novellor.files.wordpress.com · Web viewA common formative assessment is an assessment that is...

ECE 435 Novello [Type text] [Type text]

SRBI

Rachel Novello

Eastern Connecticut State University

November 7, 2013

1


The purpose of doing an SRBI teaching and assessment in our clinical placement is to be exposed to the collection of data, making decisions based on that data, monitoring student learning, and implementing lessons to help those students learn the material. The topic that I chose to do for this assignment has to do closely with what the students are learning in math and is closely aligned with the curriculum of the school for third grade.

A common formative assessment is an assessment that is given periodically to show student growth. It represents power standards and is designed by the grade level teachers. I chose the assessment that I did because it was a good measure of the student’s abilities at the times that it was given as well as being relevant to the topic that I was going to be teaching. If the assessment and objective doesn’t match, the teacher isn’t going to have a successful lesson. The assessment allows to look at the students knowledge skills and if they are understanding the concepts. For my assessments, I gave multiplication problems that were arranged vertically and horizontally. By looking at the pre assessments, I got to see who would need a lot of help with their multiplication facts and learning the strategies and I got to see who already had a head start with this concept. My school has a program that the students can go online at home and practice their math. A couple of the boys in my class go on that program frequently and they were the ones who did better on the pre assessment than anyone else. By looking at the post assessment, I got to measure who really understood the concepts and learned the skills of multiplication and who is still struggling. By recording this data, teachers can save this information for later in the year or to compare to other years or to conference with the parents about to show them what their child is doing well in or what they still need help with. Post assessments also help the teachers, like me, because we get to see what we did well at teaching. If the majority of the students do really well on the post assessment, the teacher probably did a really good job teaching the topic, in this case, multiplication. In order to collect my data, I took all of the questions from the pre assessment and post assessment and made a chart of all the students’ names. I recorded which questions the students got correct and which ones they got wrong for both assessments and put the data next to each other so that it is easy to compare. This common formative assessment allowed me to see their knowledge of skills as well as their conceptual understanding and see how much help they were going to need in between assessments, which is why I designed it the way I did.

After analyzing the data that I collected from the pre assessment and post assessment, I have come to the conclusion that the students as a whole really understood the lessons that I taught them on the subject matter and really learned from what I taught them and how I taught them. The group of students that I have include a wide range of learning abilities and knowledge skills. For the pre assessment, out of the 20 students in the class, only 2 students got all of the questions correct. 4 of the students got 1 wrong, 2 students got 2 questions wrong, and the rest of the students go down from there. 6 of the students didn’t even answer any of the questions because they didn’t even understand what to do for multiplication and so they didn’t even try to answer them. The questions were in a vertical and horizontal format in order to expose the students to both written forms of a multiplication problem. Also, after looking further at the data for the pre assessment, 7 of the students didn’t get any of the questions correct or just didn’t even answer them. To me, that means that they really have no experience with multiplication or they just do not understand the concept. One student got one question correct and one student got 2 questions correct. That could be that those questions were easier for them, they guessed, or maybe they ran out of time for the other questions. One of those students in particular got all of

