Category: Assessment

February Practicum Reflection

2/21/2016

Limerick, Grade 5 student

#1. What is your greatest challenge and when is it most difficult to be solid and consistent as the teacher responsible for the students in your classroom? How can you tell when your teacher presence is working? What are you doing and what are the students doing? How does this feel for you? Use specific example(s) to help illustrate your reflection.

My greatest challenge has been figuring out the line between being an engaging, enthusiastic and excited teacher, and effective classroom management. The first week was the main part of this learning. I was excited, I was nervous, and I was unsure of my teaching ability, and also teaching new material (never taught before!), so I went overboard on the ‘excitement factor’. This resulted in the kids also becoming excited and talking amongst themselves, and it was very hard to bring them back to attention and to productive learning. As we have said, It’s NOT a party! Never Use the P- word! It’s work- it can be FUN work, but you have to control the class at all times! And riling them up first and THEN trying to get them to focus is challenging.
The flip-side of that lesson was the one day I was very ill and had NO energy. The lesson I presented didn’t hook them- because I have relied on my personality and ‘stage presence’, and I just didn’t have it that day. As a result, they were also not interested in the lesson- review of the books that evening showed that we required a re-teach.
So this brings home the learnings that ‘we teach who we are’ but also that the class reflects our energy. By the end of the two weeks I feel I was doing much better at ‘containing’ my excitement yet still engaging the kids. Still much to learn but certainly having a deeper understanding of this teaching concept.

concrete poem of a dragon, by a grade 5 student

Concrete Poem, Grade 5 student

#2. Share a time during this two weeks when you have structured your learning around clear criteria — this could be a single lesson or a series of lessons within a topic/subject. How have you communicated this criteria to the students? Describe the assessment that occurred during the learning (student self-assessment, student peer-assessment, formative assessment by you). How has this impacted student learning? How has this affected the balance between what you are doing and what the students are doing during a lesson? How does this impact your role as the teacher? How does this feel?

Having clear criteria and breaking things down into steps is the ‘secret’ to good teaching. As this session progressed, my criteria became simpler, the steps became smaller, and the lessons became even more successful. An effective tip was keeping things chunked into Threes. I am still learning how to explicitly link assessment into my criteria, and this will be my focus for the next session.
I’ve also learned that the standard ‘Check For Understanding’ of asking kids to show thumbs up/down/sideways does not necessarily work very well- kids tend to say “YES” to things even when they don’t understand.
I’ve also began to simplify my lessons as I am realizing the amount of time things take, and that my lessons need to give space for facilitated discussion with the class to allow for multiple understanding of a concept. So, Less is More, in regards to individual lessons. Being able to have most kids have a good understanding of a concept before moving on is essential, so spending multiple days on one concept is ok! Fundamentals are important, and it is easier to give the advanced learners extensions that they can focus on. I have worked out a trial seating plan for next session which seats the strong academic students with the ones that struggle, and hope to be able to have more ‘pair and share’ activities where the stronger students can assist the weaker ones to grasp a concept. We will see how that goes, and much of that will be teaching them HOW to provide peer support etc. So will build that into my planning.

3) Comment on any relationship you discover between your response to Reflection #1 and Reflection #2.

I think that as I fine tune my planning, I won’t need to rely so much on my sparkling effervescent stage presence to ‘sell’ the lesson. As a performer, I create a great rapport with the students, and and very confident standing up and teaching, now I just need to have the substance in my lessons to back that up.
I also will focus on having my prep for my lessons done at least three days in advance, and not be copying things the morning of the lesson. I am very motivated to succeed as a teacher, and have been receiving wonderful feedback and advice from both my sponsor teacher and my VIU supervisor; I can’t wait to get back into the classroom!

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Environmental Impact Study Lesson Plan

2/1/2016

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Cradle to Grave Environmental Impact Study Lesson Plan

Differentiated and Adaptable Lesson Plan for Grades 6-12

Connect:
RATIONALE
This lesson plan was developed as a supplemental to many of the Entrepreneur/Business in the school programs that are available for grades 6-12 in BC. It was noticed that many of these programs do not consider Environmental Impact of the products the children create. This lesson plan is designed to be used with the Life Cycle Assessment Worksheet and will allow students to include a Cradle to Grave analysis of their product in their business plan. An Environmental Economics Unit Plan and marking rubric has been included as sample.

