FIAE+B2+Chapter+3


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Alicia Kenison
I absolutely agree with the statement, “Students come in biased on how to see the world of …for five to eighteen years via school and living their lives,” by Wormeli on page 20, it is our job to expand their knowledge and change their point of views. We may have students that hate blacks and then hear about Rosa Parks or think Jews are lame and then hear of Eli Wiesel and Anne Frank. We open their minds and teach in other ways than just a vacuum. It is not our job to suck knowledge in their brains. We must be sure that they actually know what we teach. Assessing is viewed in two different ways (1) essential and enduring knowledge (EEK) and (2) know, understand and able to do (KUD). Know is what the students retain. Understand is the concepts, relationships, and connections a student can take as a result of the unit; this targets the student’s interests and real-life situations. Do is the specific skills we intend our students to be able to demonstrate. We must keep these aspects in mind when we perform pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. Assessment is never something that comes just at the end, as many of my high school teachers did their task in seeing how well knowledge was retained. Instead, assessment has a beginning, middle and an end and it must target everyone in the class. I feel that I may get frustrated when it comes to assessing because it is never straight forward and it may take a long time to get each student to reach the same level of skill and knowledge. We must use assessments as a pivotal instructional tool by having rubrics, choices and a couple standard-based tests. Students need to learn how to do for themselves instead of just taking our knowledge and storing it in their memory banks. As the proverb says, “If you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but, if you teach a man to fish, he can eat for a lifetime,” we must teach our students to fish and they can be knowledgeable forever.

Jason Malbon
The author reminds us that the //true// definition of assessment comes from a Latin word meaning; “to sit beside.” This implies a nurturing, supporting way of thinking that we as educators can carry into the classroom. The best way to nurture is to first of all have clear, organized objectives beginning with the “end in mind.” (p21) Students will be much more inclined to do homework assignments and participate if the objectives are easy to follow and relevant. Depending on what the goal is, each assessment strategy should fit the objective. True/False or multiple choice questions are not necessarily bad as long as your goal is to measure basic knowledge. Deciding what you want to measure as knowledge and understanding will determine what sort of assessments will be pertinent. I want to learn and use as many types of assessment strategies as necessary to help my students learn. It is also my goal to learn methods of measuring student readiness and mastery. Is their learning coinciding with what I am trying to teach? Only through solid assessment strategies can any of these goals be realized. The author lists many different qualities of good assessment. First I need to become an expert in assessment strategies. It is fine to have fun lessons. Students want to know whether or not they are learning and they deserve accurate, meaningful assessments.

S arah Robinson
Before this chapter I have never realized how teachers can influence a students belief and out look on life. This chapter has taught me that teachers shape students brains in more than one way, teacher’s help built students futures, and teachers must take this job seriously. As a teacher you must teach your subject with responsibility, and learn the subject to your full ability. This chapter has impacted me in the way that it has made me realize that a good assessment as a teacher is determining what is worth being assessed. After deciding what should be assessed, it is taught in this chapter that assessing is viewed in two different ways, which are EEK and KUD. EEK assessment is essential and enduring knowledge, and KUD is to know, understand, and be able to do. As a teacher I want to be make sure I do both of these assessments because I believe that his two assessments are a very strong way to make sure students are truly learning and retaining the knowledge. This chapter has impacted the way I will run my class by teaching me to make sure to assess my students readiness for what I am about to teach them. One of the most important concepts I have learned through this chapter is that assessment of your students should be done over time and it should be varied. I totally agree with this because you never know what kind of day a student is having, or what is going on during a certain month around the area. This chapter has taught me that as a teacher I should try to make most assessments relate to really world because this will help the student have motivation to do the well on the assessment. Making a good assessment is going to take a lot of time, trial and error, and effort, but it will and can be very beneficial to making you a good teacher, and to help your students learn.

Sarah McGinley
Fair Isn’t Always Equal Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom 1/28/10

This was a very interesting simile to start this chapter with and I agree with it. Students do not always see both sides to a situation or a lesson. The student focuses on what is presented to him/her instead of see the higher meaning along with what it appears to be on the outside. This is one of the reasons why it is important to assess students all the time and coach them through the material that needs to be learned. So teachers work backwards in order to get the desired result and therefore students learn what they need to know easier. One thing that this chapter covered that I would use in my classroom was giving the students an idea of what the end result will be so they know what they are working towards. Also, examining the student’s knowledge about the subject to come is a great idea to find out what they already know. This relates to EEK, which is essential and enduring knowledge. We need to know what the students understand or what interpretation they receive from the information or lesson be taught. Sometimes students can seem very close minded about what they have already learned or what they think they have already learned and therefore do not want to learn things a different way. In this case, I would like to be one of those teachers who takes learner a step further and pushes the students to learn things in a different way.

