Assessment
I love to do small formative assessments at during my closures just to see how much students understood from the lesson. This website has a great list of closure/ quick assessment ideas.
My coop teacher has students correct their own work many times, which gives the students a chance to provide their own feedback and understand where they need to improve on next time.
The class still has tests, primarily for math units, but there are other techniques she uses.
Assessment as learning
Within my field experience I did a lot of group work. This is both helpful and harmful because students get to share their ideas but it is harder to know if all the students are understanding the information. To make sure that I am assessing all students, I ask a question to a different student every time I pass their group. If a student is struggling to understand a topic I will as one of their peers to explain it to them (while I am still present just in case they do not say the right thing), this shows me that both of those students now have an understanding of the topic.
Assessment for learning
I was doing this primarily during my lessons to see where students are at when I begin the lesson and where they are when the lesson ends.
For this I use
- Entrance and exit slips
- KWL charts
- Whip it (classroom discussion where students through a ball to each other to answer the questions)
- Having short worksheet in which the students correct their own
Summative/assessment of learning
I have found that I prefer jigsaw style of activities for students to show their understanding. Students will do presentations and artist projects to show their understanding.
- Real world examples
- Plays or acting it out
- Presentation
- Art piece that connects to their identity or an outcome
Technology
Over the summer I took EDTC 300 in which I learned about a variety of websites and other gadgets to help engage students.
Twitter– this is both helpful for students and teachers. There are hashtags and pages that share teacher resources and can make a community of teachers from all around the world. Twitter can also be used as a great summary resource. This teacher used twitter as an exit slip to make sure students were summarizing the main learning points of the lesson.
Local libraries– there are so many resources available to people with a library card. Library cards are free within the province of Saskatchewan, and a local library card works at every public library across the province and online. Applications such as Libby can open up the classroom library to a place that was not even possible.
Storyboard That– this is an online story board website. This can be used for brainstorming, especially when writing a story or creating a script.
Digital Flash cards– these websites can help students practice their information and gives another formative assessment for teachers. It is very beneficial for EAL students who are still learning the language alongside all of the other information they are learning. It also allows for audio and video recording for those who need to.
Instructional strategies
Using a variety of text- (differentiation, culturally-responsive, social justice)
- Having students listen, view and read a various text forms due to the fact that students learn better through different forms of text
- Have different characters within text to show students that they can be seen within a book. This can show students that diversity is needed within school and life.
- Having text that can influence and benefit students.
Within my health lesson I thought about the Canadian Food Guide in which students were able to see the guide and discuss it with their group members. One of the food guide they discussed was the First Nation, Metis and Inuit food guide, students were able to make connections to previous information to expand their understanding of this particular guide.
Intergrade real world examples within lessons (Culturally- Responsive)
- Help students make the connection between school and the outside world. It helps students to interact with the real world examples to feel as if they have a place within the classroom.
Within a health lesson about food guides, I had students create a grocery list on a budget to show how difficult it can be to feed people using a budget and the Canadian food guide.
Give students time to work independently, in partners, small groups and as a whole class. (Differentiation)
- Each person is different meaning they will learn and produce ideas differently, using strategies like think-pair-shares allow students to think independently but also bounce ideas off of one and other.
- As mentioned earlier, everyone learns differently, so allowing students to have different chances and ways to share their ideas allows for a better community building.
During some of my jigsaw activities I gave students the information they are learning about, gave them time to think about it and then time to meet with their expert groups to share thoughts and ideas. I found this allows the students who prefer independent work or find it hard to speak in front of people time to think of their ideas.
Use deep thought provoking questions (Social Justice)
- It is one thing to ask questions to see a student’s understanding of a topic but it is another to move pass the surface level questions and move to questions that that hopefully inspire students to learn more.
- Use questions that inspire students to understand, to want to know more. Have questions that move students toward a change.
Within one of my first lessons I co-taught a lesson discussing family structures and biases. The students did a gallery walk and were asked questions like what is a family, who can create a family and more; these questions can lead towards deep conversations and discussions that showed students that they themselves had biases about families.
Each week I made a Professional Development Goal when heading into my placement. The reflections of each goal is within that week’s lesson plan.
Week 1- Family structures
This week my goal was to create a strong set to make sure students were engaged and ready to learn.
Week 2- Life Roles
To get feedback from students during group work
I will walk around each group and ask the students how they are doing. I will also ask one student to give me a summary of the life roles they have brainstormed.
As I walk around each group I will see if they have proper life roles written on their sheets, if students are too shy or embarrassed to speak up.
Throughout the lesson I will stop the class and ask students to give me a thumbs up if they understand the content or a thumbs down if they do not.
Week 3- Character description
Started as closure but soon became classroom management. I was able to work on this goal by giving students who were doing their “job” positive reinforcement.
Week 4- personal consumer choices
Strong closure- this was a previous goal of mine but it was changed so I decided to do it again. With my closure I am wanting to do a class discussion so all students have a chance to speak.
Week 5- Debates
Getting feedback from students during group work (did this a second time because I needed to strengthen it).
I will walk around each group and ask the students how they are doing. I will also ask one student to give me a summary the ideas they have brainstormed.
As I walk around each group I will see if they have proper arguments written on their sheets, if students are too shy or embarrassed to speak up.
Throughout the lesson I will stop the class and ask students to give me a thumbs up if they understand the content or a thumbs down if they do not.
Week 6- Food Guide
Giving strong instructions- I pre made instructions and repeated instructions twice to know that students would understand.
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