2


the questions correct on the post test, showing great strides in learning from the beginning to the end of the assessments. The pre assessments show me what I will need to work on for math, which students I will really need to concentrate on, and what materials I will have to cover in length to make sure that all of the students meet the goal that I set. After collecting the pre assessment data, I can differentiate lessons according to the needs of the students and adjust the plans as we go. The student’s strengths would be building stamina for learning more complex math skills and being able to pay attention for longer periods of time in order to learn these skills. Although our schedule is still broken up into nice blocks of time, the students need to learn to stay in their seats through a lesson so that they don’t miss important information. The student’s also are mostly visual learners. Everything I do in class I use a model or use technology or show examples of so that the student’s have a clear understanding of what they should be doing and what is expected of them. Just like most adults, the student’s need to see physical models of lessons. An area for improvement would be to keep reviewing the math strategies for multiplication as much as possible and to allow more time for the students to be able to practice them. The students got to work with the strategies and are still continuing some work with them, but the curriculum is tightly packed and they quickly move on to the next topic. I wish I could have found more time to really jam pack the skills into their heads. All of the students have different learning styles and needs. Mostly, the learning style of this class is that the students learn visually. If I stood in front of the class and just told the students what to do and didn’t show them anything and didn’t have any materials or any books to read, they would be bored and not understand any of the material. By showing models, it brings the lessons to life for the students. The different needs of the classroom are handled by me holding small group sessions or one on one time for students who need extra help. I also make sure to be circulating the room while the students are working to answer any questions and to keep certain students in particular on task when needed. Although one set of data doesn’t typically lead to conclusions about student’s abilities, for the purpose of this assignment, I did what I could to place the students into 3 tiers for math. With tier 1 being the highest, I placed JB, CW, RT, EP, MN, SM, MD, MF, MG into that tier. I placed SW, KD, AD, EC, AC into tier 2. I then placed SZ, WT, DP, GN, EC, HM into tier 3 for extra help in this subject. In order to make these categories, I took into consideration the assessments, the improvement or lack of improvement between assessments, and what I know about the student from being in the classroom with them since the beginning of the year. I know that some student’s don’t take tests well and that there are other circumstances that prevent them from doing well. If I see that they are a hard worker everyday in math, I don’t have a problem putting them into a higher tier where they don’t need as much support because I know that they will understand the material and be able to handle the work. The reason I put those students into tier 1 is because they did great on their assessments and/or showed good improvement from the pre to the post. These students are always consistent with their work and show that they can perform at a high level all the time. The reason I put those students into tier 2 is because they showed some improvement on the post assessment and I know that they don’t need one on one support or intervention and that they just needed time and the lessons in class to learn multiplication. I put those students in tier 3 because they either didn’t improve on their assessment or they improved very little and knowing the type of student they are, I feel as though they will need a lot of guidance and it is better that they keep a relationship with me as the teacher going forward so that they can stay ahead of what we are learning and don’t fall behind.

3


After giving the pre assessment and analyzing how the students did on that test, I made the smart goal that during the 2013-2014 school year, 85% of students will maintain or improve their scores for this assessment. I wanted to make a lofty goal because I feel that if I push myself to succeed that I will be able to succeed and motivate the students. I have been listening to the teachers at my school try to set their smart goals and it is worse to set a low goal and achieve it rather than not achieve a well set goal. As far as a behavioral goal, 85% of students will maintain or improve their attention span, be able to sit in their seats and complete their work in the time given. For the few students that have difficulty in this area, it is expected that 75% of the time, they will be able to sit in their seats for the entire work period, complete their work and pay attention throughout. For my lesson, I planned for differentiation by making and giving different multiplication problems to all of the students and making some easier than others for those students that struggle in that area. The point of the lesson wasn’t to be able to solve the most multiplication problems, it was to be able to use the 6 strategies that were learned and apply them to a random multiplication problem. Another smart goal created on a behavioral basis is that 75% of students will be able to pay attention the whole time, sit in their seats the whole time and complete their work for this lesson. The rest of the students will perform these tasks 100% of the time. Over time, the percentage will increase.

There is no such thing as a classroom that has perfect students that are all at the same learning level. I see this as never a bad thing. The different leveled students can always be helping each other. I think putting lower level students with higher level students in the right setting is helpful because all of the students can work together and be a team. A classroom is always going to have various types of students and my job is to find ways to teach them that is compatible to their learning style. One strategy is to meet with small groups of the students that are struggling with the material. I will have the rest of the class working at their desks on the lesson that was just taught, and I will take no more than five students to a small table on the side of the room where they have their own space with me to work. They have the chance to ask me questions and listen to the strategies that the person next to them is using to solve a problem or to listen to the directions that I am giving them. Also, meeting with small groups gives those students a little extra time to complete work that they might not have understood or that they might have been out of the room for. I really like to pull students aside and talk to them and show them how to fix their work if they didn’t seem to understand a concept that we learned. If they still aren’t understanding after that, I find more mini lessons that I can incorporate so that those students aren’t forgotten and that they get the help they need. Another strategy is to take the students who really have issues with understanding certain topics or subjects or have other issues and I work with them one on one. This is a great strategy and very effective because I get to be with them and only them. That student can ask me any question they need and has time to work on the assignment that they didn’t understand. Also, I get to talk to them about something that might have been worrysome during the lesson; if I thought they were being disruptive or if I thought they could have done a better job, etc. Depending on the student, they usually always feel like they are the center of attention which is important too. One of the boys in my class especially needs the extra attention from me and when I take him one on one he feels more important and does better in those situations. He is the type of student I have noticed that needs the positive reinforcement so I have come to make sure I give him that. A third strategy is to limit the number of questions that are given on an assessment or on a worksheet. When there are too many questions or too many words on a worksheet, a student might shut down and not do as well as they would have if there were less words. By giving less words or less problems, the

