Class Three Reflection

My symbol for this week's class summary is speech bubbles. I learned this week that working through new concepts can be alot easier and less stressful when they are able to be talked through with my peers. I have learned the value of working alongside others to increase my understanding of the class content. This discovery is something I will carry with me through my teaching career.

Class Three Reflection

I would like to begin this week's reflection by discussing my feelings about the course so far. At the time I am writing this reflection, we have had three classes and January has almost come to a close. So far I have learned so much in such a short amount of time. Assessment is slowly (but surely) becoming something that is not so scary to me, but more an exciting new chapter in my teaching journey.

In this course there are a few things that I have really been loving. First is Poll Guru. I have never had a class that uses a platform like this to gather information from students, and I think it is so helpful. From a student standpoint, talking in a large group can be difficult even when it comes to ideas you are really passionate about. So, I love having the option of Poll Guru to get to be involved in the class discussion even on days I am feeling less vocal. From a teacher standpoint this Poll Guru is genius. It allows an educator to hear from all of their students without having to single people out to get answers. I love that. Second, is the activities throughout. I find three hour lectures difficult to stay engaged in, so the variety of activities has allowed the learning to be much more hands-on and experiential. This has contributed so much to the amount I have learned in the past few weeks.

I have also gotten the chance this week to spend some extra time working on my E-Portfolio, adding an "About Me" page and editing my previous posts!

This week's class focused on Bloom's Taxonomy which is a topic that I have heard about in my other classes, but have never spent much time exploring. So, my understanding is still quite surface level, but I am looking forward to continuing to learn more about it. At the moment I see Bloom's Taxonomy as a guideline for creating a variety of tasks and assignments for students in the classroom. It is almost a way to see where students are at in understanding a topic, as the pyramid gets smaller the understanding is larger. I think that this is a great tool to explore in the area of assessment because it can help a teacher set expectations for the assessment. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 of the textbook, teachers can use set expectations to help guide assessment. I think deciding on the level of Bloom's Taxonomy that students are expected to reach could be a great guideline for assessment.

Bloom's Taxonomy was introduced through a video followed by a series of three activities. Each activity gave me a deeper understanding of the topic, each one encouraging a deeper level of understanding. As I am writing this I am realizing that the activities themselves were helping us in understanding Bloom's Taxonomy, but at the same time they are an example of Bloom's Taxonomy. Through the process of completing these activities, we were working through the stages of the Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid (I am a little mind blown by this, as I did not realize it at the time and am now really excited about the concept of learning about the concept while teaching with the concept).

I found this series of activities really helpful in understanding a fairly complex topic. Each activity gave me the opportunity to work with a different one of my classmates, which I felt allowed me to hear different ideas and perspectives. This gave me a chance to learn from Chris, but also my classmates. Each activity became more difficult from the last, but I think this is a good thing because it gave me a deeper understanding of a topic that I had only ever touched on the surface level.

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