Building by Design

As with any assessment a teacher creates they hope to gain knowledge about their students and see if they have been able to make meaning from that particular unit of study. Seems easy, but in fact, it’s the hardest thing an educator will ever do. Assessments are ever changing, as are our students needs. To create a great assessment one needs to keep in mind the motivation of the student and their current level of skill sets, not the ones you think they should have, their actual ones. In thinking about this and the students I have taught over the years, I have began to build what I feel is an assessment in which I am truly focusing in on the many aspects of UbD.

A rough draft perhaps, and a dedicated teacher’s ideas for best practices, the assessment I have created takes a look at how we can better serve students through understanding their reading and writing skills. It’s ever evolving I know, but the beginning of a base I believe will show me how to best instruct students through an assessment that is meaningful to them.

Feel free to take a look here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vKur6hzgUGR50MhqXZNTHw_bI7TB6eH8kokzWhxtgWo/edit?usp=sharing

Understanding by Design-Why reflection is such an important part of the process

Over the course of this week I have had the chance to think in depth on some of my own assessment practices. So often we find that when creating an assessment we think ourselves that we have mastered both the concept and the design. But how often do we take time to reflect on what it really means to the student? Many times when we do it is far past that moment of instruction and becomes lost in the whirlwind of our classes and unit timelines.

I’ve put together some thoughts on this, mostly on a common assessment of ELA teachers, our argumentative essay process. In teaching this essay over the course of the past few years I have begun to understand how some simple changes could help in creating a better assessment for students.

Critical Review: Argumentative Essays

Assessment AS Learning-What we really find out in the end

A furrowed brow, sweat, and an uneasy stomach. Test anxiety. Quite possibly the feeling both a teacher and student feel when passing out the infamous pre-test. In the end, when the papers are all done and graded then we should see what we need, but it’s really rather what we find. We find a whole host of things we may not have thought about when creating our assessment and then are left sorting out if we really looked at what matters. A perfect science? No. Our best way to try to move forward in the classroom? Yes, and this is what we do as teachers and this is what our students have come to expect.

This is where I show my hand as an educator. Shared with you below is an assessment I’ve used in the classroom the past two years. I’ve never been in love with it, but as part of my department have used it as part of our “standardized” type pretests for a unit of study. Sharing this piece has been an exercise in assessing myself and my practices as a whole and has opened my eyes to a different light when assessing our students and getting to the root of what matters.

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Assessment AS Learning-What I have found to be true

1. a) How would I describe the design of this assessment? (e.g., is it a test? a cloze activity? a group project? an essay assignment? a portfolio assignment etc.?) This is a pretest, I also used the same one as the post test.
2. b) What is the purpose of the assessment?  To see exactly what the students know about nonfiction text structures up to that point. It is a part of CCSS throughout English curriculum, however really comes to play in middle school as students move deeper into essays and understanding how different features and structures play a part in our writing.
3. c) How does this assessment align, if at all, with the curriculum standards that guide my professional practice? It assess students on informational text within both reading and writing.
4. d) What information will this assessment give me about each student? It will give me their knowledge to to this point on informational text, text structures, and text features understanding.
5. e) How do I intend to use the information provided by this assessment? I use the information in a KWL fashion and gather gather what the students know, want to know, and learned. it helps me build the basis for my unit and what key features I should really pay attention to and those that I feel they already have a firm grasp on them.
6. f) What assumptions have I made about whether this assessment will, in fact, give me the information I need about the students who do it? I’ve made the assumption that my students will take the time to actually do the test because it is a “pre test” and that is notorious for having students not really try their best, therefore giving me an inaccurate read on their knowledge.
7. g) What skills have I assumed students have that will enable them to complete this assignment? That they even understand or remember what information text is or structures, that they can understand some of the wording on it, that other teachers have followed curriculum standards in such a way that the students can even understand some of the questions.
8. h) For whom would this assessment prove difficult? Why? Many students would find this assessment hard due to the sheer nature that it is large off the bat and it deals with information that they don’t readily remember or correlate it to the fact they have been using these same nonfiction text structures and features their whole lives. It would also be a hard test for our special needs learners. I feel with special needs students  that the structure of the test itself is very hard due to the multiple choice questions  and with the way some of the example paragraphs have been worded. (Any student would feel this way though I think when first looking at it and this has been in fact some of the response I’ve gotten back from it.)
9. i) Based on my readings this week, are there ways that I can imagine re-designing this assessment so that it’s better in some way? Explain your rationale and justification for your re-design idea(s). I would redesign this assessment in a heartbeat. First, I would make the test more visual appealing to help our visual learners and to further engage students. Perhaps just having a book there, in picture form, to trigger the students memory on some aspects. I think based upon what we’ve read this week this test for sure wreaks havoc on a student’s motivation due to the fact that many of them may understand the features and structures, yet the test is almost put together to fool students or lead them in the wrong path. What I can say is that I used this test in my classroom for two years, I was not the designer of the assessment, but have used it none the less because it does cover the CCSS, as well as aid students in preparation for standardized testing in which they will be asked “like” questions. With this said, I would keep some components of the testing and wording the same, however, as stated, give it more visual appeal to a student and give them working definitions to preface the questions. While some may say this is spoon feeding them, I think we need to prepare our students as best as we can and not make assessments so tricky that they will fail, rather build up confidence and upon the scaffolding of knowledge that they are currently working with to date.

The Assessment

Assessments: Their Impact on the Learning Culture

Courtesy of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”.

Assessments are at the forefront of today’s classrooms and educational research. What is the best way to assess students to make it meaningful? This is a question many educators face today, especially in the light of standardize testing practices and higher stakes learning. But are we just creating the proverbial “brick in the wall” or are we creating assessments that shed light on the needs of today’s students by creating meaningful and engaging learning societies? This question is at the forefront of recent readings by Lorrie A. Shepard and Ruth Dann. Both educators look at assessment practices within today’s schools and while both authors propose ideas different in nature,  they come up with some striking similarities on how we can adjust our assessment landscape to better the classroom experience.

My thoughts can be found here:

Assessments: Their Impact on the Learning Culture

Article Information:

Dann, R. (2014). Assessment as learning: Blurring the boundaries of assessment and learning for theory, policy and practice. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice,    21(2), 149-166. doi: 10.1080/0969594X.2014.898128  

Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7),  4-14

Hello world & Thank You

Before I begin anything I want to give proper thanks. It is because in this world we are so willing to share with others that we can truly learn. This comes about from the ability to listen to others with an open mind, relinquishing fear of the unknown and reveling in new concepts and ideas. This is the basis of both a teacher and a learner. So I thank all those that stop by and consider my thoughts, practices, and insights into the world of teaching. I truly believe that together we can make a difference in each others lives in a positive way and bridge learning gaps in today’s society.