Entry 3 – for which certificate area? For EC-GEN and MC-GEN it’s Science with a Math integration – and causes many headaches, for sure! For EC/MC Literacy Entry 3 is the one that integrates speaking, listening, and viewing – a real trifecta! Whichever certificate area you are, there is help on this website! Please join, and come on in! The Forums are busy with messages being posted all the time – and responded to by NBCTs who are Candidate Support Providers trained by NBPTS. (Forums are Certificate-area-specific, so you can be sure to find exactly what you are seeking.) You can join from the main page of this website. Click on the “Join” button, and come on in!

Kelly Mueller

Please check out the “Forums” page inside the website – specifically the Assessment Center section. Questions similar to this have been discussed there.

To answer your question, though, yes – of course you want to check for prior knowledge to help you then plan whatever they have asked you to plan (one goal, two activities — or whatever the AC exercise calls for). You want to give your rationale for why you are proceeding the way you are, so even if they don’t ask for prior knowledge, you might begin by saying that you would check for that. You might proceed, though (since you can’t actually check for it) by saying that in your experience most children this age are ready for _____. Another way to proceed would be to go ahead and BEGIN by saying you DID check for prior knowledge, and based on that your children were ready for ____. (Remember – at the AC there are no holes barred – you can have anything readily available that you want —- so in your case, you can have the results of your questioning for prior knowledge already available to you!) Just make it up – based on what you believe the children would be ready for!

But please do click on the Forums page – and then on the EC-GEN Assessment Center Forum (or MC-GEN Assessment Center if you are MC-GEN). Ask more specific questions in there if you have them!

Kelly M

You are correct to question that!…it most certainly should NOT take that long! What browser are you using? I have had trouble getting into the Chat Rooms a couple of times while using Firefox, which is what I usually use. I found by switching to Safari I had not problem at all. So the first thing I would suggest is that you try switching browsers.

Another thing is that our website is supported by two separate operating systems. (Please understand I’m a teacher just like you – not a web designer – so I’m going to try to explain this as best I can!!!) The two systems sometimes don’t communicate well. So you may have logged in or out and the other system may not ‘know’ it – and may not allow you to ‘see’ the page because it doesn’t know you are logged in. I know, it sounds aggravating – and is – but it was the only way we could have the Libraries I wanted, the Forums I wanted, and the Chat Rooms I wanted!

SO – sometimes when people are having trouble, the remedy SEEMS to be for them to go to the Forums page, scrolls to the bottom, click on “Delete Cookies” (this will only delete THIS SITE’S cookies – not other ones on your computer), log off of the site, then log on again and attempt to do whatever it was you were having trouble doing. Apparently this works wonders.

I hope one of these things will help you. If not, please write to me again. It’s easiest if you write to me directly at info@ecgen.org. That comes straight to my home email account.

Thanks,
Kelly Mueller