FIAE+B2+Chapter+3



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Chapter three of Rick Wormeli’s //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// discussed how to use a variety of assessments to assess student’s learning effectively. When you are designing an assessment the assessments are based on the essential understandings and the essential questions of the unit. The three types of [|assessments] discussed in this chapter are pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. Pre-assessments are the assessments that are assessed before the teacher starts teaching the content of that particular unit. In this assessment the teacher wants to find out what their students know and don’t know about the subject, and become aware if their students are not ready for this content and skill development. Formative assessments are the assessments that are done frequently throughout the unit. These assessments provide helpful and timely feedback to the students and teacher. Summative Assessments are given at the end of the unit. Students are asked to reflect on the main objectives of the unit.

Synthesis Reflection:
An important aspect of teaching is being able to assess what your students have learned. Not only is it important to assess students at the end of units, it is even more important to assess students before and during a unit. While assessing students during the unit it is important to give them specific feedback in a timely fashion. If you do not assess students during a unit then you run the chance of getting to the end of the unit and finding out afterwards that your students were not getting the main objectives and that you wasted weeks of class time. It is also important for teachers when they are assessing students to make sure that they assess students for the overall main objectives of the content and how they [|connect] to their lives. Teachers should not just teach students to learn what is going to be on the test. When teachers do just “teach to the test” students are more likely to forget what they have learned after they have taken the test. = =

Tiarra
According to this chapter of //FIAI//, it is important to begin instruction with the goal in mind. Like the backwards design model, a teacher must first flush out all the critical goals of a standard so that the students understand what all the assignments, lessons and assessments are trying to get them to understand. It is important to use a variety of forms of assessment to track a student’s progress over time because that way you can tell how their understanding has changed and grown, and what teaching methods work best for students on an individual basis. One thing in this chapter that I admired was the fact that it emphasizes the avoidance of “Fluff Assignments,” or “busy work” as I like to call it, which I think we have all encountered at one time or another. These static and shallow assignments do not challenge a student and make them feel as though you are wasting their time. By giving students substantive assignments you are keeping them engaged and motivated to learn which is essential to their ultimate understanding.

Danny K.
Chapter three talked about how to create assessments that enhance student learning. An important type of assessment that can be used to help you learn more about your students before you attempt to teach them is a pre-assessment. Pre-assessments can help you learn about areas that your students are already strong in and areas where they may be weaker. In the past I’ve had a few teachers give pre-assessments but not many. The pre-assessments seem to work well because it showed the teacher what we already knew so we didn’t have to waste time being taught things that we already knew. As a health teacher I will use pre-assessments in my health class as a very important tool. In health it is important to know what my students are thinking or what they think they know. There are many areas in health that my students may have false information about where a pre-assessment may allow me to find out the false information and address the class.

Justin C.
There were a lot of ways of assessing student’s knowledge that were discussed in this chapter. As mentioned in my blog for UbD/DI Chapter 5, it mentions pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment. Also in that blog entry, I mentioned ways in which I could use the three assessment methods in my own math classroom. On pages 35-36, the book gives an outline of planning and assessment of a unit. One point that the outline mentions is to plan out the assessments before planning out what is going to be taught in the actual lesson. Making out the assessments first will make sure that in lesson planning, we, as teachers, stay on track and do not teach extra material that may not be as necessary. Also, if tests and exams get written out after the fact, extra content could be accidently added onto the assessment that was not taught during the lessons. If this was to happen, the whole assessment would not be an authentic intake. In order for the assessment to be authentic, all content that is being tested would need to have been touched in the regularly taught lesson. I feel that this is a good strategy for me to implement. I fear that I would fall for the creating tests after the fact and then end up adding on material that I did not mention in the course. I want to be able to get accurate results out of any assessment that I give my students to better adjust my methods throughout the year and for the years to come.

Will L.
This chapter was primarily about assessment and how certain teachers go about doing it. As I’ve been learning in Practicum, teachers start with the end results in mind first. It is from there that they are able to consider how a lesson should be prepared. It goes over the various forms of assessment such as pre-assessment, summative, and formative assessment. It provides the teacher with a little bit of freedom and flexibility in how to assess student work. Through this, I’ve gathered that I should not rely on one particular form of assessment when I become a teacher, but be open to several forms as not all students are the same. Each lesson should be assessed differently and I aim to do just that.

Dan B.
The thing that really jumped out at me from chapter three was just how important assessment was, and chapter three also gave some tips about when to assess that I plan to use in my classroom. I think the use of pre -assessment is a good idea, because it allows you to gage what a student already knows about a subject. When I was a student the use of pre -assessment helped me because it showed me what I needed to work on to make sure that come test day I was prepared. I also think that it is important to assess students in the middle of a unit to make sure that they are on track and learning what they need to know for the test at the end of the unit. One thing I am not sure about is allowing the student to know what exactly will be on the test ahead of time; I think that a student should not know exactly what a test question will be because then the student will only focus on learning the things that they know will be on the test, and not on the things that they know will not be on the test. As a teacher I will assess a student at the beginning of a unit, and throughout the unit so the student can track where they are in the class; I will not, however, let them know exactly what will be on a test, because I want them to focus on learning everything not just the things that they know will be on the test.

