Assessing Effectively
Whichever form they may take, assessment is the cornerstone of education. In an ideal world a teacher could put forth content and students would easily and quickly digest it. In the real world, students work at different paces and interest levels; teachers may over or under explain concepts; and outside bodies like parents, district boards, and universities need standard measures of achievement to track student, teacher, and school proficiency. Assessments help all of these measures work.
Though students and parents may stress most about large, imposing summative assessments, there's far more to them than exams and research papers. In this section you'll find sample lesson plans and guiding elements that showcase how my lessons, both formative and summative, are constructed to maximize learning, retention, and equity among students. You'll find examples of how technology can be implemented in my units, and get an idea of how work is made relevant to the world outside of school.
Please click on each drop-down menu to read a brief description before following the links to the left of each header.
Unit Plan: Early American Explorers and Analyzing Elements of Bias in Media
When teaching, questions of curriculum and assessment design bring forth not only questions of "what," but also "why." In this lesson plan and resource document I showcase how I interpret the "why" of a common topic in English, the non-fiction journals of early American settlers John Smith and William Bradford. Here, you'll see my ability to not only teach the content as it stands on its own but also they way in which I make that content a tool for teaching skills relevant across all reading and subjects.
Re-Writing Bias: A Web Activity
This web-based activity on bias demonstrates my ability to incorporate technology meaningfully to create effective, easy-to-understand lessons that bring together a wide range of resources. Instead of having students manage multiple handouts, pages of notes, web links, and writings, this resource uses the web to bring everything together in a package that's much easier for students to follow and keep track of.
Assessment Design Checklist
This checklist is what I use to make sure I'm following best practices and my own teaching philosophies when designing assessments and shows that thought and intention are put into everything my classes do. The top table lists the five major questions that I must be able to answer "yes" to in order for an assessment to make the cut as well as the criteria for each answer. Below is the research that supports each tenet of my list.