hi there I'm Kathleen Jasper and today we're going over the SL lla 6990 I'm going to do an overview of the content categories on the exam and explain those a little bit and then we're going to work through some practice test questions let's get [Music] started the SLA 6990 is the leadership exam and it can be very daunting it's a big test and it should be because you are going to become an assistant principal or a principal so it's going to test your knowledge in a lot of different areas let's hop over to my presentation so I can show you the breakdown of the exam and a couple of practice test questions the SLA 6990 is broken up into seven content categories and that's going to be strategic leadership at 20 questions which comes out to be about 133% of the exam then we have instructional leadership this is the biggest part of the multiple choice portion of the exam 27 questions and that's going to be 177% of the entire exam cultural and climate lead leadership 22 questions about 13% of the exam ethical leadership 19 questions 12% of the exam organizational leadership 16 questions 10% of the exam Community engagement leadership 16 questions 10% of the exam and then this final content category here number seven analysis constructed response this is where you're going to take all of these content categories and apply them to four essay questions so this is what people tend to really stress out about are the constructed response questions but if you have a good understanding about the seven content categories you should be a able to answer the constructed response questions this is a big chunk of the exam at 25% so you can't just flake on the writing portion you have to really work on that now let's go through these content categories quickly so you understand a little bit more strategic leadership right here is all going to be about school goals Mission Vision engaging with stakeholders to kind of come up with that mission mission and vision for your school so this is kind of a big picture type of leadership and how you engage the community in that process instructional leadership and the reason why there are so many questions for this particular portion of the multiple choice is that instructional leadership is very very important when we become building administrators so it's not just about keeping the environment safe and clean which is a big part of leadership but it's also about making sure that all instructional decisions are data driven and that you are helping teachers align their instruction to academic standards you're always working with those goals in mind both state federal and local level goals and we are always thinking about closing the achievement Gap making sure all students are achieving in our schools so that's a big one on the exam climate and cultural leadership here is all about the type of culture you have in your school and how you Foster a positive welcoming inclusive culture in the school and that's done through supporting students supporting teachers seeing diversity as an asset making sure that you're seeking out teachers of all different groups so that all of your students are represented in the school the types of materials you're using things like that all aligned with culture and climate leadership then ethical leadership here is all about you know misconduct how do we handle uh teacher misconduct student misconduct student rights teachers rights parents rights that's all about ethical leadership now organizational leadership here is about the building for the most part these questions are going to have to do with fire drills you know uh bomb threats keeping the the school safe making sure that you know the facilities are up to dat you might have a couple of construction questions on there so organizational leadership is about the organization and really about the building you will have some other questions in there but a lot of it has to do with safety and things like that and then Community engagement this is all about bringing the community in and going out into the community to visit your stakeholders as instructional leaders we need to make sure that we aren't just you know operating in our little bubble in our offices and making decisions that way we want to make sure we get out into the community we have translators when we need if their students parents speak different languages we want to make sure that we are engaging with the community all the time to invite them on committees to make decisions in our schools to let them know what's going on to communicate data you know if we have some new data having to do with you know test scores things like that we want to engage the community in that and also building relationships with businesses and other leaders in the community so that our school can Thrive along with other organizations in our community and then of course the analysis the constructed response portion is going to pull from all of these areas so you're going to get questions that have a little strategic leadership instructional leadership climate and culture ethical and Community engagement it's going to pull from all of those areas now let's go over a couple of practice test questions that come from our SL 6990 study guide you can get this on our website and I'll show you more about that at the end of this video but a lot of times you will get questions with a set of data here and then a big long question with very long answer choices and I always recommend that we work backwards especially on the SL lla 6990 because when we work backwards we can eliminate some of this extra work and we can find patterns in the answer choices now one thing that a lot of people tend to say to me when they ask questions is that all of the answer choices looked like good answer choices or three out of four looked really good I didn't know which one to pick so I'm going to show you today how to do that so that you can understand more about this particular process so let's have a look at this one here we've got this set of data here this is all about reading and math gains you can see we have the grade level and then the years here and you might start looking at this chart right off the bat but I say do not look at the chart and don't even look at the question yet go straight to these answer choices first and see if we can find a really good answer Choice and then see if that aligns with the question nine times out of 10 you will be able to eliminate a bad answer Choice and then zero in on a couple or One Singular good answer choice so let's start with a here use peer groups by having the third grade team observe the fifth grade team and apply the effective strategies in the classroom okay I like this this is basically saying that we're going to help third grade teachers work with fifth grade teachers to figure out the best strategies not bad B acquire an external resource that focuses on math gains to provide support to third and fourth grade teams okay we have this external resource now this is something that you might see on the exam external resource might be something like uh find a company to come in or a consultant to come in these are typically the wrong answer choices schools do use Consultants schools do Buy external resources all the time but on this test typically we are going to want to make sure that we are really focusing on what we're doing inside the school with our own teams with our own resources so I'm going to cross off B because that's typically not the right answer C request some support from District to provide math coaches for the first through fifth grade team now do principles do this request support absolutely but typically on this exam it is not the correct answer again it is incorrect for the same reason and B would be incorrect we want to take care of things inside of our buildings the best we can of course we reach out to District when we need to but district is busy they don't have time and we need to make sure that we are instructional leaders and handle it ourselves and let's have a look at D here using grade level teams focus on increasing math gains