MFE Reflections – Meaningful Assessment

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MFE questions

1. In what way(s) have you tried something new this year to strengthen your teaching or enhance the learning environment in your classroom? Consider the influences of technology, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, global studies, mapping, collaboration with colleagues, new curriculum, your MFE goals, etc. Also consider risks you have taken that haven’t worked out as planned and those that have worked.

In trying to create a more student centered classroom, it has become apparent that by giving students more control and ownership of their work that they are producing higher quality work. It is seemingly easier to get students to dig a little deeper and provide richer opportunities for high order thinking by letting them design their own projects and final performance assessments. The trick seems to be how much scaffolding and direction to give them. I often think I am giving too direction out of fear of not giving enough. The students have quickly adapted the new techniques and openness of the classroom.

Assessment has been another area of change. Pink’s six senses have directed my approach to modifying my assessments. By using images and opportunities for students to create stories using their vocabulary words I believe I have seen significant understanding of the new words. I have also looked to create performance assessments that allow students to not only demonstrate what they know but what they can do with what they know.

2. Describe your communication with students, parents, and colleagues. What are your strengths? In what ways would you like to improve?

Email has made it easier to communicate with both parents and students. My weakness might be an over reliance on the email when trying to get important information out to parents quickly.

3. Describe any professional development activities or conferences you have participated in this year or plan to complete. What impact does professional development have upon your classroom and your teaching?

Going to NAIS, being a part of the Powerful Learning in Practice group, hosting the NCAIS Technology Conference, and attending the Blended Learning Environment in April at Cary Academy has/will have a wonderfully rich array of professional development opportunities. One example was seeing Marco Antonio Torres in Chicago speak about creating a learning studios out of the classroom. I have already become to try to reproduce his ideas in my classroom.

Authentic Assessment

***quick side note – Students got so anxious every time I mentioned an upcoming test or quiz that I felt we needed to change something… but what? As we discussed their anxiety, they came up with the suggestion that perhaps if we simply avoided the words quiz, test, or exam than it might reduce their anxiety. So we voted on what words to use and they chose to replace quiz with shirley, test with snicker, and exam with kahuna.

more about the big kahuna…

There were over 80 vocabulary words that we studied over the semester so it was not feasible to somehow assess the students knowledge of all 80 words. So here is what I did:

1. Students had to prepare for all 80 words since any of them were possibly on the kahuna.

2. Created two vocabulary exercises. The first one included a word bank of 28 words. Don’t know why I chose 28. For this exercise there were 3 images on the page. Students were asked to use two vocabulary words to describe the image. They had to include some context clues to illustrate the meaning of the word. The context clues were to be underlined. The second exercise combined the vocabulary words with the content from the stories or novels that were read. Students had to answer the questions using complete sentences demonstrating a knowledge of the story and the vocabulary word. There were 6 questions and students only had to answer 3 questions.

3. Included vocabulary words throughout the kahuna in effort to naturally use as many words as possible. All vocabulary words were in bold face type.

Beyond the vocabulary I needed to assess students analytical reasoning, understanding of the materials read, writing (thesis statements and short essays), comma usage, and subject/predicate identification.

The Big Kahuna – Goals

This is a little backwards but I am writing about how a planned my semester exam which I gave to students last week. Even though I gave the kahuna (exam) last week, I am waiting to grade them until I can get my thoughts together in the next couple of posts. My goals were:

create opportunity for students to demonstrate factual knowledge
create opportunity for students to demonstrate conceptual knowledge
create opportunity for students to demonstrate procedural knowledge
wherever possible overlap factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge
create assessments that are mostly constructed response versus selected response
allow for choice – choose three of five, create your own pairs
balance choice with fair, accurate assessment of all information (coverage was an issue)
authentic assessment that asks students to apply, create, and synthesize

I did some reading to help me get a better understanding of assessment and to help me focus my thinking. The following books were helpful:

Classroom Assessment by W. James Popham – Chapters 5-8, 11
Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12 by Janet Allen – Chapter 5
English Teacher’s Companion by Jim Burke – Chapter 11
The Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson (general concepts)
Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Gouvadis – Chapter 12

Each book offered something different but the concept was still what the students have learned. Breaking down what I had hoped that had learned into categories – factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitve- was extremely helpful. The types of activities that I created were designed to overlap between these categories while at the same time overlapping the skills and content.