C360 Teacher Work Sample in English Language Learning, catalog number EDUC 6754, is the one-CU professional assessment in the English language learning program. Its purpose, in the catalog's own framing, is to showcase content knowledge, planning, instruction and reflection together in a single piece of evidence. The unit value is the most misleading number in your Degree Plan. One CU describes assessed scope, not effort. A work sample is a long document built on real teaching, and candidates who schedule it like a one-unit course are the ones who run out of term.
What a work sample is evidence of
A teacher work sample is not an essay about teaching and it is not a lesson plan collection. It is an argument, supported by evidence you generated in a classroom, that your planning decisions produced learning for identified pupils and that you can explain why. Every part of it points at that claim.
Four capabilities are named in the catalog description and each is demonstrated differently. Content knowledge shows in whether your language objectives are linguistically accurate and whether you know what is actually hard about the target structure for a learner at a given proficiency level. Planning shows in the alignment between what you say pupils will learn, what you teach, and what you assess. Instruction shows in the decisions you made while teaching, including the ones you made in response to something going wrong. Reflection shows in whether you can read your own results honestly and say what you would change.
The English language learning setting adds a specific demand on top of all four. In an ELL work sample, language is both the medium and the object of instruction, and the document has to keep those apart. A pupil who cannot show understanding of a science concept may understand the science perfectly and lack the language to express it. Work samples that treat every wrong answer as a content gap miss the entire point of the program, and the reflection section is where that failure becomes visible.
The other ELL-specific requirement is proficiency-level reasoning. Support that is appropriate for a beginning-level learner is unnecessary scaffolding for an advanced one, and instructional decisions have to be justified in terms of the levels actually present in the class. A work sample that describes one undifferentiated group of English learners has not engaged with what the program teaches.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
Scored detail for any WGU course lives inside your Course of Study, not the public catalog, so open your rubric and count aspects before writing a word. Each aspect is scored independently against a three-point scale, and a score of 2 in every aspect is what passes a task. There is no averaging, which in a long document means one under-evidenced aspect holds up everything else you wrote.
In work sample documents, headings that echo the rubric's own nouns matter more than anywhere else. A document of this length is not read straight through; it is navigated aspect by aspect. If your headings tell a story instead of naming the assessed element, the evaluator has to search, and searching is how aspects get scored as unmet.
The word budget, worked. Take a rubric with eight scored aspects and directions asking for a document of roughly 5,000 words. Reserve 250 words for a contextual opening and 200 for a closing reflection summary, leaving 4,550 for the scored body. Eight into 4,550 is about 570 words per aspect. Now redistribute against difficulty. The analysis of pupil learning aspect typically needs nearer 900, because it has to present results, break them down by group, and interpret them. Describing the setting is complete at about 300. The instructional decisions aspect wants around 700 because each decision needs a reason and an outcome. Take the surplus from any aspect that asks you to list rather than to justify, and the total holds.
One scheduling rule specific to this course. Work backwards from the teaching, not forwards from today. The document cannot be finished until the instruction has happened and the pupil evidence exists, so the deadline that matters is the last day you can teach the sequence and still have time to analyse it. Missing that date costs a term, and no amount of writing speed recovers it.
A structure that fits a work sample
Your task directions govern the arrangement absolutely here, more than in any other course, because a work sample is a specified document. Where they leave room, this order is the conventional shape and it keeps the evidence chain visible.
| Section | What belongs in it | How it gets scored |
|---|---|---|
| Contextual factors | The setting, the class, proficiency levels present and what each implies for planning | Scored for implications drawn, not for description; a demographic list with no consequences scores low |
| Learning goals | Content goals and language goals, stated separately and measurably | Scored for alignment to standards and for keeping content and language objectives distinct |
| Assessment plan | How you will know pupils met each goal, before, during and after | Scored for matching each assessment to a specific goal rather than to the unit generally |
| Instructional design | The sequence of lessons, with scaffolds tied to named proficiency levels | Scored for justified differentiation; undifferentiated plans fail the program's core idea |
| Instructional decisions | What you changed while teaching, why, and what happened next | Scored for responsiveness; a plan executed unchanged usually means evidence was ignored |
| Analysis of learning | Results whole class, by subgroup and for individual learners, with data shown | The highest-weighted evidence in most work samples and the most common return point |
| Reflection | What worked, what did not, why, and what you would do differently | Scored for honesty and specificity; a reflection with no failure in it reads as unexamined |
| Professional goals | What this sample tells you about your own development, with concrete next steps | Scored where the rubric names professional growth |
| References and artifacts | Standards, sources and any permitted attachments, cited in the required style | Scored wherever citation is named |
The instructional decisions section is the one that separates strong work samples. A candidate who reports that a planned scaffold did not help a group of learners, explains what they substituted mid-lesson and shows the effect, has produced better evidence of teaching skill than one whose unit went perfectly to plan.
