NBPTS AYA English study guide
NBPTS AYA English · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
National Board Certification in Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) English Language Arts is a voluntary, performance-based credential for experienced middle and high school English teachers. Unlike a single sitting exam, it asks you to document and analyze your own classroom practice across a school year: designing literature and composition instruction, examining student work, reflecting on video of your teaching, and demonstrating that you can meet accomplished-teacher standards for students roughly ages 11–18. The NBPTS AYA English study guide has 7 sections and about 2,580 words.
01Knowledge of Students and Their Learning
Knowledge of Students and Their Learning asks you to treat a class as a group of developing adolescents with different identities, language histories, motivations, and learning needs. Constructed-response prompts typically give you a classroom scenario and ask how you would gather information, interpret it, and adjust literacy instruction.
374 words, about 2 min02Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment: Literature and Literary Analysis
Literature and Literary Analysis tests close reading, interpretive reasoning, genre and form, text selection, and text complexity. Prompts may ask you to analyze a short passage, design an interpretive task, or justify a text choice for adolescents.
375 words, about 2 min03Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment: Language, Composition, and Rhetoric
Language, Composition, and Rhetoric tests your command of grammar and conventions in context, rhetorical analysis, argument, organization, style, writing process, and language variation. Prompts often present student writing or a short persuasive text and ask you to diagnose strengths, revise for a purpose, or plan instruction.
365 words, about 2 min04Instructional Design and Delivery
Instructional Design and Delivery tests whether you can build coherent, standards-aligned literacy units and enact them with adolescents. Prompts may ask you to sequence a unit, choose discussion structures, scaffold complex texts, or differentiate without lowering cognitive demand.
355 words, about 2 min05Assessment and Data-Informed Decision Making
Assessment and Data-Informed Decision Making tests how you choose, design, interpret, and respond to evidence of student literacy learning. Prompts may ask you to evaluate an assessment, analyze a data set, give feedback, or adjust instruction.
352 words, about 2 min06Professional Collaboration, Leadership, and Reflective Practice
Professional Collaboration, Leadership, and Reflective Practice tests how you work with colleagues, families, and systems to improve literacy learning, and how you examine your own practice. Prompts may present a department conflict, a co-teaching dilemma, or a reflective scenario.
372 words, about 2 min07Equity, Diversity, and Inclusive Literacy Practice
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusive Literacy Practice tests whether you design literacy instruction that is accessible, culturally sustaining, and free of deficit assumptions. Prompts may ask you to select texts, respond to a challenge, adapt assessment, or support multilingual learners and students with disabilities.
387 words, about 2 min