assessment

Assessment

I have never heard the term backwards design in relation to lesson plans. From my experience and interactions with teachers I think they do in some ways think about the goal first and work backwards but perhaps not in the exact way the article “The three stages of backward design” describes. For example the template on page 22 starts with the goals and moves to the childrens understanding and then to stage 2 on performance tasks and assessment evidence and then to stage three planning the learning activities. I believe some teachers and even myself may have started with the goals and then moved to stage 3 the learning activities without really thinking about assessment evidence and criteria and performance tasks second. Something else I believe I tend to see a lot is an activity a teacher really likes and has done for years and they are just trying to find somewhere to fit it in and make it relate to something the kids are currently learning. Being in more of a teacher role I have experienced how important time management is and there is not a lot of “free-time” or time to “waste” in school, school curriculums are so detailed and then planning around specials, using classroom time to its maximum potential is crucial. I think using this strategy of backwards planning if one really plans from the objectives or goals and follows the stages will make sure that all of the lessons are working towards a goal and are relevant . One example from the article was about a kindergarten assignment for the hundredth day of school for the kids to bring in a poster with one hundred things glued to it. In my opinion this was just an activity a teacher is probably used to doing and thinks it is “fun”, but having something along the same lines and even having the assignment include grouping the objects on the poster or putting the items in a certain pattern could work towards a kindergarten standard or objective and it would still be fun or engaging for the students. I liked these articles because they did help me think about how I can use class time wisely but I feel like I need to see more examples of different kinds of assessments, especially for math besides tests.

Backward Design and Assessment

Out of the three articles, I felt that the last one that I chose to read, "Gaining Insight into Students' Thinking Through Assessment" was both the most interesting and helpful. Honestly, when reading about backwards design it never occurred to me that educators planned lessons any other way. I have never planned a lesson or activity without beginning at the end and first considering the desired results. How can you plan a lesson without really thoroughly thinking about where you want it to go and what you want the students to accomplish intellectually? It was interesting however to read about the "backward design" phenomenon and acquire an actual term for the particular philosophy, which apparently I had been looking at a bit naively.

That being said, the actual snapshots of multiple activities in the 3rd assessment article really made me reconsider the outcomes of certain assessment questions. For example, the author provided 8 different answers they had received from the question, "The Clearview Little League is going to a Pirates game. There are 532 people, including players, coaches, and parents. They will travel by bus and each bus holds 40 people. How many buses will they need to get to the game?” When I first glanced at the answers (and then took 5 minutes to do the math in my head, I thought, yep ’14,’” but as I began to look closely at how each student worked out the problem, I noticed that even though some of the students had the correct number answer, they clearly still did not fully understand the math they were performing. One of the students actually divided wrong getting the answer of 14 R12 instead of 13 R12 but because of their logic, they technically wrote down the right answer.

This solidified for me the importance of students’ assessments including explanations, presentations, written work, and the like. As teachers we have to, as the backward design model insists, remain focused on the real goals of assessments. When we assess we must assess not just the answers or the students’ abilities to fill in a blank with the appropriate information, but our students’ understanding; the process of their learning not just what they “learned.”

Assessing assessments

I always have felt like assessment is my weak point. I love the challenge of looking at standards and coming up with creative ways to teach the materials. The "Backwards Model" article reminded me of the curriculum planning strategies they gave students in my FCE 321 class. In that class we learned goal curriculum is made up of long term goals, short term objectives (somewhat like the GLEC's), Methods of carrying out objectives, Activities, materials and Assessments. The class emphasised the importance of assessments and that they are what propel what objective based activities you do next and the methods you use. Although the class emphasized the importance of assessment I still don't feel confident in creating assessments that are meaningful and affective.

I was nerdishly excited when I found our the 2nd part of "The Backwards model" article focused on creating affective classroom assessments. I found the questions given in the article that prompt teachers to think more critically about the purpose of activities helpful and I plan on reading over them again when we are suppose to do our two week units plans. However, I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what meaningful assessments are. I am hoping first of all that we get to do more than just read about the Backwards model and actually get help carrying it out. Through that process I also hope to get most of my confusion cleared up.

For my second article I read the Cantlon article about authentic assessments. I really am put off by the idea of standardized testing and love how she came up with creative ways to assess her students learning in an "on-going, holistic" way. It seems that this article helped me put more of a face to the principals discussed in the "backwards model" article.

