Reflection on Completing edTPA and my eFolio!

At the end of this semester of Social Studies Methods, I had to create an electronic portfolio showing everything that I did this semester. Although it took a while to complete, this was a great experience that I will get to use as I continue my teaching career. I thought that it was a very valuable experience to form a unit plan, which I got to put on my eFolio. My unit plan was about economics, and it included five lessons and mini-lessons. There were direct instruction lessons, inquiry lessons, and cooperative learning lessons. This experience took me a long time, but once I become a full time teacher I'm going to have to make these often, so it was good to get to practice it now. Another valuable part of my eFolio was my reference section. In this section, I have over 20 sources that I used this past semester in one convenient location. I can look back on these in the future and use them when I'm actually a teacher.
The most important part of my eFolio to me was my edTPA tasks. These were based on my instruction this semester, and while it was very challenging to complete the tasks, it was great practice for when I actually need to do these tasks for student teaching. There are three edTPA tasks, all with multiple parts. Task 1 is the planning task, meaning that I completed it prior to my instruction. In this part, I planned out my instruction keeping in mind the specific needs of the class. In task 2, I posted a video of my instruction and commented on it. In task 3, I posted my assessment data and talked about whether or not my instruction was successful. Completing edTPA took me by far the most amount of time of any part of my eFolio, but I'm very glad I did it. I'll be much more prepared to complete these tasks after my student teaching, and I'm very thankful for that.