BC PROVINCIAL CURRICULUM
K-12 Applied Design, Skills and Technologies Draft Curriculum
Core Competencies:

Communication
Thinking (creative, critical)
Personal and Social (Positive Personal and Cultural Identity, Personal awareness and responsibility, Social Responsibility)

K-12 Applied Design, Skills and Technologies Draft Curriculum will focus on fostering the development of the skills and knowledge that will allow students to create practical and innovative responses to everyday needs and problems. Design involves the ability to combine an empathetic understanding of the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and critical thinking to analyze and fit solutions to the context. To move from design to final product or service requires skills and technology. Skills are the abilities gained through competence to do something and to do it increasingly well, and technologies are tools that enable human capabilities. In Applied Design, Skills and Technologies, students will grow in their ability to use design thinking to gain an understanding of how to apply their skills to problem finding and solving using appropriate technologies.

Grade 6-9

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Performing Arts Assessment

1/26/2016

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http://www.teddyandtom.com/?comic=artistic-process

For this blog, I am focusing on the assessment of the performing arts, as with my Circus program we often present a show as our culminating event, and as a licenced Teacher I will need to be able to assess my students for this activity.

There are conflicting points of view on Arts Assessment in the research:

Performing Arts as Product:

Drama Assessment should remain objective, and marks are solely based on the final performance. Clear criteria and outcomes are assessed in isolation- the process of creation, rehearsal, and show development is not taken into account. This is reflective of a competitive framework- such as a dance or drama competition, where acts are judged solely on their technical ability. This leads to an easily quantifiable ‘score’ or mark to be conveyed on report cards. This system does have value for students who are already able to excel at the given task- summative assessment enforces the status quo and continues to marginalize students who are still in the learning process.

Performing Arts as Process:

This side of the spectrum focuses more on the learning process, and less on the outcome. Self reflection on the rehearsal process, rehearsal logs, contributions and learning during the lead up to the performance are all emphasized. The performance itself may be critiqued, but assessment of the learning process is the goal.

https://sandiegoofficedesign.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/frustrations-of-the-creative-process/

As discussed in Arts with the Brain in Mind, there are various and at times competing stakeholders invested in Arts Assessment. The student/teacher/parent dynamic, who are invested in the actual learnings and at time unmeasurable qualities that the arts encourage and develop (compassion, courage, morality, etc), and the administrators/policy makers, who may be focused on test scores and summative outcomes in order to acquire (and thus distribute) funding.
Status quo and old school summative testing philosophies are problematic when applied to the arts, although a product-based assessment stance attempts to do so. Formative and process assessment techniques reflect the realities of the artistic process- that an engaged attempt to “do art” is messy, full of self doubt, and struggle. It is in our reflection on these struggles that the learning happens.
Assessing students on their process is more realistic and reflective of true learning, yet is still problematic in that it tends to be subjective from the teacher’s perspective. It is also challenging to know when the student’s efforts are ‘good enough’ to denote a Pass, or insufficient to reflect a Fail. It is true that some students may be marginalized by a summative marking system, and thus disengaged from the learning process.
The BC Curriculum has moved away from emphasizing summative assessment in all areas. The Arts Education Curriculum Learning Standards and Content focus primarily on process and experience, not product. Learning Standards such as “Explore identity, place, culture, and belonging through arts experiences” and “ Reflect on creative processes and make connections to other experiences” are stated, along with Content such as “personal and collective responsibility associated with creating, experiencing, and performing in a safe learning environment”. These encourage teachers to focus on process, not product.

http://lundetrae.com/2015/06/23/how-to-embrace-the-creative-process-and-the-fact-that-it-takes-time/

I feel that a formative assessment of the Arts is a way to include marginalized students in alternative ways of knowing and expressing themselves, and a way to encourage success and belonging in students who may be on the fringe of the status quo system. I am a teacher who is concerned with supporting each student on their learning journey, not just the ones who are already benefiting from the traditional educational system; Formative arts assessment speaks to me on a personal level as a way to reach and encourage those students. My personal values of creating an inclusive classroom that is concerned with social justice and anti-oppressive practice, and including an arts program in my classroom that focuses on personal growth and learning is one way to do this.

