Competency 7: Take into account student diversity

Reflect on an experience where course delivery or assessment hindered your ability to demonstrate knowledge. 

In any situation in which I had to take a test or exam, I found my ability to demonstrate my knowledge was hindered. I am not a good test taker and even if I completely understand the topic in class and in my homework, the second I have to apply that knowledge on any type of examination, it never seems to work. Tests never allowed me to fully demonstrate my understanding of a topic in a way that matters summatively and unfortunately, formative assessments were never counted towards final grades. One example is in high school when I was taking physics. During every assignment and piece of homework I did, and every in-class question we answered for practice, I was able to do most of them. However, when I did any test, my grades were always poor enough to raise concerns with my teacher. I was lucky enough that my teacher took me aside and personally tutored me so I could pass the class but it goes to show that formal examinations were an assessment method that worked so poorly for me that my teacher was confused as to why I wasn't doing well.

 Reflect on implementing an assessment with a real group of students. What were some of the challenges you encountered? Were you able to differentiate your assessment for ALL students? 

Other than realizing I could have worded my rubrics a little more clearly, as I mentioned under competency 4: implementing teaching and learning situations, I didn't encounter too many difficulties. From the start I knew about some of the needs my classroom had as my AT let me know they do well with anything that has them moving and using their fine motor skills, as well as their need to practice their writing. I had also already committed to challenging myself in making every lesson engaging and attempting to include an activity in each lesson that has students moving in some way. One thing I could have done differently, however, was to add an oral component to my assessments as I did not have one. Although I did help students who needed to talk through their answers before being able to put them into writing, having an oral component could have been beneficial to those who are not strong writers.

Fortunately, my classroom did not have a vast diversity of needs as only one student was on a modified program. This student has difficulty expressing their thoughts orally and is not able to do so in writing. For this student, what I ended up doing was having them tell me what they wanted to write, I would write it out for them and then they would copy what I wrote underneath in order to practice their printing.  This worked fairly well for the student and although they did technically need to be graded at a grade 2 level, I would attempt to grade them holistically in comparison with the student's own ability. I found that this motivated the students in turn as I was able to point out to them how they had improved.