Assessment
Year 4
Goal
My goal for Year 4 is to develop and utilize different assessment tools that align with the outcomes being taught. One of the assessment tools that I want to become stronger at is rubrics. I would like to learn how to create a rubric that is easy for students' to understand but is still effective.
Year 3 Practicum
Goal
My goal for my Year 3 Practicum is to work on providing feedback to students that is not vague. I want to implement a "star and a wonder" model by the end of the practicum (A,4).
Growth
Just like how I wanted to receive feedback from my mentor teacher, I wanted to provide feedback to my students as well. I think that I got much better at providing feedback during my practicum. I would circle around the classroom when students were focusing on a task and discuss their work one on one. I would always start with what I loved and then look to provide support and advice about what could be enhanced in order to help build on their learning. I learned that students are fairly open to feedback when approached in a positive way, highlighting the good helped establish safe relationships with students where they felt like they could trust me and seek support when needed.
WINTER 2023- EDUC 2375
Goal
My goal for this semester is to implement new assessment tools and create a rubric to use in a lesson plan in my field experience that will be learned in my Effective Assessment class.
Growth
I was not able to make a rubric for a lesson plan in my Kindergarten field experience but I was able to implement new assessment tools that were learned in the Effective Assessment class. During a read aloud lesson, I used a Pre-assessment tool of thumbs up/ thumbs down as a way to gauge the classes understanding of the books topic. As a part of a comprehension lesson for my Three Connected Lesson Plan, I used oral questioning as formative assessment tool to check the students understanding. The responses provided me feedback that allowed me to go back and change my next lesson plan in order to further clarify what students did not understand. I also used a performance- based task as a summative assessment where students had to write a letter and describe one thing that they learned throughout the three lessons. Overall, I learned several different ways to assess students and managed to implement a few into my field experience.
FALL 2022- EDUC 2371
Goal
My goal for next semester is to learn about different types of assessment tools that align with outcomes and start to implement them in a classroom setting.
Action Plan
My plan will be to utilize the information that we will learn in the upcoming Effective Assessment course next term as well as the assessments that my Mentor Teacher will do in the classroom.
Artifact from Fall 2022
The assessment for one of the students that I had been tutoring shows their letter recognization and sounds with much improvement. At the beginning, the student was limited in their letter recognition and struggled with their sounds. The assessment and feedback demonstrated how relevant assessments are used to identify learner needs and adjustments to instruction was made (A, 2).
WINTER 2022 - EDUC 1233
Goal
My goal is to continue to build on what I have learned about assessment from EDUC 1231 and be able to put it in practical use during my field experience.
Strategy
I plan to continue to work with my mentor teacher to find multiple different ways of creating assessments that are varied in their approach. I will also utilize resources such as Chapter 4 of Educational Foundations in Canada by Edmunds et al., (2015) in order to further gain knowledge on assessing students and various methods that can be used to identify learners needs.
Growth
Not all students can be assessed in the same way. After building on what I had learned in the previous semester, I was able to get more comfortable with offering different types of assessment strategies. In my lesson plan assignment, I used the Question and Answer technique to gauge students' understanding of what makes us unique before our lesson began and returned to it at the end to see what kind of growth students had. I also used a worksheet that had each student draw themselves in order to show how each of them are unique in order to apply the information that we had learned in a creative way. After the lesson was over, I recapped it with my mentor teacher to see what I could improve on going forward.
I also spent an evening with my mentor teacher for Parent Teacher Interviews. I was lucky enough to observe while my teacher and the parents went over the students' progress reports and looked to identify what areas needed to be worked on and which areas students were excelling at. The evening gave me insight into what is expected from students in terms of summative assessment through their progress reports.
An example of the worksheet that was used to assess students' understanding of being unique. Each student needed to draw how they see themselves.
FALL 2021 - EDUC 1231
Goal
My goal is to learn about the various way to assess students and find out which ones work best for various types of learners.
Strategy
My strategy will be to observe my mentor teacher during their assessment period and asks questions as to why they are doing the particular assessment.
Growth
This semester I was able to help my mentor teacher with assessing her students. We used different types of assessments including formative assessment and summative assessment. I found that I learned a lot about what it takes to support continuous learning in the classroom through formative assessment while utilizing summative assessment to see which areas need to be focused on. It also provided an opportunity for feedback and reflection on how, as a teacher, one must find different ways in order to aid student success.
A progress report that lays out the summative assessment for Kindergarten.