Followup:
I was tasked with developing a rubric for our performing arts Myth based drama production this semester. Using my knowledge of arts growth and assessment, my research in formative and summative assessment systems, and input from the class on what is important, I created the following rubric which includes both performance assessment and process reflection.

Sources:

http://www.thedramateacher.com/how-to-keep-performance-assessment-in-drama-objective/
Jensen, Eric. (2001) Arts with the Brain in Mind. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. USA.
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/arts-education/4

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Formative Numeracy Assessment

12/18/2015

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With the BC Numeracy Standards

Assessment standards are changing with the new BC curricula, and it’s an exciting time to be coming into teaching. I’ve been exploring my assumptions and researching the new BC Performance Standards, and am impressed with the focus on formative over summative assessment. Summative still has it’s place, of course, and there will always be a role that traditional ‘tests’ will play in our assessment of students, however the new curricula lends itself to larger projects with higher level understandings of the concepts.

For example, the Grade 2 numeracy standards state that “Relatively short questions with a single correct procedure and answer are not appropriate for performance assessment.” (Grade 2 Numeracy p 52)

Another aspect I’ve found interesting is use of the term “Numeracy”. Just as Literacy is more than, yet still includes Reading, Numeracy is not limited to Mathematics. The concept of Numeracy is broken into the following concepts and skills:

“Number (Concepts and Operations)
Patterns and Relations
Shape and Space
Statistics and Probability
Problem Solving (Grades 8-12)

Numeracy tasks and problems typically draw on concepts and skills from two or more of the curriculum organizers listed above” (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 9)

These concepts are organized into four ‘big picture’ aspects of numeracy: Concepts and Applications

Strategies and Approaches
Accuracy
Representation and Communication” (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 11”

The new Performance standards for Numeracy allow for a more in depth understanding of the student’s level of understanding of the concepts, beyond a simple summative test score and resulting letter grade. “Performance standards answer the questions: “How good is good enough? What does it look like when a student’s work has met the expectations at this grade level?” (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 3)

The standards will be used in our teaching practice by being embedded into the curriculum. We can link our learning outcomes to the standards, and can rephrase into kid friendly “I can” statements. The standards also provide concrete examples of student work of varying quality in order to assist teachers with application. Evaluation is ongoing throughout the term, and can include observations and communication between student and teacher. It also recognizes that some students will need support and be unable to work independently, but will still be able to grasp the concepts (for example, distractable students who cannot stay focused, but who still understand). The standards also allow for assessment to be adapted by the teacher as needed, to reflect the time of year, or differentiation needs of students. (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 6)

By expanding assessment standards to reflect the big picture of Numeracy, the BC gov’t allows teachers more flexibility and application of ‘real world’ mathematics to their teaching. “Numeracy involves concrete applications in which students, confidently and independently, use mathematics to address real tasks or problems in an increasing variety of situations. The ability to recognize the mathematical demands and possibilities in a situation is an important aspect of numeracy. Numeracy is based on mathematical foundations and requires the application of concepts and skills related to the formal aspects of the discipline of mathematics. “ (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 9)

It is important to remember that the standards are just one piece of the Evaluation whole. A combination of formative and summative assessments must be used to create a wholistic picture of a student’s learning. “The performance standards do not address all aspects of the mathematics curricula and need to be used in combination with other forms of assessment to develop a comprehensive picture of student achievement in the BC mathematics curricula.” (BC Performance Standards Numeracy, P. 10)

I look forward to learning more about Assessment strategies in class this semester!

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February Practicum Reflection

3) Comment on any relationship you discover between your response to Reflection #1 and Reflection #2.

Environmental Impact Study Lesson Plan

Cradle to Grave Environmental Impact Study Lesson Plan

Differentiated and Adaptable Lesson Plan for Grades 6-12

Performing Arts Assessment

Formative Numeracy Assessment

With the BC Numeracy Standards

Karina Strong

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