4


student will be able to relax when doing the worksheet and not feel so overwhelmed because they don’t know where to begin working. A few of the students in my class get anxiety over the amount of text that a worksheet has so I have to keep the text limited. What sometimes helps those students I have found is when I highlight the directions for them in front of them. Once I have handed the sheets to everyone, I go to those students who I know need this extra guidance and highlight the directions for them while reading the words to them so that they know exactly what to do. Every time I have done this, they have performed better on the task than when I haven’t highlighted the words because I know the highlighted words draw their attention and they only need to focus on that one thing. Another strategy that is helpful for my specific lesson is to do problems where the numbers only range from 1-50, instead of 1-100. For the lower students, this might have helped them because the number problems would have been a little easier to handle. Other than these strategies for various students, scaffolding and supporting the students in any way possible is always the way to go. The trick is to find the best way of teaching each child individually because they all learn in their different ways. Scaffolding is a way of promoting a deeper level of learning, so if teachers incorporate leading questions and experiments and keep children reading, those are beginning steps.

(Pictures are below) These pictures show the students working diligently to complete the lesson that I completed the lesson plan for. The documentation process is handy because I get to look back and see how intensely the students were working and if they were really enjoying the project or if it wasn’t really grasping their attention. From what I observed in these pictures and from doing the project over the 2 days, I gathered that the students really liked this project and that the talk that was going on during the project was all about the different strategies and their approach to solving the multiplication problem they were given. I also videotaped myself giving instructions for this project which I reviewed a couple of times so see how well I gave the directions. The students all followed the instructions well and knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. For a couple of students, I did give extra support, but they are students that I always give extra help to for all subjects (to make sure they are on task, to make sure they understand the directions, to make sure they are keeping up with the rest of the class). The last form of documenting student learning was giving the post assessment. By giving the assignment for a lesson doesn’t always tell you if the student fully understands the content, so further assessing needs to come in. From the lesson, I gathered that most of the students knew how to solve the multiplication problem that I gave them and they understood how to use the different strategies to solve it. One ‘problem’ was that for this project, they were given lots of time to complete this one problem. For the post assessment, they were given multiple different problems and they were not differentiated because every student got the same assessment. All of the students also had to complete this post assessment in a certain amount of time; they weren’t given 2 days to finish it like the project so they were rushed for time and maybe they would have felt the pressure to complete the problems and might have made more mistakes that they wouldn’t have if they were given more time. The purpose of the post assessment was to determine student growth and to see if any of the students progressed from the pre assessment and to see if my teaching of the content was good and meaningful for the students in my classroom and if I taught according to their needs.

5


(Student AD, 2013)

(Outcome of lesson taught, 2013)

After giving and analyzing the post assessment, every student improved except for 4. Out of the 16 students that improved, 10 of them answered every question correctly and 2 of them only got 1 wrong. Of the 4 students that did not improve on this post assessment, students EC, WT, and SZ did not even attempt to answer questions on either the pre assessment and on the post assessment, the questions were either still left blank or were incorrect. For student HM, he did better on the pre assessment than the post assessment, where he didn’t get any answers correct. What I think happened with HM is that he has anxiety and has issues with concentrating on the task at hand. He also gets pulled out of class a lot during the day. One of the reasons he might not have done as well on the post assessment could have been that he was distracted by something or someone at his table, he could have seen too many questions on the paper and gotten flustered, he could have had to leave the room for his scheduled extra help, or he might have just not known the answers to the questions on the post assessment because they were different problems, but in the same format. Overall, having almost 85% of the class maintain or improve their scores for this assessment show that I met my goal and that my teaching methods were on target. What I still want to improve on is helping the other 4 students who didn’t master the skill yet get to where they need to be. Looking at the students as a whole, the gains were tremendous because a big majority of them improved their scores even if it was just by one question. By this many students improving their scores between assessments, it shows that they really understand the content. By collecting this data, it also shows that we as a class get to move on to the next set of lessons, which is division. For the students that are still struggling, I