by mapping curriculum to the state assessment specifications while also focusing instruction on the math standards okay this one has a lot of good words in it first of all the term standards is used when we are thinking about increasing gains or increasing student scores we always want to make sure we focus on the standards because that is what the students are tested on at the end of the year and here we have this term mapping curriculum can't kind of see it there let me go ahead and erase a little bit there there we go math curriculum mapping it that's a really good word as well because we're going to use the state standards to map curriculum so we're being very strategic in our approach and so d looks like it's the best answer here much better than a although a is okay now notice that all four answer choices are pretty good and this is where people get confused they think well we would do all of these things yes we would but it says which would be the best approach to maximize Effectiveness here and so you're going to want to go with the best answer choice and D is the best according to all the key words in there and you will see this a lot on the test so be on the lookout let's read the question now further working backward and let's not you know think too much about the data yet let's work backwards so the principal of Tall Pines Elementary School wants to ensure that plc's so those are professional learning communities are focused on student achievement particularly in math according to the data above which approach uh should she use to maximize Effectiveness so again using the state standards mapping curriculum regardless of the data is going to help but you can see here using grade level team is always a good thing focusing on math gains the question has to do with math so that's good and um you know aligning it to the state standards we want to increase the gains and you can see here first grade um in their math gains haven't gone up very much second grade same thing kind of stagnant staying there third grade went up quite a bit they went from 58 to 62 so that's pretty good fourth grade 43 to 46 uh not great fourth grade struggling there and fifth grade 72 to 75 looks like fifth grade's got a good thing going they're in the 70% that's pretty good uh the biggest gains happened in third grade but we want to push that even higher and we want to make sure everybody is is working here not just the third grade not just the fifth grade we want to move everybody and that's why D is the best answer all right let's have a look at another one so this had two questions to it this data set here so we already know kind of what the data set looks like we just did the first question again we have a long scenario here let's go ahead and have a look at the answer choices first a encourage the fifth grade team to come up with a plan for teacher-led professional development to train staff on these methods I like the term teacher-led professional development on this exam you want to encourage teachers to lead the professional development because teachers listen to teachers and sure teachers do listen to administrators and school leaders however Prof profal development is usually more effective when a peer is leading it and so I like a let's keep that b inform the staff they will be required to attend professional development right away I'm going to cross this off this has a punitive vibe to it requiring and of course we do require things we have to but on the exam typically requiring or mandating is not the best answer we want to empower people to attend professional development and having it be teacher LED is one way to empower them so I'm going to cross off b c create a math advisory Council okay I like that to help teachers who are struggling to increase student gains okay so that one's good too math advisory Council that means you're kind of forming a committee of Math teachers and that's really good because you're you know using kind of a democratic approach you're not just telling people what to do you're you're kind of creating an advisory Council so C looks good D offer incentives to the team with the highest gains now do we do this do we offer incentives those of you who get the highest gains get a you know Starbucks gift card for $100 or whatever sure and does it work yes but on the test external rewards are typically not the correct answer again we want to empower people to do this work without the incentives although incentives work I highly recommend you use them from time to time but that's not the best answer on the test so right now I'm between a and C let's go ahead and read the question the princip wants to focus professional development in the areas of both reading and math she also wants to cultivate buyin meaning she wants people to say yeah I'll do that from all the teachers on each team according to the data what is the most effective way well to create buyin teacher-led is going to be the best thing now a math advisory council is good but it says here she wants it in both reading and math so be careful when you're working quickly you might forget that in the areas of both reading and math were addressed in the question and you might go with C because it sounds good but it only addresses math here so C would be out leaving a as the best answer now those were just a couple of questions from our study guide so if you'd like more resources just head over to kathleenj jasper.com go under my programs and you can click SL 6990 we also have the practice 5412 they are very similar exams and when you click that that will take you to this information page where you you can see all of our resources if you scroll down a little bit you can see our reviews and some helpful information and links that will help you with the exam now we do have the study guide here we also have an online course and an audio course if you get the audio course I do recommend pairing it with the study guide now the online course has everything video tutorials comprehensive Writing Practice it comes with the digital study guide and the audio course so when you get the online course you get everything but let's have a look at the study guide here you can purchase the digital download which comes in a PDF it is emailed to you directly to your email address after you purchase or if you are interested in the physical copy you can just click this button here and it'll take you to Amazon and you can see we have over 252 festar reviews people really love this book and it's the physical copy so if you prefer a physical copy you can get that on Amazon Prime delivered to you in a couple of days now the physical and digital are exactly the same so if you need the study guide now and you don't have time to wait for it go ahead and grab the digital download now our online course for the SLA 6990 is extremely comprehensive like I said before it comes with the study guide and the audio course and it has video tutorials extra practice everything you need in one place now we also have an audio course that people are really liking and I I'm very excited about this basically you can throw it into your headphones clean your house walk your dog whatever and get a lot of the information there now there are no practice test questions in the audio course that's why I recommend pairing it with the study guide or if you want everything get the online course but this is a great way to get information and just kind of listen in your car or whatever I am an auditory learner so I love audio courses and so if you're one of those this will be great for you as well so remember we have tons of resources for the SL 6990 it is one of my specialties I have really focused a lot on that exam and know a lot about it make sure that if you have any questions or concerns you can throw them in the comments below and I'll be happy to answer those for you I wish you luck on your exam be sure to study and if you do get the study guide or online course do everything in those two resources because all of the information is very important thank you so much and have an awesome [Music] day