Week 7 & 8 Reflection

 

Going into this week's blog, we will be talking about not only week 7 but also week 8 work we did within the class!

Week 7:

For this week, we did Statistics and talking about Measurement. Something i know we can all remember is mean, median, mode, etc. 

Standardized Assessment Terms- 

    Population: The entire group of people for whom typical performance is estimated by the instrument.

    Sample: The group of people actually included in the study/test.

    Norming: Refers to the process of constructing norms or the typical performance of a group of individuals on achievement assessment.

Week 8:

What we had done over week 8 that is exciting is that we all got our field placements that we will be in starting October 17th! Starting off we did a funnnnnn excel assessment within the classroom, to show how using data drives instruction within the classroom. In the excel sheet we found the mean, median, mode, sum, and standard deviation. I thought that this was very fun because afterwards we got to create graphs to see which kids within that classroom struggled with certain topics based upon their test scores. I really like Excel because I have been using it since freshman year of college but i do forget how to use it sometimes. 

    Below is one of the bar graphs that I created in my Excel sheet. 

Here you can see where the students were more proficient in than others. Then we went into the discussion to close as why are these certain students struggling on most of the tests? Is there a learning situation they are struggling with? Are they ELA students that still don't quite understand the English language fully yet? These are all the questions we have to think about when evaluating assessments in the classroom, and how we can help. 

Week 6 Reflection

     This was a short week for us but also very informative! Today's blog we are going to be talking about Wednesday's and Friday's class period. Our main focus this week was Alignment and Lesson Planning

Here below is the backwards design that was demonstrated on Wednesday's class period. 

The three steps to Lesson Planning: Aligning Standards, Objectives, and Assessment.

Step 1: Start with the Standard

- Standards are what you must teach

- Curriculum can vary and is supposed to help you teach the standards

Step 2: Create an Objective

- Objective must come from the standard 

- Adapt it to fit your students' needs and the pacing you are using 

- You can use part of the objective if it is complicated 

Step 3: Creating the Assessment

- Use your objective as your assessment

In Friday's class period we switch laptops with a partner and had each other read and reflect on our lesson plans that we have been doing. We talk about what is planned for the lesson plan, we analyze our partners plan and assessment and give constructive feedback on what was good and what might need some improvement on.  After analyzing and reflecting our partners plan and assessment, we got to edit and rebuild our lesson plans to be evaluated again.  

Week 5 Reflection

 Why is it important to work to set up learning objectives?

    Setting up learning objectives will help not only motivate but also inspire those students to meet the requirements within that activity. Learning objectives are also a way for teachers to stay organized within the topic/lesson they are teaching in the class at the student's pace and making sure teachers follow their learning objective sequences will help the classroom overall.

What is the ABCD Method?

A: Audience

B: Behavior 

C: Condition

D: Degree

Here is an example we used in class below 

    The ABCD Method can help with learning objective to almost get a step-by-step instruction with the flow of an example like the picture above and breaking it down for the students to then understand what they should be looking for and following by.

Ms. Lauren Wagner Zoom Call Reflection:

    After class on 9/26/22 I had a lot of new ideas and activities from Ms. Wagner's meeting with us that I would like to incorporate into my future classroom. I would say that after the talk I got more of an understanding on overall everything we have been discussing in class throughout this semester so far and how to build on that knowledge of everything we've learning so far like holistic and analytic rubrics, checklists, rating scales, documentation (portfolios), Webbs Depth of Knowledge, and much more. It was nice to hear another teacher's perspective and ideas on assessment and it was also a good reflection on everything we've learned because it made it easier for us to ask questions and understand what Ms. Wagner was showing/teaching us.

Week 4 Reflection

  What are your understandings of Blooms Taxonomy and DOK, and how can these be used for future instruction?

  This was the question that was posed for us to talk about, there is a lot of information that goes along with both Blooms Taxonomy and DOK. To start off, let's talk about Blooms Taxonomy. below you will see the pyramid to Blooms Taxonomy.

I would incorporate this pyramid method into many instructional activities and lecture lessons I am teaching on different topics within the curriculum. I found this pyramid to be very educational and helpful for future classroom help. While reading through PowerPoints and talking about Blooms this pyramid showed me very in detailed information and a good visual of the overall outcome and expectations. 

Now onto DOK...

Now with DOK (Depth of Knowledge) as you can see above it has the same type of look for stages of Blooms Taxonomy, but they do differ. Below you will see the DOK wheel that shows DOK1-4 and things that are involved with those stages as well.