Evidence craft, and the lines that do not move
This document is built on evidence about real children, which makes the handling rules non-negotiable rather than stylistic.
- De-identify everything. Pupils by initial or code, school and district generic, no photographs of children unless your directions explicitly permit them and your placement has authorised it.
- Report data as collected. Pupil results are the evidence base of the whole sample, and inventing or adjusting them is not a shortcut, it is a fabrication that ends programs.
- Separate language performance from content performance in every claim about a pupil, because that separation is what the ELL program exists to teach.
- Show the data, not just the conclusion. Tables of scores by group, in whatever format the directions allow, let an evaluator award the analysis aspect instead of taking your word for it.
- Cite standards and any professional sources in the style your directions require, and match the reference list to the in-text form.
- Attribute anything drawn from a colleague, a mentor teacher or a published unit plan. Adapted materials need attribution exactly as sources do.
Two things sit permanently outside what any support can include, and it is worth being direct about them. Nobody but you can teach your lessons, observe your pupils or generate the data this document rests on, and nobody else should be describing decisions you did not make. Placement paperwork, hour logs, observation forms and anything requiring a supervisor's signature are yours and your institution's alone. Support here means shaping, structuring and strengthening writing about teaching that you actually did.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Because aspects score independently, work samples are usually returned for one under-evidenced section in a document that is otherwise finished.
- Every scored aspect has a labelled section using the rubric's own noun, so nothing has to be found by reading.
- Content objectives and language objectives are stated separately and assessed separately.
- Contextual factors produce consequences. Every fact about the class connects to a planning decision somewhere later.
- Analysis of learning is broken out by subgroup and by individual, not reported as a class average.
- At least one instructional decision responds to evidence gathered during teaching.
- The reflection names something that did not work and says what would replace it, in specific terms.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted without a grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. In a six-month flat-rate term, and in a document that depends on classroom access, the time is the binding constraint. A return that arrives after your teaching window has closed is far more expensive than a return on an ordinary paper, which is the single strongest argument for having the structure right before you teach rather than after.
Six mistakes that cost time in C360
- Scheduling by CU value. One competency unit is assessed scope. The document is long and depends on teaching that has to happen first.
- Merging language and content objectives. They are separate goals with separate evidence, and merging them removes the ELL reasoning the program is assessing.
- Describing the class without drawing implications. Contextual factors is an analysis section. A demographic profile with no planning consequences is the commonest weak opening.
- Reporting only whole-class averages. An average hides the learners the work sample exists to examine, and subgroup analysis is usually where the marks are.
- Writing a reflection with no failure in it. A unit where everything worked reads as a unit that was not examined, and evaluators read a great many of these.
- Starting the writing after the teaching. Structure first, teach second, analyse third. Reversing that order guarantees missing evidence you can no longer collect.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions, ideally before you teach the sequence rather than after. Work comes back as structure and coaching: the document mapped aspect by aspect, guidance on stating language and content objectives separately, a plan for what pupil evidence you need to collect so the analysis section can exist, and a review of your drafted analysis and reflection once your own data is in hand.
What we do not do is equally clear. We do not teach your lessons, produce or alter pupil data, write about decisions you did not make, contact your placement school, or touch observation forms, hour logs or anything requiring a signature. The work sample has to be yours, and the useful help is making the writing carry the teaching you actually did.
Questions candidates ask about C360
Is C360 the same course as EDUC 6754?
Why is a work sample only one competency unit?
Can someone else write my work sample or supply the pupil data?
Building the ELL work sample this term?
Send your Course of Study rubric and the task directions before you teach the sequence. You get an aspect-mapped structure and a plan for the evidence the analysis section will need.
Where C360 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.