National Boards: Continuing Entry 1

Today’s post continues to discuss Entry 1 for school counselors. This entry involves a small group session that focuses on a critical need at your school. Read my last NBPTS post, Planning for Entry 1, if you missed my initial explanation of the entry.

Entry 1 is divided into the following sections:

Instructional Context (1 page)
Planning and Implementation (5 pages)
Analysis of Student Work (4 pages)
Reflection (2 pages)

Be sure to include these headings in your writing. Also remember to create a header to automatically include your candidate ID number on the upper right side of each page. Use the suggested page lengths to keep within the 12-page limit for this entry. You are not required to include the questions in your writing. If you are thinking about doing it, I would suggest you reconsider. Just answer the questions. You can use parts of the questions as sentence starters where appropriate or simply use a connected standard as a lead in to your answer. You want your writing to flow and be an “easy read” for your assessor.

The bulk of your writing will cover planning and implementation and the analysis of the students’ work. Notice that the planning and implementation sections should be no more than five pages in length, but there are eleven bullets of questions to answer. The Analysis of Student Work section should be just one page less, but only has five bullets. What does this tell you? The assessors will really be looking for a thorough analysis of your students’ work.

When you write your reflection, be sure to really think about how your lesson went. Approach this just as you do any group or class lesson. When you teach a lesson for the first time, more times than not you will discover something you could have done differently or something that went very well. Really take time to think through this section of your writing.

You will need to choose and submit three student work samples. Two pages per student may be submitted, but no more than six pages total. You will turn in the original work samples. The pages must be 8.5 x 11 in size. One of the work samples I submitted was a half sheet of manila paper. I still had to affix the half sheet to a full sheet of paper. Also, you may not submit an assignment that is front to back thinking it is one page. It will be considered two pages. These specific directions are included in the Format Specifications section of your portfolio instructions. There are more things you will need to know, so PLEASE be sure to read them thoroughly.

With Entry 1, you are also required to submit a description of the assignment and a set of instructions. This should be no more than one page in length. Do not over think this. Just tell the assessor what the assignment was along with the directions the students followed to complete it. My own description page was approximately a half page in length.

Stick Around! You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates. My next NBPTS post will begin to address Entry 2. As always, I’d love to hear from you. Let me know if there are any questions you have about Entry 1.

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