~Donnalee

Assessing your students

I think it is very important for teachers to work backwards and know what they expect their students to accomplish from a specific task. I do not however, agree with the fact that all teachers need to have the same assessments for their students. “Three different teachers may all be working toward the same content standard but if their assessments vary considerably, how are we to know which students have achieved what? Agreement on needed evidence of learning leads to greater curricular coherence and more reliable evaluation by teachers” (pg 20). I do not think that all teachers need to have the same assessments for each of their students in order to know if they learned the material or not. I think it is important to be flexible with your assessment in order to cater to the personalities in your class room. It is obviously important and necessary for teachers to teach to the standards but I think there can be different ways of showing it. Students are not always all on the same page even though they may have been taught the same content. I think it is very important for formal assessments to be the same such as trimester tests, but assessments given throughout the trimester can be different. At my school, all of the first grade teachers meet every Wednesday to discuss the plans for the coming week. In some cases a class may be ahead of another class and therefore the worksheets or informal assessments will vary. One class may need more instruction on a specific topic than another class. There are also different kinds of assessments that have been given such as verbal assessments, written assessments, or assessments that are shown through pictures. I think it is important to have some formal assessments that can be compared with the other classes but I also think it is important to add in your own assessments because ultimately you are the one that needs to know what your students can or can’t do. You are the one that needs to be able to correct the misconceptions that your students may have.

Assessment

In the Thinking like an Assessor article I read about the backwards design program and how it is important to make sure you have a specific reason for the assignment. With the case about the kindergarten teacher who had the students make a poster of 100 things for 100th day she did not make the children count in any column or row to show they can actually count 100 things. After reading this I am worried a little bit about making sure everything has an academic purpose. It sounds obvious but I am worried that something like this might slip through the cracks during my first year of teaching. Having students make a poster of 100 things seems like a great assessment until the question is asked of how do you know for sure that students can count to 100 and understand the concept of bundling and regrouping.

That is why I liked the three basic question section. I think these are great questions to ask yourself when you are coming up with tasks or assessments. I think these questions could be helpful when creating new curriculum. In the article it says it is “important to consider the general types of performances that are implied,” “What specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we examine,” and “Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student’s knowledge, skill, or understanding?” All of these questions help narrow down exactly what you are looking for in assessment and how you are going to go about assessing these things. While I think I have a good idea of what I am looking for on assessment I think these are good questions to keep in mind when coming up with assessments. I will try to keep them in mind when I come up with a task in the future.

Talk moves

The talk move that stood out the most to me was revoicing. I like this idea because especially being with first graders it can be difficult to understand the message they are trying to get across to the rest of the class and in order to have a good clear class discussion I think revoicing will be a necessary practice. Since the teacher does not know what the student is thinking it may be a challenge to correctly revoice what the student was actually thinking. If a teacher revoices using a question the student may say “no that is not what I was talking about” or the student may just say “yes that is what I meant” although it really not be what they were thinking but they do not want to correct a teacher. Also as a teacher during these discussions it would be important to let the students finish their complete thoughts because it may take them time t think of the right words and I think it is important as a teacher to not cut them off and just interject our assumptions on what they were going to say without letting them finish.

My case study was the first grade case study with the teacher Mrs. Sigler. I noticed a lot throughout her case study that she asked the other students to repeat what other students were saying. The whole group discussion led to new ideas of triangles as a class. It seemed as if the questions kept building off of each other and helped all the kids expand what they believe a triangle to be. I can see myself using reasoning a lot in the classroom in discussions. There are many ways it can be used you ask the class to just give a thumbs up if they agree with whatever concept we are talking about it helps to give a quick check for understanding. Then it can go in depth and can give kids an opportunity to interpret what another student is saying and different students have different points of views and may interpret ideas differently and by asking them to apply or use someone else reasoning is a good way for them to share.

carolyn

Student Talk in Case study number 2

In Case Study 1 the first grade students were learning about geometric shapes, triangles in particular. The teacher, Mrs. Sigler, gives the students a task of sorting different geometric shapes. However she notices that one group has only put equilateral triangles in the group designated for triangles. She points to the other triangles and asks the students why they have not put those in the triangle group. They respond by saying they are not triangles because they do not look like the picture of the triangle on the poster (which is an equalateral triangle). She continues to talk to them and they give her explanations as to what a triangle is. They say “It’s short and fat and looks just right,” and “They’re flat on the bottom”. She then proceeds to do a number of things with the triangles and the students all give her explanations relating back to the poster. This talk with the students helps the teacher understand why they were not seeing all the triangles, just the equilateral ones. In her classroom she has only provided one example of a triangle and some of her students see that as the only way you can have a triangle. The image of the triangle becomes more important then the definition of what a triangle is. The next day she decides to do a different activity where she hopes the students can learn more about the definition rather then just the image. She provides them with three strips of paper and has them make triangles. Then they have a class discussion to talk about why they are triangles. She uses a couple different talk moves during her discussion. She repeats what students are saying, has other students repeat what students are saying, and most importantly gives the students time to come up with their response. Through the student talk the teacher was able to get a clearer understanding of what her students were thinking about and how they were drawing on certain conclusions.