Component 4 includes 3 parts: Knowledge of Students and Assessment, the Professional Learning Need and the Student Need. Unfortunately there is no way around it, Component 4 is a beast. It is the component with the most to keep track of and documents to submit, which makes organization key. Below are my recommendations for Component 4, however you should always check the National Board’s website for official instructions.
I did Component 4 last and it was the only component I completed that year. At that point, I had learned from working on the previous components, so I hit the ground running. My colleague and I got together over the summer to make parent and student surveys to send out during the first week of school and brainstormed what we were going to use for each section of the component. This allowed us to go into the school year with a clear plan and helped minimize our stress levels. I intentionally did not have overlap between each of the three parts of this component because I wanted to ensure I had plenty to write about without repeating myself. Keeping each section unique helped me stay organized, however I’ve heard other teachers have success overlapping them, so do whatever works best for you and your processing style!
Here’s how I structured more portfolio entry:
- Knowledge of Students and Assessments: my Spanish 1 students’ interpersonal communication
- Professional Need: improving my implementation of IPAs
- Student Need: my Spanish 5 students’ dual credit options
Get organized!
- Create separate folders for each section of this component so you keep everything straight. I did this in Google Drive so I could access them anywhere.
- Use Google Forms to collect data from parents and students. Not only is it easy to copy a Google form and modify it for each group, but it also provides charts of your data!
- Color code! I picked one color for each section of the component and color coded everything from my Google folders to the written component instructions. That way I always knew what I was working on.
- Use Google Draw to compile your evidence pages. There are no margin requirements for the evidence pages and Google Draw doesn’t have any margins. This means you can fit a ton of evidence onto each page and it is easy to insert images, tables and charts or graphs.
For more information about written commentaries, see my Component 2 post.
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