6


will make sure to give them extra help and still review after that what we are learning right now. After doing the post assessment, I wouldn’t say that there are any losses because even though a few students didn’t improve their scores, the data and practice doesn’t go to waste and I can’t say that by them completing the assessment that they are ‘losing’. Any type of support and guided learning is helpful in the long run. By the students being exposed to multiplication now, they will eventually develop the skills to master the content. Another thing I noticed after analyzing their assessments is that the students used some of the strategies we used in class to figure out the multiplication problems that they didn’t know. For example, one student in particular drew arrays on his assessment to get the answers because he hasn’t memorized the facts yet. Student DP’s learning style for right now is drawing pictures to solve the math problem on hand which is clever. The overall learning style of the class is that they are all visual learners, which is partly due to their age. By me making a large scaled model for the lesson that I did with them and for all of the lessons I do with them, it really captured their attention and helped them when they had a question about one of the strategies. The students need to physically see examples of what they are supposed to do so that they can follow along. Also, from pre assessment to post assessment, there was a change in growth pattern as well. When that many of the students in the class improve or at least maintain their scores from the pre assessment, there is of course growth on a huge scale. As far as how I expected each student individually to perform, they were all about on target with how I would have guessed. JB, RT, EP, CW, MN, SM, MF always perform well on most tasks and are all around good students. AD and KD did better than I thought she would because her strong suite isn’t math. AC, EC, MD, GN, and SW all improved exactly as much as I knew that they would based on previous work that I have seen from them throughout the year. Their work ethic shows that they are determined and have the skills to do well in math, but they need the support and modeling/teaching beforehand to show them how to do it. SZ, WT, HM, EC, DP didn’t do well on the post assessment, but it was expected as well from me because it takes these students longer to grasp the concepts that we learn in class because they get taken out of class a lot and miss lessons. MG was one student that really surprised me with both of his assessments. He did a great job on the pre assessment and got every answer correct on the post assessment. Typically he doesn’t do well at all in math, which makes me think that someone helped him complete this assessment, skewing his scores. If he did it entirely on his own, then I am very happy and he is improving along just fine. What I hope to see is that the students will continue to grow in future assessments. The learning results of these growth patterns are that the students understand the information that I am teaching them and remember it and can apply it in any situation to solve multiplication problems. The results of the post assessment are most likely due to the planned interventions and SRBI strategies that I had in place during the lesson that I taught for this assignment. The small groups and one on one time with the students that I pulled were effective because there results/data improved from pre assessment to post assessment. Students EC, EC, HM, WT, DP, GN and sometimes AD were put into these groups in order to help them with this content and more than half of them improved their scores. This shows that the small groups and one on one attention helped the students and was effective for their learning. Another of the strategies that helped was that I did some problems that ranged from 1-50 instead of going up to 100 so that it was a little easier on some questions. With this strategy, it still showed me that the students know how to do multiplication. The form of differentiation that I used for the lesson that I performed for this lesson was to give different multiplication problems for all of the students depending on their level of knowledge. I gave harder ones for the students who are in the higher group. This allowed them to use the multiplication problem to

7


complete the 6 strategies for the lesson and once they understood the strategies, they could use those strategies on the post assessment. Those students who understood the strategies in the lessons improved on the post assessment. All of these strategies were effective because they all helped bring up the scores of the majority the students.

