Phase 4: Becoming a Practitioner

Designing Assessments for TPA

For this cycle's TPA, I designed an assessment with two main goals in mind. The first was to gauge how independently my students could use their AAC devices or engage with grade-level reading content on their own. The second was to have students match text directly from the reading passage to a review sheet, which helped me see how well they were connecting the source material to key concepts. Together, these two components gave me a clearer picture of where each student was in terms of both communication and comprehension, and helped guide my instructional decisions going forward.

To measure independence, I used the Degree of Independence Index (DII), a formula that uses weighted scores to calculate how independently a student completes a task. Scores across each step of a literacy task are summed and divided by the maximum possible score to produce a percentage representing functional independence.

DII = Σ(weighted trials) ÷ (n × max score)

Each step is scored on a 0–5 scale: 5 = fully independent (no cues needed); 4 = verbal prompt; 3 = gestural prompt (pointing, glancing); 2 = modeling; 1 = partial physical prompt (elbow/wrist guidance); 0 = full physical prompt or no response.

For example, if a student completes a six-step literacy task with scores of 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, and 1, their earned score is 25. The maximum possible score is 6 steps × 5 (max per step) = 30. Dividing 25 by 30 gives 0.83, meaning the student demonstrated 83% independence on that task.

Literacy Instruction and Adjustments for Students with Dyslexia

Detail the strategies I learned for literacy instruction and how I would make adjustments for students with dyslexia.

TPA #2 Completion

This cycle of the TPA was really useful in connecting a set of lessons together to target specific skills I want my students to obtain. It allowed me to develop my ability to assess student performance and use data to adjust instruction, then evaluate how effective those changes were. One thing I need to work on is giving more actionable feedback to my students so they know what skills they are using and how to use them.