Task Four
Which component from this domain are you most comfortable with?
I feel that in this domain the component that I feel most comfortable with is Communicating with Students and Demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness. I work very hard to really get to know my students and create an environment with reasonable expectations and respect. When I am talking they do their best to listen and when I am teaching they do their best to learn. Being in special education though it is difficult for them to understand fully due to their disabilities. However, I can see them trying their best and working to their highest ability. I have established routines for my students that will help with my communication of content. We discuss the objective for every lesson and review that objective throughout the entire lesson. Directions have to be repeated on a consistent basis in order for my students to fully understand what is being asked of them or what it is they are learning. Also being a special education teacher it is important for me to observe what is working and what is not. If I prepare a lesson and my students are showing signs of confusion or not getting it, I will deviate away from my original plans and try something different. I feel that I do a pretty good job re-directing the lesson to something more beneficial to my students. Many of my students have experiences that they love to share, when this happens I use this a teaching tool. We speak and correlate their experiences to the/a lesson. Tying in content to their life experiences really helps my students understand.
Which component from this domain do you believe most strongly ties to instruction?
This is a difficult question because all of them need to be integrated together to achieve productive communication between a teacher and a student. If I had to choose I would say that communicating with students is the most important. If they are unable to understand what you are saying and your expectations then learning will be difficult. We give instruction so students can learn, if there is anything about instruction that is misunderstood or not clear then learning, motivation, engagement and demonstrating of learning will not be possible.
Which component from this domain would you like to zero in on in your own instruction?
I would really like to work on and learn more about using assessment in instruction. I feel that I need to work on giving my students several ways to demonstrate knowledge instead of the simple paper and pencil tasks. I work really hard to make lessons/content engaging and important to their everyday lives. They are able to demonstrate understanding in these activities however when it comes time for an assessment they “fall apart”. I would really like to learn how to generate creative assessments for my students.
How does this domain look in my classroom?
I believe that students feel comfortable to speak freely in my classroom. There is not a stupid question and questions that are asked are to provoke challenging thinking situations. We have a question of the day that is presented at the beginning of a lesson and can only be answered once we have completed the lesson. Students are to use specific elements that we discussed in the lesson to answer. We understand the expectations place on us as teachers and as students. My students shared with me what they expect from me and i spoke with them about my expectations. Learning is a shared responsibility in my classroom. If i feel they are having difficulty with a concept i will re-direct and try a new strategy to teach the concept. In turn, they do not hesitate to let me know that i am not making it clear for them. We do our best to work together to maximize learning.
My question
I would really like to know how other teachers assess their students. What i am looking for is summative assessments. I believe that with the activities i create throughout a lesson, my formative assessments are very good. However, my students break down when they get that unit assessment. What are some ways you give summative assessments to your students?
Thanks, have a great week!
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I can really relate to you - being a special education teacher myself. I also agree that communication and questioning are key and what drives good teacher student relationships. I like what you said about learning being a shared concept in your classroom. I totally agree with this and it is refreshing to hear from others something that I feel strongly about as well. I also wanted to mention that I really like your question of the day - I will have to try this and see how it goes. You asked: What are some ways you give summative assessments to your students? Like you mentioned, I also see summative assessments being a very mundane and undesirable experience for our students. I have found that if I break the assessment up into smaller pieces and give it over a 2-3 day period (3 being the longest) that it is much easier for them to focus on the content of the assessment and not the length!!
ReplyDeleteWhat are the ages of the students you teach? I teach high school history 9-12. I teach general classes and have a decent amount of students on IEP's. As we go through this and read each others blogs i think this is very important. What we are talking about is affected by age. Communication is always key. I totally agree. It one of many things I can get better at. I try to incorporate as much modern circumstances in to what we are learning about. We are talking about the Great Depression in one class. We talk alot about emotions that are common in the deperession and how they are similiar in the recession (fear,hoplessness,anger, depression). Asfor a summative assesment I am tests and quizzes. My school is very much about the Ohio Graduation Test. My students are lower funtioning. THey need as much practice (repitition) and exposure as they can get.
ReplyDeleteBy reading your blog I can see that you use formative assessments- and this is so important especially as you are trying to gauge their learning as you go. But summative assessments seem a bit more constricting. It seems as if there are only so many types of summative assessments out there- as Dan said where he teachers they are all about the big text. But your students may need different ways of being summatively assessed. This would be a good area to do an inquiry around. How else can you use summative assessments? What different ways are there to measure learning at the end of a unit that feel authentic and yields the data you need to prove that students have learned the concept. This sounds like a really good area to spend some time with.
ReplyDeleteI agree all of these components in this domain tie together to help learning for your students. I use a lot of formative assessment with my students as well throughout units and yes summative does tend to be more difficult at times. Some ways in teaching Kindergarten we tend to use performance tasks. I have a wonderful assessment book by Evan Moore Math assessment tasks. We use this a lot for math assessments in kindergarten. It is aligned with our standards as well. http://www.evan-moor.com/Title.aspx?CurriculumID=2&ClassID=202&SeriesID=88&TitleID=327&EmcID=336 it has really helped with summative assessments in math for us.
ReplyDeleteLeslie- Thank you for the idea to spread out the summative assessment. I actually tried that for my math resource class and it went well but i have not yet tried it for my other classes.
ReplyDeleteDan- I teach 3rd, 4th ,and 5th graders. I think that the way we communicate to our students depends our their ages. The vocabulary we use with our students are those key words they will see on the state assessment test. I think that repetition and practice is a good strategy for high school students to get ready for the OGT. However, i also know that several lower level students have difficulty with memorization. So we are at a point where teacher / student communication is very important to learn.
-If anyone can answer Mrs. Clark's questions please let me know. I am struggling. LOL.