Chapter 7c: Assessing and Reporting Student Achievement

This last part of the chapter is all about different types of assessment for either quizzes, tests, or projects.  I believe this information to be important to understand because the manner in which you assess can directly affect how you measure the students' understanding of the knowledge.  For example, if all a teacher did was have true or false questions to measure their understanding, there is a 50% chance that it will either be correct or incorrect. 

Another aspect to consider is the manner in which you write different types of assessments.  Depending on how you write them, the questions can appear vague or confusing.  This can also affect the outcome or results.  There are proper guidelines to writing types of assessments.  For example, with multiple choice questions, the teacher should have the same number of responses for each item.  This keeps consistency and allows it to appear more uniform for the student.

For my future classroom, I will attempt to use a variety of assessments.  This allows the types of assessment to become more diverse for the students.  I will also adapt certain tests for certain students; this would depend on if they have a IEP or a 504.  I believe this differiention will allow for an environment conducive for student success.

Chapter 7b: Assessing and Reporting Student Achievement

In this portion of the chapter, they discuss the idea centered on having zero credit.  The book mentions that giving out zero credit for missed work, cheating, or incomplete assignment that this does not accurately depict the students' knowledge.

Instead of depicting student knowledge, giving a zero grade to a student can negatively impact the representation of the what the student actually knows in an inaccurate way.  This type of grade accreditation follows more closely along the lines of a punishment instead of a grade.  In my opinion, if you are going to punish someone, then it must fit the crime; otherwise, the punishment is nonconstructive.

In my future classroom, this is something I will consider a lot.  I want to give people the best description of my students' knowledge, and to do so will be refraining from giving out zero credit grades to students.

Chapter 6c: Preparing an Instructional Plan

To start off, lesson plans have the be one of the hardest things to do as a teacher, but they are the most essential.  They establish a clearly defined plan of how the cirriculum will be carried out.  This ensures productive class time and overall promotes better learning. 

Having more exposure and practice time to work and study the dynamics of a clear lesson plan is essential for any students.  The book lays out the seven essential parts of a lesson plan:
1. Descriptive course data
2. Goals and objectives
3. Rationale
4. Procedure
5. Assignments and assignment reminders
6. Materials and equipment
7. Assessment

These parts of the lesson plan are something that I have had exposure to before, and it has been nice to be able to practice them when creating actual lesson plans.  With this practice and exposure, I will be able to efficiently create lesson plans for my future classroom in order to ensure success for the students.  It is better to have an organized, scheduled classroom then to just go-with-the-flow.

Chapter 7a: Assessing and Reporting Student Achievement

The first part of this chapter is all about asessment.  It covers all sorts of kinds of assessment and what they are used for.  Though I do agree assessment is important in education, I don't believe that all forms of assessment are used correctly. 

To start off, I do not like how high stakes assessments are seen as the end-all-be-all when it comes to measuring students performance.  There are some students who do not work well in a tradtional test environment.   These students are at a disadvantage than other students to passing grades, getting into college, and obtaining scholarships.

However, I believe my favorite type of assessment would have to be formative assessment.  I think these types of assessment help the students out the most becaue the teacher discovers what he/she needs to do differently.  If these types of assessment were never conducted, the teacher would never know what they might have to adapt to create a better learning environment for the students.  

Chapter 6b: Preparing an Instructional Plan

On page 243, under The Problem of Time section, it discusses how teachers should make sure they have enough resources and planned activities to take up the entire class period.  Right away, I am going to go ahead and say that I agree with this, mostly. 

I believe that if the students are in the classroom, they should be learning.  That is why they go to school, and we don't want to deprive them of that, whether they care about it or not.  This is one benefit of planning out your lessons and units because it allows for a better understanding of what activities will be doing for the daily lesson.  Also, when you have the activities planned out, you can then look at what resources you need to make sure it will run efficiently.  This is a big portion of the planning is gathering and allocating the resources.

As a future teacher, I believe that this concept should be held true; however, I also believe that there are moments when the students just need a break from what is going on.  Now, of course this would be a rare occurrence, but I see it to be necessary.  Another part of learning is for students to just socialize.  A lot of people forget to emphasize the importance of this in education.  Having excellent social skills will take someone a long way in the professional world.  So, when I say free time, or a break from something, I will still have some sort of activity going on, but I will try to focus it on just free socialization.  

Chapter 6a: Preparing an Instructional Plan

On page 229, there is a concept introduced called learning through direct experiencing.  This concept focuses on how students learn through direct experiences.  When they are learning in this manner, they students are being engaged through their senses.  This type of learning often times creates deeper connections with what the students are learning and their brains.  This is because it is one thing to learn the knowledge of something, but it is an entirely different thing to apply that knowledge to something--it reflects understanding. 

This concept is so similar to experiential learning; in fact, they are probably the same thing.  This type of learning can be used in project based learning units.  These units are a current trend in the culture of education. People advocate for these units because teachers can incorporate not only the experiential learning, but they can also incorporate interdisciplinary material for the students to take up. 

Another great way to utilize experiential learning is to use it with ELLs.  There is a concept involved with ELL teaching strategies called total physical response.  This type of response involves not only saying the word but associating an action with the word as well.  For example, if the student or teacher were to say the word "run," they would also show the action of running.  This incorporates using sensory skills to learn as well as conceptual skills.

Chapter 5c: The Curriculum

               Objectives are one of the most significant parts of creating a unit or lesson plan.  They are important because they are what a teacher uses as a standard to determine if the students are meeting the requirements outlined in the national or state standards. 

                Because the core of the objectives come from the national and state standards, the objectives must be written in a manner that covers all aspects of measurement.  This is where Bloom’s Taxonomy comes in. 

                They are six ascending levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, synthesis, and evaluation.  Each of these levels play a significant role in the outlining of what the students should be able to do at the end of the unit or lesson.  However, there is a distinction between the lower and higher order levels of thinking.  The lower order levels are knowledge and comprehension, and the application, synthesis, and application levels are higher order.  These two levels are distinguished by the level of cognitive ability needed to fulfill the levels.  For example, the knowledge level of the hierarchy requires simple tasks such as labeling or defining; whereas, the level of synthesis requires the compilation, understanding, and a creation of something based on a topic or theory. 

                Because I believe both lower and higher order levels are important, I will utilize both in my classroom.  I see this ascending hierarchy as a means to guide the students in a scaffolding manner when it comes to units or lessons.  I am a big supporter or scaffolding and Vygotsky’s theory of ZPD, so I would absolutely see Bloom’s Taxonomy as a means to fulfill the undertakings of these beliefs.

                When it comes to units and lessons, you are more likely to see a lower order thinking objectives within lesson plans are they are the everyday learning steps toward the big idea.  However, you will still find some higher order level thinking objectives in the lesson plans, but they are more typically found in the objectives for the unit plans.