Week 7 & 8 Reflection

Within these past two weeks, I learned a lot about measuring data and calcuating/showing that measured data. In week 7, we learned about sepcific terms we use when measuring data like mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation. I knew that we had to interpret data within our classrooms, but I did not know of some of the terms we need to know to interpret that data, like standard deviation or standardization scores. In my future classroom, I think I would rather use T-Sore when having that bell curve just because it makes more sense to me.

Week 8, we started learning hot to calculate the data, but with an easy method. Excel was never my strongsuit, but I think I got the hang of the equations and charts pretty fast. What I truly love about using Excel for data, is that it helps to show which students are struggling with certain topics, how the enire class is doing with the topics, and what topics do I need to review with either small or large groups. I think these past two weeks have showed the side to teaching that we don't talk abput much but is highly important to the teaching process.

Week 6 Reflection

This week, we learned about how our assesments, lesson objectives, and the state standards should all aligh with one another. In the one scenatrio we read about Mr. Sullivan, his lessons were fun and engaging but his assessment was not nearly realted to the lessons he was teaching. His lessons were may have been aligned to the state standards, but not to his assessment, which caused a misalignment in the lessons vs. the assessment. I realized how important it is to make sure everything is aligned so that your student's will have an easier time with the lessons and assessments. I remember many of my tests in school having questions on topics we never fully went over, which I felt was highly unfair. It causes stress/anxiety in students and can even develop into them having lower confidence in their learning abilities. In my future classroom, I want to make sure that my studetns feel as if they know the content well and will not have as much stress and anxiety I used to have going into tests and quizzes. I will always keep in mind that I should start with thinking of the end goal I want my students to take away and learn from the lesson, and then work backwards.

Week 5 Reflection

 This week, we expanded our learning on writing lesson objectives. Objectives clearly state what the students should be learning within this lesson as a result of the teacher's instruction. Objectives need to be clear, student-centered, and measurable. 

    When writing a lesson plan objective, using the ABCD method helps to ensure you hit each part required for an objective: Audience, Behavior, Condition, and Degree. This method gives you the perfect format to hit those three previously stated requirements. 

ABCD Method 

    This week we also listened to Ms. Lauren's talk on assessments, especially within standard-based grading, and how to make summative and formative assessments with each core subject. I learned a lot thanks to her talk and was thankful for all the wisdom she passed down to us. She explained how summative assessments, they do not always have to be multiple choice, we can leave them open-ended as well, working on their cognitive skills a bit more as well. She also thankfully answered one of my questions on if we as teachers need to always make our own assessments. I learned that we do not have to but it can be helpful to children in making our own, especially with open-ended questions.

Open-Ended Assessment 

Week 4 Reflection

 This week was based on two tools that help guide lessons and lesson planning, Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depths of Knowledge. I've learned about Bloom's before, but what I never realized was how he uses verbs to differentiate and define the six different levels. For example, in the Remembering stage, the verbs 'recognizing' and 'recalling' are used to define that stage. These verbs can be used to help write objectives for students when directing the objective at a specific stage on the pyramid. 

    Webb's Depth of Knowledge is new to me, this week being the first hearing of it. Webb's is kind of the opposite of Bloom's, where he does not define the stages by verbs but by activities' complexity. For example, in the first of the four different stages, a child should be able to recall information, such as a fact, definition, term, or performance of a simple procedure, like listing animals that have tails. Webb focuses on the specific activity and analyzes the student's process of thinking. 

    In my future instruction, I would love to use Bloom's as a way to help focus my lesson plans and objectives, making sure most of my students are hitting each stage one at a time. With Webb's, I think I would want to use it more for assessing my students during learning and using it to focus on the informal and formal assessments for my students.

Week 3 Reflection

    This week we focused a lot on documentation and how there different ways to document students' progress and comprehension of a lesson/topic. Portfolios are one way of documenting a child's progress, which usually consists of formative assessments like photos, checklists, artwork, etc. It usually is something that is not to be shared with the entire school, more private documentation is shared with parents at a parent-teacher conference. 

Portfolio

    Documentation panels can also show a student's progress and/or understanding of a topic. It can also show their development of knowledge of a topic over time. Documentation panels are more public and are showcased to students, families, staff, etc. 

Documentation Panel

  The Reggio Emilia approach has the teacher as more of a partner to the student, as the student is the main active contributor to their own learning. The children display their work on their walls and can revisit and analyze their work, that being a form of formative assessment. The project approach, it can be seen as more of a summative approach since it sums up the lesson/topic that was taught in the project produced by the students. 

The Project Approach

Reggio Emilia Approach

   

 

Documenting a children's progress and work and having them be able to see that progress is very important. I definitely want to implement the project approach with my future students as well as use portfolios to keep track of their progress and development. 

Week 2 Reflection

    In week 2, I learned more about summative assessments, mainly spending more time on holistic and analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics are rubrics that give a single score for overall performance. For example, instead of breaking down each part of grilled cheese, the holistic rubric combines the parts that can be described as 'good', 'okay', and 'bad'. Analytic rubrics describe each task/part separately, giving a score for each section. For example, unlike the holistic rubric where they combine the parts of the grilled cheese that are good with one score, the analytic rubric separated the parts of the grilled cheese (bread, cheese, grilled) and then give them a score off of each of those separate parts.

    For observation techniques, I definitely would use time sampling when I want to figure out how frequently a behavior shows in a student. I think I would use a running record if I need to observe a student's behavior(s) during an activity. Event sampling would be used when I need to know what triggers a certain behavior in a student. Anecdotal records would be used when assessing a student's emotional development or their attitude toward learning

    With analytic rubrics, I also learned how difficult it can be to make one. When we made our own in class, we had to make sure multiple factors were added in. For example, each description of a task should be specific and to the point, not have an ambiguous vocabulary. We also need to make sure the rubric fits into our objective and that each task is hitting the objective we want the students to make. That also includes not adding unnecessary items into the rubric if it is not helping the understanding of our objective.

Holistic Rubric

Analytic Rubric

Week 1 Reflection

    Going into week one, I had a basic definition for assessment. I knew an assessment measured a skill/subject to determine where students were at within the skill. I knew that a form of assessment was quizzes and tests. During week one, I learned that evaluations measure a student's skill level, not just with tests and quizzes. Teachers observing, recording, and using multi-modal assessments on students are also ways to run assessments. Multi-modal means that students should not be assessed using one form of assessment; they should be assessed in multiple ways with both informal and formal assessments, to get the most accurate assessment of the student. Informal assessments include things like observations, checklists, rubrics, etc. --- all things created by the teacher. Informal assessment includes formative assessments which give feedback to both student and teacher and are given on an as-needed basis. Formal assessments include tests, quizzes, and surveys, all things I thought were the only way to assess a student. Formal assessment is the umbrella term for summative assessments, assessments that cover a variety of skills and are given at the end of a unit/term. 

  

Rating Scale

 I want to use these different types of assessments in my classroom since they all can be used for different things. If I need to assess a student's behavior, I might just use a rating scale (formal assessment) to assess their behavior and actions in class.

    

   

 If I want to measure my student's knowledge of a subject we're learning, I might design an analytic rubric to assess each part of the knowledge that they are/are not retaining. 

Rubric

All in all,  have earned a helpful amount of knowledge on the different types of assessments and how/when to use them.

~Shaniyah