Something that sparked my interest and became more apparent to me was the different stages that I would incorporate into my future classroom. In this stage DOK1 involve recall of information, such as a fact, definition, term, or performance of a simple procedure. DOK2 is Skills and Concepts, involves limited application of skills and concepts. They must go beyond simple recall to answer questions about and make connections between pieces of information. Next is DOK3, Strategic Thinking, involves deep understanding as exhibited through planning, using evidence, and more demanding cognitive reasoning that is abstract and complex. And lastly, DOK4, Extended Thinking, this involves extended thinking to solve authentic and complex problems with unpredictable outcomes. This type of task requires highly sophisticated and creative thinking because it is open-ended by design—there is no correct answer. I found all of these stages to be very informative and I would like to incorporate this into my classroom. These stages will help me will curriculum topic ideas for lessons and activities within the classroom and also help me with evaluation on assessments.

Week 3 Reflection

This week's reflection is going to be a little shorter than my usual blog posts because I actually missed a day of learning due to a family gathering, I had to attend :(

Documentation:

    We learned that the Reggio Emilia was the pioneer of documentation. It is the learning process of construction and emergent curriculum which is the interest that drives the curriculum. Then we learned about the Learning stores which was a form of observation and documentation that is a written in a narrative story. Teachers look for this for child-initiated play and engagement. This is provided to a shared group of students and also sparks their interest. 

The difference between the Reggio Emilia and Conventional:

Conventional📖: This is a summative assessment that can be measured. This focuses on more standardized testing 

Reggio Emilia💕👯: This is a formative assessment that focuses on the child's understanding of a topic/content/scenario/ unit/ etc. This is not testing them of what they know but what they are starting to get a better understanding of. This focuses more on group cooperation and assistance where helping each other is encouraged within the classroom.

My future classroom:

I think i gained a better understanding of which documentation approach i would want to implement my classroom and why. I feel that both Conventional and Reggio Emilia are very important to implement into classrooms but i would consider doing both. I want my students to have that ability to feel free by working together and helping each other out on assignments, activities and other classroom work that is assigned to them to help them understand the material or course being learned but also testing their understanding with a test or project something that I could assess their knowledge on the material we covered in class that week or even month. So, I would implement both strategies of documentation within my classroom 

Week 2 Reflection

     Hello everyone! Long time no see, I've learned a lot throughout this past week that has furthered my knowledge about formal and informal assessment. Throughout this week, we learned about rating scales and rubrics. I learned that there are Analytic rubrics and Holistic rubrics, the difference between the two are that analytic rubrics describe and score each of the task attributes separately while holistic rubrics describe the entire criteria (skills, abilities, and behaviors) for one score. Also, we learned that rating scales are an organized list of skills abilities, behaviors, and levels of performance, the definition of rating is the degree to which ability, behaviors, or skills were presented. While rubrics are an organized list of skills, abilities, and behaviors; and levels of performance but define each level for degree to which the skills, abilities, and behaviors were presented. This allows students to know what is required in an assignment and how it will be graded. I will be using very detailed grading Rubics within my future classroom to help the students see and know what they need to do within that task to receive the highest grade possible, also this will show them what they were missing or needed extra explanation to within the assignment as well. 

    During class this week we also got to create our own grading rubrics within our small groups. After we created each of our own rubrics for the " life of a butterfly life cycle" assignment we got to go around the room and comment and spread positive feedback to other groups. After all of this, Dr. Won uploaded pictures of young students' assignments on the life cycle project and in our small groups we got to grade them and then explained why we gave them that grade at the end.

Week 1 Reflection

         My first week of learning formal and informal assessments has been going great! I feel like I am really starting to get the feel of assessments and how I would like to incorporate different techniques within my future classroom. To start off, in my classroom I would like at the beginning of year to give my students a criterion-referenced test to test the knowledge from past years of all the students within the class to determine where most of the children ended off with and what topics/lessons we would need to start off with. Another thing I learned throughout week one that I found very intriguing was when we discussed the four types of observation techniques. I always knew observation techniques but never fully questioned why? Observing can help us see patterns in learning through the students and allows us teachers to really dive deep into seeing what is in a child's mind and their thinking process as well. Something that I struggled with as a child and even up till today has been norm referenced test. I like to say I am the worst test taking, and I never had any real encouragement before the SAT, ACT, PSSA's or anything like that except from the encouragement of my parents at home. I want to create a safe space and help to any child whether they are in my classroom or not who is having the same struggle that I did. I want to be that helping hand to a child who needs it. As a future educator I find myself learning new concepts and ideas throughout this past week that it has made me excited to keep learning. This information is very beneficial and crucial within a classroom, and I can't wait to get started! 💚