The competent teacher understands and uses appropriate formative and summative assessments for determining student needs, monitoring student progress, measuring student growth, and evaluating student outcomes. The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student.
Educational Psychology
Chapter 3 - The Self, Social & Moral Development Test
This chapter 3 test assessment and analysis has been included in this portfolio as evidence for monitoring student progress related to educational psychology targeting the self, social and moral development of students. As a future educator, providing assessments such as this example allow me to understand where students need more assistance or where I need to make better connections between the students and the material. The use of Google Forms and Google Sheets allows for retention of the assessment for future classes but also copies can be made to adjust particular questions where I may need to be more clear or create more of a story for the question rather than list various examples of a psychology chapter section. The online assessments provide real-time answers so I can view the results as the students are completing the assessment. This gives students instant feedback so we can determine where further work may be needed or it can tell me that the students fully understand the material and we are ready to move on to the next chapter. Instant grading of assessments also provides students with access to their overall grade and not wait for all the tests to be graded once I have the block of time. This allows me as the teacher to provide more instruction or feedback for the student rather than worry about grading and reporting.
First this test supports performance indicator 7O where the competent teacher effectively uses appropriate technologies to conduct assessments, monitor performance and assess student progress. By using Google Forms, the test results were automatically downloaded into Google Sheets where I could perform calculations to determine percentage scores with overall totals and separate scores between the two types of questions, multiple choice and short answer. Upon reviewing the scores, I could see that some students were strong in multiple choice where they could recall a term that they saw versus short answer where the student had to recall on their own the terminology and provide examples that they can apply the concepts to real-world and make connections to their life. By using Google Forms, I am able to retain the assessment and adjust questions for future classes depending on how the students respond where some questions may be confusing or too basic.
Second, this test supports performance indicator 7M as I am able to record the scored within Google Sheets which can be consolidated and linked to Google Classroom where grades can be maintained and saved for documentation. In addition, students could view their performance in real time which gives them ownership for their grades. The test scores and test itself can be shared electronically and shown to parents during parent-teacher conferences as well. This reduces the human error of transferring grades from a test to a written grade book.
Third, this supports performance indicator 7J where the teacher uses assessment results to determine student performance levels, identify learning targets, select appropriate research-based instructional strategies and implement instruction to enhance learning outcomes. As explained within the Chapter 3 Test Analysis, reviewing test scores after being logged from Google Forms to Google Sheets allows me to see which questions gave students difficulty and where I will need to address further review and take a different approach to having the students demonstrate their knowledge. The students may need more hands on tasks such as performing skits or doing team work videos to demonstrate the different concepts for the problematic questions. In addition, I can see which students have a grasp of the chapter material and which that do not so I can offer additional review time in a smaller setting or provide more examples of situations that demonstrate the concept.
Economics - Supply & Demand In Action
This artifact is an assessment tool that was used as part of a unit summative for Microeconomics. In order to determine student knowledge regarding supply and demand, we created a current event assessment. The students had to find a current event, an advertisement or a technological advancement and explain it using supply and demand terminology from our unit. During the unit, we evaluated formative assessment results and noticed students struggled with various questions. which were short answer or multiple choice. This artifact allowed students a different perspective and a different method to demonstrate their skills.
This artifact supports the statement in this standard, "The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student." As stated previously, the economics teacher PLC discussed all the various results from each of their class formative assessments. Based on the data results from these assessments, we noticed that students were still struggling with supply and demand related to the indicated market and what happens to price and quantity. I had seen a recent news brief discussing coffee beans and the impact to coffee prices. I had a "geek" moment and realized we can ask students to find a real world supply and demand example and explain it. When I presented it to the other teachers, they liked the idea and as a team we developed the assessment into this artifact. We found that the students embraced this assessment and they had great success. This success allowed the students to end the unit confident and positive.
I learned that collaborating with other same subject teachers was informative. There were new ideas and suggestions for tools to use in presenting content or assessing. Even as a student teacher, I was treated as one of the team and my suggestions carried the same weight as a tenured teacher. I saw the dynamic in developing new content and how that process develops from an idea to an actual fully developed assessment tool. I learned that in this cooperating school, assessment development is a team effort. Teachers support each other and realize working together can bring stronger results.