Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Fulfilling and Promise, Assessing (blackboard)

Fulfilling the Promise (p.100-103)
How would I use this information in differentiating?
This little activities would help in a lot of ways with differentiation. First of all it gets the students to open up and tell you (the teacher) a little about themselves. It gets them to share their likes, dislikes, struggles, strengths, hobbies, and, etc... As a teacher these will help a lot in teacher on each child's level because you are starting to understand who they are. How can a teacher really truly teach affectively is she/he doesn't know their students. This will also push the students to be their because because they feel like the teacher actually cares about them and wants them to succeed. It builds trust, respect, a community, friendships (helps the students to get to know each other too). It gives great ideas of what to teach that will have their interests and will help them to learn to love learning.
What would I add or remove?
I would add a page where they could ask questions about the teacher, like her/his likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc... I feel that students love learning about their teacher because then they have some one to relate to. It also helps to let the students know that you (the teacher) are just a regular person just like them.

"File of Inventories/Pre-Assessment"
I am not sure whether or not the teacher that I student teach for does any of these yet, because she hasn't really gone over what she is doing with assessment for this year, with me. Once I get into the her classroom in November I really do want to ask her how she does assessment though, because this is one area I really want to work on. The examples that were on blackboard are such great ideas! I love the idea of letting the students express themselves by circling a picture, by drawing, by writing, etc... To me that makes the student feel like you as the teacher care about what they feel towards different subjects in school. It is nice to find out where your students struggle so that you can help them to love that area subject in school towards the end of the year. For example; if they don't like reading and then they circle a topic that they are interested in you ( the teacher) so go do research and find books that the student will love and relate with. Read is hard for children but if you can get them to love it as soon as possible the more benificial it is to them in life. I also like that they can express their feelings with drawing. So students are the best writers so it maybe more comfortable to them to express it through their art work. I really am considering using some of these ideas this year when I student teach. There are so many ways to assess and they don't have to all be boring. They can be fun like the ones that are shown on blackboard. When I was first learning about assessing students I though it was just like quizzes and showing their work. But this has really opened up my eyes to many different ways of assessing, It makes it more fun for everyone, i feel.

1 comment:

Teacherheart said...

It sounds like you took a thorough look at the inventories posted there. It is not likely that your cooperating teacher uses these in the way we are teaching about in our class -- to help you PLAN lessons and units that are differentiated with just the right amounts and kinds of scaffolding for the differences in their abilities and interests. The reason I make this point is to caution you to modify or change whatever inventories you want to use, and make them appropriate for the students in the classroom and for the content you're getting ready to teach. If you use them like this, your cooperating teacher will not likely have any problem with you using them.... she probably already has appropriate assessments to base grades on, and to determine how much the children learned, after the lesson or unit has been taught. Remember to see these in our reading, as tools to help you proactively differentiate. Can you take another look at the writing sample information and determine what you could learn about your students from that? 3 points