By engaging in the SRBI process, I gained a lot of insight into what really goes into the process and I learned a lot about the school system and about myself. This was a really big project, from formatting a pre assessment to conducting a lesson to giving a post assessment to analyzing the data and seeing which students understood the content and which students still need extra help is a lot. The main qualification of this project was that it needed to be scientific based research. My school tests the students fairly often especially for math to see how much they are improving or if they are still maintaining the same scores they had before. I have learned a great deal about the different tests that they give, MCOMP, MCAP, STAR, and how the school triangulates the scores to see which students fall into the necessary tiers so that they are given the appropriate support they need. The STAR test my school has to pay for, but all of the scores go into the same database that the school has. I believe that I have shown a lot of growth from the beginning of this experience to the end. I was able to make my own assessments, administer them in the time given, and analyze the data noticing patterns within each student to see which students are good at this subject matter, which ones need help, and which ones learned from my teaching because their scores improved from the pre assessment to the post assessment. By having to do this SRBI assignment, I really got to see the in’s and out’s of what it takes to administer a series of tests and to analyze a full list of students’ data and to make sure that they are all going to get the tiered support that they need. I got to see that there are so many steps to this process and that it takes a team of people from different backgrounds to help. One small program that we have in my school is for tiered math students. After administering assessments and triangulating the scores of the students in third grade, the students who scored at one of two grade levels higher got put in a separate group. Those students now are in an intervention group where they work with one teacher a couple days a week. The problem was deciding which students would be placed there because it was only supposed to be students who scored two grade levels above, but some teachers felt that the students who were one grade level above should be there too because they are smart enough they just hadn’t done as well on their assessments. What I took away from these meetings was that there is always going to be discrepancies with assessments and that you know your students better than other teachers so you need to stand up for your students and get them the support they deserve, in this case, gifted intervention. I would say that is one thing I have improved on, sticking up for the students in my class and making sure they get the tiered help that they should because I am the one that sees the work that they do every day. One of my areas of strength would be writing smart goals. The third grade team that I am working with at my school has been collaborating together to make our own smart goals for the year. I have gotten to attend meetings where the vice principal and school math experts come and talk about what is expected when writing smart goals. For example, when writing a goal, the aim shouldn’t be too high, but shouldn’t be too low so that you are definitely going to make it because then you aren’t setting the bar high enough. Also, I learned that if a student is maintaining goal, they are still succeeding because the difficulty and expectations are still rising throughout the year. One challenge I faced was getting everything done for this project by the due date. This semester has been so busy that I was really crunched for time to get everything finished on time. I have been in full takeover in my classroom for over two weeks so I am constantly planning new lessons and making sure that my plans are set ahead

8


of time and that copies are made so that my days will run smoothly. Although I have been keeping up with my weekly class assignments, I have other responsibilities as well so this semester has been fun and a great learning experience, but hectic as I expected. Overall, I have learned so much from this experience and I want to continue learning about it. Student teaching as well has been such a good learning experience and I continue to take away great lessons from being in the classroom and being around the children every day. I have learned what lessons work best based on how the students react to them, I have learned how to plan way ahead of time even though the plans will probably change, I have learned how to deal with certain situations in the classroom with the students based on their different personalities, and I have now made my own assessments and put the students into tiers based on scientific data.

Student/# 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6JB √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √AC √ √ √ √ √EC √ √ √ √ √ √ECAD √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √KD √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √MD √ √ √ √ √ √ √MF √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √MG √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √SM √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √HM √ √GN √ √ √MN √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √DP √ √EP √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √RT √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √WTCW √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √SW √ √ √ √SZ

*This chart shows the students initials going down the first row. The first 6 questions are the pre assessment and the last 6 questions are the post assessment. The check marks are for if the student got the question correct. The reason I chose to only analyze the first 6 questions of the assessments was because for multiplication, I could tell if the student understood the skill by looking at that many questions.

9


Student Teacher: Rachel NovelloGrade Level: 3rd GradeInstitution: Eastern Connecticut State UniversityLength of Lesson: 2 days

Content Standards: CCSS.Math.Content.3.NBT.A.3 Multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10 in the range 10–90 (e.g., 9 × 80, 5 × 60) using strategies based on place value and properties of operations.

Prior Knowledge: The students have done some work with multiplication and learning their facts by using a multiplication chart. I have been teaching different strategies for multiplication after our addition and subtraction unit.

Objectives: Students will use the 6 strategies they have learned so far to complete this project.

Vocabulary: commutative property, fact families, repeated addition, array

Assessment: I will be collecting the projects that the students complete for this assignment. I will give helpful feedback and if there are still students that don’t understand the concepts after I analyze each of the projects, I will find more lessons that have to do with this topic and teach them to the class so that those students have more support. This is a common formative assessment.

