Week 7 & 8 Reflection

 Using Data to Drive Instruction

    This week, we worked with excel to interpret student assessment data. I liked that we went over this, not only because we are going to have to do this in field, but also because excel is something that is confusing overall and is used all the time in real-world application. We completed graphs and calculated the sum, mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the assessment results. We also went over some basics of using excel, like copy and pasting results.

We also talked about statistics concepts during week 7. We went over score reports and how we have to understand these for things like teacher-parent conferences and so on. Some terms we went over regarding statistic assessment concepts are defined below:

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

                       ex) All five year-olds

Sample: group of people actually included in the testing or study.

Norming: the process of constructing norms or the typical performance of a group and testers are ranked in relation to other testers. 

Criterion-referenced tests: test results are compared to a set of standard, and testers are ranked in relation to the body of tested knowledge. 

*We first learned this concepts to apply later when working in excel and doing future learning and projects. 

Reflection #6

 This week, we learned even more about assessments and how to explore different assessments/elaborate on the ones that we have already created. We went over observational learning, formative assessments, and DAP, which is 'developmentally appropriate practice'.

DAP requires meeting students where they are and enabling students to reach their goals. The main ideas of DAP are shown on this infographic.

On Wednesday's class, we discussed how we must align our objectives to the standards for best teaching results. We talked about specific steps we have to take in order to meet objectives with the standards. they go as following:

Step 1) Start with the standard. 

-The standard is what you are supposed to teach, so picking a standard to be taught is the first step and working the curriculum to the objectives and said standard is important. 

Step 2) Create an objective.

-Your objective must come from the standard. You may adapt to fit students needs.

Step 3) Creating the assessment

-Use your objective as your assessment.

These three steps are outlined to work together to adhere to lesson planning; aligning our standards, making objectives, and providing assessments for our students. 

I like how we discussed this, because we are lesson planning right now. I like how we met with a partner to critique each others work. When we do this, we get an idea as to who is on the same page and who isn't. When meeting with another student, it may be better then a teacher providing feedback because students are more likely to make common mistakes and build off of eachother. 

Week 5 Reflection

 Learning objectives are important to have in a classroom because it begins with the end in mind. When you introduce said goals to children, they know what to expect and can then follow some form of learning structure easier than if learning blindly. They are told what is going to ultimately come of their learning. I would have appreciated this in elementary because as a child, I was always confused as to why I was learning such things and what was the bigger purpose. I intend to give this to my classroom so they know why we are doing what we are doing. 

The ABCD formula is perfect to make sure teachers are aligning their objectives to their assessments. I will break down the formula below:

A- Audience: this asks the question of who is doing the learning, who the target audience is.

B-Behavior: describes what the student will be able to do, along with how to demonstrate knowledge. You may use action verbs like Bloom's Taxonomy for this portion. 

C-Conditions: this asks the teacher to describe any resource and limitations for performing the behavior, like what materials the students will have, time limits, cues to be given, and with whom.

D- Degree: the level or criteria with success is determined, how well said instruction must be done. 

Ms. Lauren's Talk-

I learned lots of valuable information during this zoom session. I first liked how she said accommodations are mainly having open reflections, and leaving things open for students to come up with their own answers that may vary rather than just one correct or incorrect answer. I also liked how she said you should decorate your classroom with students work rather than cheesy Pinterest decorations; this way you save time and money. I also think having students work displayed enriches the classroom environment and promotes creativity. 

Week 4 Reflection

 My understanding of Bloom's Taxonomy is that it builds off one another. The levels of Bloom's Taxonomy go deeper into understanding as you go up the model, or triangle, in this case.  Blooms lowest tier of understanding is remembering. Remembering is like memorizing more of a recall of information; not that deep of an understanding. Next is understanding. This is where you can not only recall information, but explain ideas and concepts with whatever you are learning. Next is apply; which would be using the information in new or different situations. This application is, I think, truly what it means to understand a topic. But there are more levels of this triangle, and fourthly would be analyzing information, which is basically making connections to your learning. The last two are to evaluate and create information. Evaluating information would be justifying a stand or decision and then to end the triangle, to produce a new work, which is to create. We did an in-class activity to show how to use Bloom’s in a classroom:

Webb's Depth of Knowledge essentially says that no learning has been done until students can apply or use the knowledge. Going back to my first paragraph, I said that a student doesn't fully comprehend a subject until they can apply it. This is why I like Webb’s so much, because it is similar to Blooms but it is more about the process of thinking not just a hierarchy, and more so used to indicate an activity's complexity. Webb’s can be used in future instruction in a classroom to assess children in what they have learned; like label locations on a map, solve multi-step problems, support ideas on an anchor chart with details, or design a model after a lesson.

