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Lessons · Teaching · the requirement on teaching reading and literacy

Showing you can teach reading

California requires every candidate for a teaching credential to demonstrate the ability to teach reading and literacy, and this requirement is in transition from a standalone reading examination towards a literacy performance assessment carried inside the preparation programme.

Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.

What it is for

A candidate read a guide written for an earlier cohort, booked a standalone reading examination and studied for it for two months. Her own programme had already moved to an assessment built into her coursework. Nothing she learned was wasted and the booking was. When a requirement is mid-change, the only safe source is the Commission's page and your own programme's advice, in that order.

How to think about it

Ask two questions and write down the answers with the date you got them: what does the Commission's page say this requirement is now, and what is my programme doing about it for my cohort. Do not act on a blog, a forum, or a friend who qualified two years ago. The structure is stable, which is that you must show you can teach reading; the form of the showing is what is moving.

Worked example

The structural fact, which does not move: reading must be demonstrated
Every elementary candidate in every state shows this somehow.
The form of the demonstration is what is changing in California
Standalone examination in one cohort, embedded assessment in another.
Commission's page read first, then my programme asked about my cohort
Two sources, in that order, with dates written down.
Nothing booked and nothing paid until both have answered
This is the requirement where guessing costs the most.

Your turn

Name the state a requirement is in when it is partway through changing form.

The reading requirement is in , so the Commission's page is the only current answer

The trap

Treating a requirement in transition as a requirement that has gone away. It has not. The demonstration is still required; only its shape is being rebuilt, and a candidate who skips it because the old test was retired will be stopped at the recommendation.

Practise the requirement on teaching reading and literacy on HoneA question on it now, a real problem where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.