and students.
 
  • Focus Student 3: A student whose life experience(s) either inside or outside of school that may result in a need for additional academic and/or emotional support and whose behavior in class catches your attention (e.g., does not participate, falls asleep in class, remains silent, acts out, demands attention). Life experiences may include, but are not limited to, challenges in the home, community, or school as a result of discrimination, bullying, illness, loss of parents, divorce, trauma, homelessness, poverty, or incarceration; or a student who has been negatively impacted due to their religion, racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism, or heterosexism; or as a result of needs as a student of color, Standard English learner, a migrant, immigrant, undocumented student, a self-identified LGBTQ+ student, or a student in foster care.
 
  • Formal assessment: Refers to collecting and analyzing student assessment results to provide information about students’ current levels of achievement or performance after a period of learning has occurred. Results of formal assessment are used to plan further instruction and provide detailed feedback to students to direct growth and development based on content-specific learning goal(s) of the instruction. Formal assessments use a rubric and/or clearly defined scoring criteria, shared with students prior to the assessment, to gauge and evaluate student achievement or demonstrated performance. A formal assessment requires students to demonstrate the extent to which they have gained specific skills, competencies, and/or content knowledge through a product, process, or performance.
 
  • Funds of knowledge: Defined by researchers1 Luis Moll, Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez (1992) “to refer to the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being” (p. 133). When teachers shed their role of teacher and expert and, instead, take on a new role as learner, they can come to know their students and the families of their students in new and distinct ways. With this new knowledge, they can begin to see that the households of their students contain rich cultural and cognitive resources and that these resources can and should be used in their classroom in order to provide culturally responsive and meaningful lessons that tap students’ prior knowledge. Information that teachers learn about their students in this process is considered the student’s funds of knowledge.
 
  • Gifted and Talented Education (GATE): Under this state program, local educational agencies (LEAs) develop unique education opportunities for high-achieving and underachieving pupils in the California public elementary and secondary schools. Each school district’s governing board determines the criteria it will use to identify students for participation in the GATE program. Categories for identification may include one or more of the following: intellectual, creative, specific academic, or leadership ability; high achievement; performing and visual arts talent; or any other criterion that meets the standards set forth by the State Board of Education (SBE).
 
  • Graphic organizer: A visual communication tool that uses visual symbols to express ideas and concepts to convey meaning. A graphic organizer often depicts the relationships between facts, terms, and/or ideas within a learning task. The main purpose of a graphic organizer is to provide a visual aid to facilitate learning and instruction. There are many similar names for graphic organizers, including concept maps and story maps.
 
  • Heritage language learner: A student studying a language who has proficiency in or a cultural connection to that language.
 
  • Higher-order thinking skills: A concept popular in American education reform that distinguishes critical-thinking skills from low-order learning outcomes, such as those attained by rote memorization. HOTS include synthesizing, analyzing, reasoning, comprehending, application, and evaluation. HOTS are based on various taxonomies of learning, such as that propagated by Benjamin Bloom in his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals (1956).
 
  • Hybrid classroom: A hybrid classroom is where a student learns at least in part through delivery of content and instruction via digital and online media with some element of student control over time, place, path, and pace.
 
  • Inclusive learning environment: Inclusive teaching strategies refer to any number of teaching approaches that address the needs of students with a variety of backgrounds, learning styles, and abilities. These strategies contribute to an overall inclusive learning environment, in which students feel equally valued.
 
  • Individualized Education Plan (IEP): This written document is developed and required for each public school student who receives special education and related services. The IEP creates an opportunity for teachers, parents, school administrators, related services personnel, and students (when appropriate) to work together to improve educational results for students with disabilities.
 
  • Informal assessment: Observing and documenting student learning and adjusting instruction to provide in-the-moment feedback to students while teaching. Informal assessments may involve a range of strategies (e.g., purposeful questions to check for understanding during the lesson; observation notes taken by the teacher while students are engaged in instructional activities; student-created representations of learning [written work, visuals, graphics, models, products, performances]; student peer review and critique; student and group reflection on the qualities of their own product, process, or performance; homework; “do nows”; exit slips).
 
  • Learning goal: Specific statements of intended student attainment of essential concepts and skills. The learning goal is the heart of assessment for learning and needs to be made clear at the planning stage if teachers are to find assessment for learning manageable.
 
  • Lower-order thinking skills: Lower-order thinking skills are reflected by the lower three levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remembering, Understanding, and Applying.
 
  • Manipulatives: Physical objects that are used as teaching tools to engage students in hands-on learning. They can be used to introduce, practice, or remediate a concept. A manipulative may be as simple as grains of rice, coins, blocks, and other three-dimensional shapes, or as sophisticated as a model of the solar system.
 
  • Maps: Types of visual/graphic organizers that are used to help students organize and represent knowledge of a subject. Concept maps, for example, begin with a main idea (or concept) and then branch out to show how that main idea can be broken down into specific topics. Story maps help students learn the elements of a book or story by identifying story characters, plot, setting, problem, and solution.
 
  • Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS): An integrated, comprehensive framework that focuses on CCSS, core instruction, differentiated learning, student-centered learning, individualized student needs, and the alignment of systems necessary for all students’ academic, behavioral, and social success. MTSS offers the potential to create needed systematic change through intentional design and redesign of services and supports that quickly identify and match the needs of all students.
 
  • Performance(s): A demonstration of competence or mastery that typically focuses on the student's ability to apply what he or she has learned to a realistic task—a problem or situation that might be encountered in real life.
 
  • Rubric: A tool for scoring student work or performances, typically in the form of a table or matrix, with criteria that describe the dimensions of the outcomes down the left vertical axis and levels of performance across the horizontal axis. The performance being scored by a rubric may be given an overall score (holistic rubric scoring), or criteria may be scored individually (analytic rubric scoring).Rubrics may also be used for communicating expectations for performance.
 
  • Scaffolding: Refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. The term itself offers the relevant descriptive metaphor: teachers provide successive levels of temporary support that help students reach higher levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to achieve without assistance. Like physical scaffolding, the supportive strategies are incrementally removed when they are no longer needed, and the teacher gradually shifts more responsibility over the learning process to the student.
 
  • Social-emotional development: Includes the student's experience, expression, and management of emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others (Cohen and others 2005). It encompasses both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes.
 
  • Social identity: The cultural identities of students2 are constructed from their experiences with the 12 attributes of culture identified by Cushner, McClelland, and Safford (2000): ethnicity/nationality, social class, sex/gender, health, age, geographic region, sexuality, religion, social status, language, ability/disability, and race. Students’ cultural identities are defined by these experiences, and students learn these identities within a culture through socializing agents (Campbell 2004). Therefore, teachers must understand that these cultural identities define who the students are.
 
  • Standard English learner: Pupils whose native language is English and whose mastery of the standard English language or academic English is limited due to their use of nonstandard English.
 
  • Student self-assessment: Refers to students evaluating their own learning, based on criteria, and objectively reflecting on and critically evaluating their progress and academic development in the content area.
 
  • Think-Pair-Share: A collaborative learning strategy in which students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This technique requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing an answer with a partner serves to maximize participation, focus attention, and engage students in comprehending the reading material.
 
  • Universal Design for Learning (UDL)3: A set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs. UDL curriculum calls for creating curriculum that provides multiple means of representation to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge; multiple means of action and expression to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know; and multiple means of engagement to tap into learners’ interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn.