Standard V Project EDU 6613 March 15, 2010

Project Overview

This is the Standard V project for the Standards Based Assessment class at Seattle Pacific University.  For this assignment I was to take one assessment my students had completed and have a group of students reflect on it using some provided reflection prompts.  I was then to determined what strategies would help my students improve their performance on a 2^nd assessment of the same concept as the first assessment.  The students would then reflect on their performance on the second assessment using the same reflection prompts as the first reflections.

I conducted the assessments in one of my 8^th grade science classes. The subject of the unit was rocks and minerals.  The goals of the lessons were for the students to know the types of rock that comprise the Earth’s crust and how they are formed and how they can change from one type to another through the rock cycle.  In addition we looked at what minerals were and how to identify some of the common minerals.  This unit took about 2 weeks, however, my assessments dealt with only the rock portion of the unit which took just over a week.

Follow this link for a Google docs version of the Project.

Meta-Reflection Standard T January 1, 2010

Knowledge of teaching

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is:

1. Informed by standards-based assessment. All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.

I’ve heard a heard a lot of debate about assessment.  Some feel testing is biased towards certain students.  It is true some students are better at testing than others.  I was a good tester when I was in school.  For this reason we as teachers can use many different forms of assessment.  Our students are not just filling out answers to tests.  We have class discussions, we have various small assignments throughout the year, and we are constantly observing our students for signs of understanding or confusion.  I argue that there should be constant assessment happening in our classrooms.  This is a formative assessment I made up for the students that they did the day after we had an important lecture on the layers of the Earth.  This assessment let me see how well I did with the lesson and how well a lecture without teacher written notes would work with middle school students.  I was pretty sure that they had never  had to take notes from a lecture simply by listening.  I think it went well for most of them but also I know that note taking is a skill that they need to work on and that expecting middle schoolers to take notes straight from lecture is probably too much at this point.

2. Intentionally planned. All students benefit from standards-based planning that is personalized.

While the idea of personalized lessons for each student is a great idea the reality is that there just isn’t enough time for us to assign, monitor, or grade so many lessons.  The compromise is the development of lessons that are flexible enough to challenge students that need it but are also able to be understood by students who are slower to understand.  My      multi-cultural journal includes pieces on differentiation and diversity in the classroom.

3. Influenced by multiple instructional strategies. All students benefit from personalized instruction that addresses their ability levels and cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Not all students learn the same way.  I myself am an example of this.  Some students learn best by reading, some by listening and watching, and others by doing.  I want to strive to include as many different instructional strategies as possible over the course of the year.  As a science teacher I am lucky in that my students often get to see results of lessons by doing labs.  I also mix in lectures and visual tools to create lessons that cover a broad base of learning styles.  These are three different lessons (Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3) I created and entered into this blog for our content methods  class using the various Marzano strategies for creating a better classroom.

4. Informed by technology. All students benefit from instruction that utilizes effective technologies and is designed to create technologically proficient learners.

Technology is evolving at an amazing rate.  Some of this innovation has found its uses in education.  As the world becomes a more technology dependent students will only benefit from lessons that include and make use of technology.  I took a technology elective this past quarter.  In this class we learned about new technologies and how they might be used in the classroom.  Throughout the class we wrote weekly blog posts and created an educational technology  webpage and a digital narrative.

Significant question reflection September 1, 2009

My fact sheet dealt with Standard T:  Knowledge of teachers

Teacher candidates positively impact student learning that is: Informed by standards-based assessment.  All students benefit from learning that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative, and self-assessment strategies.

My topic was: What is formative assessment and how can it improve learning in the classroom?

Formative assessment is a topic that came up during both the Introduction to Teaching and the General Teaching Methods classes.  As a tool, formative assessment is something I can see myself using quite a bit during my teaching career.  I can use formative assessments in any class to gauge lesson effectiveness, discover student preconceptions, or to guide a lesson in another direction if need be.  Formative assessments can range from a class discussion to a quiz.  The important point is that the results of the assessment be used by the teacher to guide student learning and adjust lessons if need be.

Some other fact sheets dealt with assessments also.  Tim B’s paper discussed the relation of self assessment and gender.  The tendency for girls to have a lower self-efficacy than boys in math and possibly science means I may need to use methods that will allow girls to see that they are just as capable as boys.  Adrienne H’s paper discusses strategies for self assessment.  By allowing students to critique their own work with a criteria or rubric allows them to see where their work is and where they may need improvements. 

Through the course of my teaching career I hope to be able to incorporate some of the strategies promoted by my fellow students; from culturally responsive teaching, to the use of technology in the classroom, to trying to involve parents in student learning.  Hopefully, if my teaching career is long enough, I will be able to develop strategies to answer the questions put forth by the other student teachers in this program.