Materials: poster paper, stickers, labels of the 6 strategies, differentiated multiplication problems for each student

Technological Resources: I will have a multiplication table up on the smart board so that all of the students can reference it just in case they can’t figure out the answer to the multiplication problem that I give them because I am giving it to them unanswered. For example, I will be giving a student the problem ‘9 x 6 = ‘ and they will glue that to the middle of their paper and have to solve that using the 6 different strategies.

Learning Activities:Instructional Strategies: I will begin with showing my model of this project on a large

poster board so that everyone can see each of the strategies clearly. I will go over each of the strategies talking about each one and reviewing the difference between them. I will tell the students what is expected of them and how they have 2 days to complete this project so they need to finish in the time allotted. Whenever any of the students are acting out or are getting too loud, I will remind them of the voice level and tell them that they should be working independently so they don’t need to be talking to their neighbors. If more direction needs to be given, I will give further consequences.

Grouping Strategies: We will start as a whole group where I will explain the project and show the students my own model that I made (about 5 minutes). I will give out materials and show them how to fold their papers so that they have 6 equal sections for each of the strategies (about 5 minutes). The students will then work independently for the rest of the time on their

10

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/3/NBT/A/3


projects and 5 of the students will work with me at the small table on the side of the room so that they get extra support with this lesson (25 minutes). We will finish the projects the next day during math (about 25 minutes). We will regroup at the end of the second day to talk about the project and have some people share and talk about each of the strategies and why they are all so important (about 10 minutes).

Initiation: I will start this lesson by telling the students what they are going to be doing for the project. I will bring it up at morning meeting so that they can get excited about it. I will then show them my model so that they can see an example of what one should look like. I find that modeling is a great tool for students because a lot of them are visual learners. I will hand out the materials that they need and then they will begin working.

Procedure: 1. Introduce the topic of the project that they are going to be working on 2. Show my model of the project so that the students have an example of what the project

and final product should look like3. Explain each of the strategies that I used for the project 4. Set the expectations for the project and classroom environment5. Hand out the materials that the students will need to complete the project6. Show the students how to fold their paper into 6 equal sections7. The students will begin working and will complete their work on day 2

Closure: At the end of the project, I will have a couple students share their finished products and as a whole class, we will together review the 6 strategies, talking about each one. I will ask the students that share which strategy was easiest for them to complete and why.

Intervention: I pre made multiplication problems for each student that are differentiated because I know which students need easier problems to solve. Also, I will be paying closer attention to 3 students in particular who really struggle in math, so I will be giving them more one on one attention. When I am not helping them, I will still be circulating the room for others who have questions.

11


Connecticut's Common Core of Teaching (New CCCT)

I. Content and Essential Skills Teachers understand and apply essential skills, central concepts and tools of inquiry in their subject matter or field by:

1.1 Demonstrating proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics skills;

1.2 Demonstrating discipline-specific knowledge and skills as described in the relevant national and state professional teaching standards;

1.3 Using developmentally appropriate verbal, non-verbal and technological communications;

1.4 Using technological and digital resources to promote learning, collaboration with colleagues and communication within a learning community;

1.5 Demonstrating understanding of how to use content area literacy skills to enable students to construct meaning through reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing and presenting; and

1.6 Demonstrating understanding of how to use content area numeracy and analytical skills to enable students to problem solve, interpret and use data and numerical representations.

I incorporated writing into the lesson by making a model and showing the students what was expected of them to be made. The students needed to write the vocabulary words, which were the 6 strategies they learned of multiplication onto their projects. I demonstrated the skills on the model, using a different number problem so that they could transfer the skills to their own.

Standard 3.OA.7, Fluently multiply and divide within 100, using strategies such as the relationship between multiplication and division, was used for this lesson. The pre assessment and post assessment are relevant to this standard.

A digital camera was used to film me teaching this lesson to the students. I demonstrated the teaching of the lesson, listening to the students ask questions and speaking to the students by giving instructions on what they were expected to do. The directions were that the students would be completing a model similar to mine using the number problems I gave them and any other materials I gave them using the strategies that I taught them for multiplication.