Grace K.
Chapter 3 held a lot of information about ways to assess students’ learning effectively. According to Wormeli, assessment should always be based off of the end result a teacher is working towards: the standard and the essential and enduring understandings that have been “unpacked” from it. By focusing on the desired end result, teachers can assure that their assessments are meaningful and not busy work (activity-oriented teaching). Again, fluidity and adaptation were emphasized as important traits of a successful differentiated classroom; to this end, Wormeli recommends formative assessments be given often, so that a teacher may alter instruction to account for deficits brought to light by the assessments. When adapting, however, teachers should never disregard the objectives and standards they are working towards. Feedback from students and for students are both vital to a successful classroom – feedback from students could be in the form of pre- and formative assessments or a simple class discussion about what is working and what isn’t, while feedback to students should be provided early and often to promote success. Additional methods to promote success in the classroom are: using multiple assessments over time so that one bad day doesn’t ruin a student’s track record, making sure that assessments are substantive and not “fluff” assignments, allowing students the opportunity to re-do work that did not meet the bar, recording observations about students for use in future lesson planning, and offering tiered assessment as long as they all work toward the common goals of essential enduring understanding.

Grady B.
In chapter 3 of //FIAE//, I learned a great deal about how to create assessment that not only tested, but enhanced student learning. Just as truly utilizing DI in regard to content mastery can be drastically different than that of a traditional classroom, some of the ideas proposed in this chapter were equally new to me. The idea mentioned on page 21, where the final exams are provided to students at the beginning of the unit, while being decidedly untraditional, goes to the heart of what DI is really about: student learning. I really like the idea of using a final assessment to frame the learning of students throughout a unit, and the overarching idea of planning backwards is making even more sense to me, when framed in this way. I was initially ambivalent to the idea of such explicit displaying of what would be tested, concerned with the fear that if students already know what’s on the test, they will be disincentivized from learning additional content. However, this initial thought is countered by the fact that many students do that anyway, even without knowing the explicit test questions. Additionally, I feel like this method benefits the teacher, in that if a student or students feel that the teacher has strayed from these fundamental questions that are being asked in a test, then they will voice that fact to the teacher, who can adjust his lesson accordingly.

Jonathan B.
This chapter deals with assessment, and begins with the diagnostic type. The chapter stresses the importance of diagnostic assessment because of the diverse biases and diverse perspectives with which students view various studies. The information gained from these diagnostic assessments is invaluable in shaping the curriculum, and adjusting goals and future assessments. The chapter also advocates “over-time” assessment, as it tends to be much more authentic and effective than single-shot timed multiple choice tests. The chapter emphasizes the need to think through assessments, and to have them meet certain criteria to ensure efficacy. This is important as it is key to making sure that assessment matches what has been learned in the class, as described in other readings. Incorporating the strategy of “informed” assessment procedure will be an integral part of my classes.

Chris D.
Early on in chapter 3, there are definitely a lot of things that I don’t agree with. For example, giving students the final exam on day one of class is something that I do not like. Giving my students a test on day one won’t accomplish anything for the rest of the semester. Even though they’ll want to know what I want them to know, it would be for the wrong reasons. They’ll want to learn only what’s going to be on the test and learn it only for passing my class rather than learning everything I teach to them for their interest in math. Even though I disagree with that suggestion, there is an idea that I absolutely agree with. From personal experience and from my own beliefs, students will do a lot better if they know what’s expected of them. Creating a syllabus one of the more effective ways of doing this I believe. Pre-assessments are another way of having students know what is expected of them. At the beginning of a new unit, I plan on giving my students a pre-assessment that has mostly everything that will be covered, this way they know what will be expected for them to know when the test comes.

Kaitlin T.
“Beginning with the end in mind” may be one of the more helpful suggestions within Wormeli’s book, Fair Isn’t Always Equal. Giving the students a blank copy of the final assessment may very well help them to learn the material that is presented to them in a more effective manor. He states, “Students are likely to do the homework assignment if they have a clear picture of the finished product.” This approach also avoids the dreaded question that has been asked probably since the beginning of education: “Will this be on the test?” Wormeli suggests teachers prioritize standards and objectives. For a more visual, hands-on teacher literally laying the the standards/objectives out in front of you should help to organize. Wormeli recommends categorizing them as “essential,” “highly desirable,” and “desirable.” Eventually, educators will be required to design assessments. First, teachers should create their summative assessment (“we start with where we’re going...”). The designing of this assessment requires an educator to create the “culminating project or unit test” before we begin to create the lesson plan. Pre-assessment is what it sounds like: an assessment taken before embarking on a new unit. It takes inventory of “students’ readiness...and skill development.” Formative assessments are the checkpoints occurring throughout a unit.

Jen R.
Chapter three in “Fair Isn’t Always Equal” focused on the principles of assessments within a classroom. Also, chapter three brought to my attention the importance I will serve teaching the youth, the responsibility I will withhold and the dependability factor. As the teacher, I will be responsible for each student in my classroom and they will depend on me to better their education and heighten the success of their future. Throughout this chapter, I learned that as the teacher, I am also responsible for filtering through the assessment policies and determining what is genuinely worth being assessed. As a teacher, this chapter has impacted the way I will run my classroom by teaching me the importance of assessing my students and preparing them for the information they are about to learn. When assessing my students, I need to take a gradual approach and use techniques that target every individual learning style. = =

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Tyler S
To asses correctly, you need to assess in multiple different ways, and you need to do it over time. Everyone has their bad days, or they make a mistake. On some assessments, this might make them look really bad. If you have had them going through other forms of assessments though, and that one bad result is the only bad one, you know then that something just went wrong that day. The long term assessment is what gives real insight into how well the student has learned.