Week 3 Reflection

Last week, I learned about purposes and the process of documentation. I learned how important it is to document a child's learning, and how easy it is. I learned that in my own classroom, I would love the ideas of making a portfolio and having a class blog which shows families what the kids are doing each week. With these two areas of documentation, kids can revisit their work and it shows their progress over a long period of time. Taking photos is another great way to document their learning as well while doing an activity, so I would upload these photos to the class blog for viewing or put them in their portfolio. I also would like to use kids' work to document their learning, like their arts and crafts or story’s and sentences they write. I like how authentic that is and how it represents each child’s specific and individual abilities. 

The Reggio-Emilia approach focuses on expression in a child's learning. This can look like documentation which shows a visual of how they see the world. Kids can construct their own knowledge and the teacher is there for guidance. Children’s interest drives the curriculum and it shows a basis for understanding rather than measurement. They are evaluated by documentation of their learning; like panels or portfolios. The project approach is similar in that content could be driven by the student. With this approach, kids share the information they have learned with others rather than getting tested on it or documentation, which builds understanding.These two definitely have more freedom in learning and are formative, rather than the conventional approach, which is summative and has little freedom. The conventional approach is measured by things like academic performance. 

I can now better support the learning of future students by figuring out a balance of free learning driven by interest and summative evaluations. Like the one I created in class:

Week 2 Reflection

    For week 2, I first and foremost learned about different observation techniques. I learned that observation is more than just watching and theres is multiple ways to do so. We observe, as teachers, to see what the child is learning, plan lessons accordingly, to write and record, and so much more. There is roughly about six different types of recording observations that teachers can conduct. I have outlined the 6 different types with their definitions below. 

You may have to click on the image to see it clearly!

       I would use different observation techniques in my classroom as to which type would fit each individual student best. For instance, if I am trying to understand why a child is behaving a certain way in my classroom, I would use an event sampling approach to gather more information in a single event. 

    We also learned about different types of rubrics this week and how to make one of our own. When developing an analytic rubric in class, I think I struggled most with the set up. For me, it was hard to think about how many boxes to make and the main areas of concern. When I got to the actual content of what I wanted, it was easy to do the layout because you can start with what you absolutely want the child to do, like "Has no grammatical errors". After you define that, you can go down the rubric and say something like "Has few grammatical errors", and so on. So, I liked that it was sort of a pattern. In the future, I would like to make an organized list of topics, content, then write all the descriptors. Afterwards, I would transfer all of the information to craft the rubric; I think doing it all at once was overwhelming. 

Week 1 Reflection

     This week, we mainly learned about different types of assessments. There is informal and formal, which informal is teacher created and formal is made by test-developers. When being a teacher and conducting a lesson, there is specifically three different kinds of assessments that should be taking place. There should be a diagnostic assessment before the lesson, to start to get an idea of what children do and don’t know. This can look like a fun survey to do when class starts. Afterwards, teachers can see what skills and knowledge the students know and therefore can plan accordingly or modify  their lesson plans. During the lesson, the teacher should conduct a formative assessment, like a quiz or a written reflection. Formative assessments do not have to be graded, so you may have creative freedom with it as well. Formative assessments are so the teacher can see what they themselves are doing well, along with the students. Its a win-win. Lastly, after a lesson, the teacher should create an end-of-unit test or paper to measure the students' overall learning, which would be a summative assessment.

This is a great example of using diagnostic and summative or formative assessments. Kids can fill out a paper of what they knew before the lesson. Then, once the teacher has taught the lesson or during a lesson they can fill out a "Now I Know" paper, which we can all reflect upon as a class as we reveal the "top secret" answer!

    These three types of assessments should be implemented throughout your lessons, and I definitely will be implementing all three as creatively as I can to provide to my students interests. After learning about all of this information about assessments, I cannot wait to implement various types of learning in my classroom.