I have found that reading the students books that have to do with multiplication during these lessons really help them as well because they can connect real-life situations to mathematics. They can then take what they heard in the book and verbally present it back to me and on paper. We always have group discussions after reading books as well which help the other students in the class understand better and see other strategies and ways of thinking.

By demonstrating different strategies for multiplication, it enables the students to use whichever one works best for the situation on assessments.

12


II. Classroom Environment, Student Engagement and Commitment to Learning

Teachers promote student engagement, independence and interdependence in learning by facilitating a positive learning community by:

2.1 Creating a class climate that is responsive to and respectful of the learning needs of students2 with diverse backgrounds, interests and performance levels;

2.2 Promoting engagement in and shared responsibility for the learning process and providing opportunities for students to initiate their own questions and inquiries;

2.3 Providing explicit instruction about social skills to develop students’ social competence3 and responsible and ethical behavior by using a continuum of proactive strategies4 that may be individualized to student needs;

2.4 Fostering appropriate standards of behavior that support a productive learning environment for all students; and

2.5 Maximizing the amount of time spent on learning by effectively managing routines and transitions5.

The classroom I am in has lots of children with differing performance levels, high and low, so differentiated lessons are always performed. I have gotten good at varying the lessons for the needs of all the students. I take small groups and conference with the students who need extra help and I sometimes take students one on one so that they get even more support and attention. There are also many occasions where certain students get pulled out for extra help throughout the day.

I make sure that the students get to ask questions and voice their opinions. At the end of each lesson I ask, “Does anyone have any questions?” I want to make sure that they all understand what they are expected to do so that they can get right to work.

It is critical in my classroom to maintain a safe environment and to let the students know that they are safe and that they can come talk to me about anything. They all feel comfortable with me being there and they tell me about their families, friends and problems that they might be having with either. I hold morning meetings each day and that is when we discuss what should be happening on the bus, what should be happening at a school assembly, during fire drills, etc. Behavior is enforced in the classroom and the students respect it.

The schedule of the day is always changing so I have learned to be very flexible. The students know the routine of the day, but usually need help with transitions, which is where I come in and initiate a star system. When they have reached the amount of stars, they get a reward.

13


III. Planning for Active Learning

Teachers plan instruction in order to engage students in rigorous and relevant learning and to promote their curiosity about the world at large by:

3.1 Determining students’ prior knowledge to ensure that content instruction is at an appropriate level of challenge and differentiated to meet their learning needs2;

3.2 Developing and organizing coherent and relevant units, lessons and learning tasks that build on students’ prior knowledge, skills and interests and engage students in the work of the discipline;

3.3 Promoting the development and application of skills with conceptual understanding, and anticipating students’ content misconceptions;

3.4 Selecting appropriate assessment strategies to monitor ongoing student progress;

3.5 Selecting or designing instructional strategies, resources6 and flexible groupings that provide opportunity for students to think critically and creatively, and solve problems;

3.6 Integrating learning activities that make real-world, career or global connections, and promote interdisciplinary connections whenever possible;

Activating prior knowledge is important and that is what I do before reading books to the students. They build upon their knowledge that they already have by reading new books, but they have to be able to connect the new knowledge to prior knowledge. Keeping the content at the intended level is also important because if it is too hard or too easy, they aren’t going to learn anything.

Assessments always have to match the objectives of the lesson. It is sometimes easier to look at the assessment first and then the objective to make sure that you are testing the same thing for the lesson.

Making groups of students is a learning process. I have found that certain students work better with others and not so well with some. You have to look at the learning abilities of all of them, then decide if the higher level students can be placed with those in the middle. That way, the higher level students can teach the middle level and they will all still be learning.

When connecting a lesson in school to real world, it makes everyone make more sense to the student. They have an ah-ha moment. I just did a simple science experiment with dissolving sugar cubes. I connected it to how when making tea, you should put the sugar cubes in the water when it is hot and they all immediately understood and make their own connections to real life.

14


3.7 Designing or selecting academic and/or behavioral interventions through differentiated, supplemental, specialized instruction for students who do not respond to primary instruction alone;

3.8 Designing strategic questions and opportunities that

15

novellor.files.wordpress.com · Web viewA common formative assessment is an assessment that is...

Documents

Transcript of novellor.files.wordpress.com · Web viewA common formative assessment is an assessment that is...