Diana Quinlan
It is important to realize that teachers have one of the toughest jobs possible. Students come to us with their own view of how the world works and it is our job to find out how they see things and change it. Teachers have a greater impact on student’s minds then most realize. I agreed with everything that this chapter said until the end of page twenty (which is not very far along really). I had always though that test and grades were the end results but the author seems to suggest otherwise. I understand that grades, especially on tests seem like life and death to students, but in my experience students who have been given the opportunity to make up tests for 100% credit have not even bothered to study for the first test. I feel like this is an unfair advantage to those who did study the first time around. I also do not agree with giving students the final exam on the first day. There is no way one can put everything that is covered onto one exam, and if students have the exam ahead of time I feel that they would only bother to learn the information on it instead of everything covered in class. Even though there are a few aspects of this chapter I do not agree with there are several more that I do agree with. For example I believe that students are more successful when they know exactly what is expected of them. This is why we create a syllabus. I also believe that true assessments occur over time through pre-assessments and formative assessments. Pre-assessments are meant to be short and sweet to give the teacher an idea of what students already know. Formative assessments should be used to check student’s progress throughout a unit, and feedback from such assessments can help students study for future assessments. If students keep up with the homework and use the formative assessments to study then they should have mastered the content and should not need the opportunity to make up the final assessment for full credit.

Eric Cole
As I read this chapter a few things popped out at me that I know I will use in my classroom one day. First, is the idea to let students know the goals of the semester before the start of it. Students do not like to be ill-informed. They thirst for knowledge, and if they know that a series of lessons has a set of goals in mind they will be more likely to pay attention to the class rather than doodle on a piece of scrap paper. Second, is to integrate old ideas into new lessons as the class progresses. If I teach how to do a simple story outline early on in the year, I should keep having my students do them throughout. That way they will understand the concept more and more, and they will integrate it into their own lives, which is a pretty big goal for me. Lastly, the thing that struck me most, is to avoid “fluff” work. If a student does not get a concept right away, it does not help them to have them just forget about the concept, and to go draw pictures the rest of the class. A good teacher will find a way to simplify things so that the student is able to understand the concept. As things get more advanced, the teacher should develop new ways for the student to learn, or get a student who has mastered the concept to help tutor the one who is struggling. Simply giving up on a student is NEVER ACCEPTABLE!

Scott Bowden
This chapter focused on how to assess students well. There is more to assessing than I had figured. A lot of my teachers used all the work, etc that I had done to assess how well I was doing. They weren't really selective about what they chose to grade. I like how this chapter suggested giving formative assessments because they are needed/merited, not merely because it's one specific day. A lot of teachers I've dealt with give quizzes or tests every week on the same day and expect us to know the material for that day. Some days, I found myself cramming the knowledge into my skull for the quiz and then going back and taking a closer look at it when time was more plentiful. I think I can bring this philosophy into my class and only give quizzes and tests when I think my students have done sufficient learning to merit them, not just because the topic is done being taught.

Jared Merrifield
Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

The introduction (to the introduction) for this chapter really impacted me: it discussed biased students. It is indeed one of the hardest tasks for a human being to execute, to change someone’s beliefs that are deeply rooted within them, replacing it with the “truth.” Of course, in a classroom, there is bound to be just as many right answers as “no wrong” answers, but even with the more ambiguous questions, convincing someone to change their beliefs, or even to simply introduce them to a new one, can be strenuous. Personally, I really like the idea of giving students the end-of-unit assessment during the first day of classes. Again, this ties into the //UbD// chapter and emphasizes the effectiveness of diagnostic instruction. I must reiterate how useful I find this method to be: it lets you know where a student is and, with luck, where that student is going. Later in the chapter, Wormeli stresses the importance of assessment and the need to take action as a result. If you assess a student and do not take action based on the results, that is not effective (or differentiated) teaching, and that student’s progress will not grow. I also empathize with any student who works several hours on a project only to find out that s/he didn’t do it right, all because of the teacher’s lack of instruction. I am one of those people who needs to know //exactly// what he is supposed to do, preferably in a step-by-step procedure. If this is not provided for me, chances are I will make at least one crucial blunder. The KUD concept introduced in this chapter echoes the exact same formula in //UbD//; once again, this method only makes sense when a teacher is assessing a student’s possible mastery of a subject. This section also provides an insight on essential questions, and after reading it, I might have to make a few changes in my own essential questions for the lesson plan packet – or at least, I feel an urge to do so. I enjoyed the chapter’s blurb on “fluff” assignments, and I am not proud to say that I had to do my fair share of fluff and ended up learning very little. Some of them might be appropriate for a younger classroom, but that is only because younger students are not expected to master their school subjects at such an early age. The guidelines for a differentiated lesson that the chapter provided at the end will surely be helpful to me, and any other teacher for that matter. I may have to read them more and garner a further understanding of each step; I have a feeling it will alleviate some of my trepidations on teaching.

