National Board Application Part 2: Assessment Center

In addition to submitting the portfolio, you also must take a 3 hour online assessment.  It is recommended that you study for the assessment and know key theorists and strategies to include, but I think any teacher worthy of National Board certification would be familiar with these and use them daily.  (With that said, I totally asked the ESL teacher for tips since I do not know specific names/ideas in this area.) 

Regardless of your certification area, there are 6 content-specific exercises and you have no more than 30 minutes to complete each exercise.  If you are in the middle of typing a word at the conclusion of 30 minutes, the screen goes blank and your time is up. 

You have 10 seconds before the next exercise prompt appears and another 30 minute countdown begins.  The only thing you are allowed to take into the testing room is your driver's license.  They also scan your palm multiple times for identification purposes before you are allowed to enter and exit the room. 

I am not allowed to give any specifics as to what my prompts were, but here is a general description of each exercise for the Early/Middle Childhood Literacy certification:

Exercise 1: Reading Comprehension

In this exercise, you analyze a student's comprehension of an excerpt of text and suggest a strategy to use with this student to improve comprehension.
 

Exercise 2: Oral Language Acquisition Skills for Learners of English as a New Language

In this exercise, you identify one strength and two weaknesses in the oral language development of a student for whom English is a new language. You describe two developmentally appropriate teaching strategies, other than teacher correction, for building upon the identified strength or for addressing the identified weaknesses in order to further the student’s oral language development.
 

Exercise 3: Emergent Literacy

In this exercise, you analyze a student's writing sample, describe the developmental characteristics of the student's writing, and propose two developmentally appropriate teaching strategies to address an identified area of weakness or build upon an identified strength.

Exercise 4:Analyzing Student Reading

In this exercise, you analyze a transcript of a student's oral reading, identify two significant patterns with respect to reading miscues and/or fluency, and discuss an appropriate teaching strategy to address one of the identified patterns.
 

Exercise 5: Interpreting Visual Text

In this exercise, you interpret a visual text, identify its message, and analyze the use of visual and textual elements to convey that message. You identify the intended audience for the visual text and explain how the visual text targets that audience.
 

Exercise 6: Writing Development

In this exercise, you identify one strength and one area of need in a student’s writing sample and describe a developmentally appropriate teaching strategy to address each of them.