Amanda Fitzpatrick
This chapter shared a lot of information that is critical in assessing students. I learned that perhaps the most effective way of teaching a lesson so that all of my students get all of the knowledge intended is to first pre-assess where they are individually, so that way I can add in material necessary to comprehending the lesson that they are unaware of. As teachers we want to students to have the most success possible with a lesson, and a pre-assessment is a good way to do this. Another point I found helpful was that of allowing the student to pick their own way of being summatively assessed at the end of a unit. This way, if the child is more of a visual learner, they can show off their creative side by drawing up a poster that sufficiently addresses all of the points laid out on the rubric, whereas a more verbal learner may chose to write an essay to explain what they have learned. Although in the past, I have had teachers that make up several different rubrics dependent on what kinds of projects the class may be doing, I think along the same lines as the book--the teacher should make up one rubric that does not specifically focus on the presentation itself, but the content of the presentation, with extra points for being communicated well (for a student doing an oral presentation) or creativity (someone who opts to make a poster or another visual presentation). This way, the student knows what content is supposed to be in their presentation and the teacher knows what exactly they should be grading for as far as content goes.

Susanna Cooper
Chapter 3 gave many ways to successfully teach an assessment. Some big points that I felt were important were for teachers to keep the students out of the dark, use pre assessments to show readiness in a unit, and avoid teaching fluff. By informing students of what they are going to learn they have a clearer understanding for the get go, which the teacher then builds on with each lesson. The pre assessments help show the teacher where the class is at and whether the lessons need to be changed due to the results. As a teacher, I should use this a lot. What good will it do the students if I am teaching them things they already know, or keep moving forward when they don’t understand what I covered earlier? Not much, they won’t learn as efficiently as when we are all on the same page. I think that any pre-assessments I do can be in a variety of ways. Foe example, in a different book I read about the exit questions. These questions let me know where the students are at. I also should be aware of how my activities affect the learning that needs to happen. Teaching “fluff” will not help my students learn the critical points that are mixed in with the fluff. I should only be teaching the students what they really need to know. And how teach them should be ways in which they really learn and grow. If I ask them to write a poem about their favorite colors, this will not benefit them any, unless I am having them practice a certain poetry style that I may have just introduced to them. I think this relates well to real life. I liked the example about the 5 paragraph essay. Some grades teach just that essay style. I still remember learning how to write a 5 paragraph essay over and over again. I did learn other styles too, but if this is the only style that is permanently impacted on the students, this will be the only style they use as adults. Authentic essays allow more points to be developed than a simple 5 paragraph essay, 3 points with intro and conclusion. If employers are looking for more authentic essays, than that is something I should teach my students as well as a 5 paragraph essay. They should understand when it is proper to use each one.

Mike Lawson
Chapter 3: Fair Isn’t Always Equal

Handing out the final test on the first day of class does sound pretty radical. However, if backwards planning works when it comes to drawing up lesson plans maybe it will work when it comes to understand what the class will be about. I think it would be a good idea to get students immediately interested in what I will be teaching. I also like how the book embraces when students shout out what the “answer to number 12” is (pg. 21). Teaching is all about getting the students to memorize the information. So why not give them the information in ways that they can easily remember it. Set out clear expectations for the students and allow them communicate with one another to form strongly developed ideas. I hope as a teacher my kids will gain a lot of EEK. I want my students to remember my class and the things I taught them. I want them to remember that my class taught them how best they learn. I basically want my class to be the best class they have ever taken and for all my students to master my content area, which I suppose may never happen. Knowing what the students already know coming into the class is really helpful as well. I will always have some kind of pretest for my students so they know where they are in terms of basic information, and I will understand where I have to start with them. Possibly assigning a little extra reading after going over it with that specific student would be helpful. One goal for my class will be for the students to try and assess themselves on specific occasions.

Jared Boghosian
From this chapter I learned that when making in class groups, arrange the groups based on similarities and differences in the classroom. Always keep your intended goals in mind. Thanks to the backward design, you should be establishing goals in stage one before reaching assessment. More acronyms, KUD stands for Know, Understand, and Do. Know is referring to knowledge retained by the student. Understand is linked to all of the ideas that need to be uncovered by the unit. And Do is how a student demonstrates a skill learned in the unit. The main thing I will take away from this chapter is the list of things that are essential to creating a lesson plan. Such things include: Unpacked standards, curriculum guides, pacing guides, mentor teachers or colleagues, text book or chapter tests, subject specific listservs.