Final Entry

My view of teaching this semester has definitely changed. While it is not always easy to think like an assessor, I believe that I have somewhat altered my view to include a more goal directed teaching. Creating a lesson plan with backwards design helped me to align my objectives with my test and lessons, rather than creating lessons and then deciding what to test. I do believe that the test should be altered at the end, maybe due to a change of plans but the model holds true.
I have also learned a lot about differentiation and how to better meet the students needs and desires for learning. I have different tools to use like menu options and understand that meeting different learning needs through choice can also allow students to learn in a better environment for them.
I hope my teaching will be student learning focused and I will use formative assessments to guide my instruction. Sometimes when I cook, I forget to taste the food to make adaptations and while coming out with a surprise is sometimes fun for cooking, it is not an effective way to teach. I have learned a wide range of tools for assessment this semester and believe I am much better prepared to create units that are result focused.

Day 5: Test Administering

Today I administered the assessment in form of a test. Throughout the unit, we had many formative assessments in the form of posters and drawings and we thought a test assessment would give us a clear picture of what they actually learned. We made a review packet for the students and included several maps they had seen over the unit. This was to give the students more exposure to the material and give them an idea of what the test would look like.
In the beginning of class I allowed them to review the packets for a couple of minutes because it was a Monday. I was very impressed with how the students performed. One student in particular kept saying how he did not know anything, but he only got 2 wrong on the test. He has a bad attitude about learning and working and gets frustrated easily, but he showed he was very capable of learning and working on the test. I was disappointed with the results from one student. She has some attitude problems but achieves quite a lot when she applies herself. I can never tell whether she will be on or off, it changed almost every day. She was absent for part of the lessons so that may have contributed to her lack of knowledge, but she missed 9 questions out of 17.
This brought me to my questions of how to grade. Although I am learning a lot in my instruction and assessment class, I still feel I do not know how to grade a fourth grader's work. I do not want to over burden them with grades, I just want to know where each student is. I talked to my clinical instructor a bit about how she grades tests and she expressed hesitancy in making classes about grades. She uses the 'O/G/S/U' scoring system but stays away from the 'Unsatisfactory' grade because she fears damaging students so young. I agree but I also believe it is important to test to get an understanding of what students do and do not know yet. When grading the tests, I simply marked how many wrong answers and most students fell in the plus one (there was a bonus question) to the -2 range. I was pleased with the number of students here and while math does work out so that 15/17 is quite a low score, I am placing this is the 'good' range. I feel I have an understanding of what students did and did not learn from the lessons and want to show the students that they did learn a lot.
After some serious reflection with the assessments and the lesson plans, I will be able to rethink the unit as a whole and whether my assessment was an accurate measure of what was taught.

West Day 4: March 16th

Today we used a reverse concept attainment to learn about why people migrated to the west and how the tales of success compared to the harsher reality. The students seemed very excited to be looking at primary sources in history. On the preassessments, only a number of students could name reasons for going to the west and they mainly surrounded around gold so we decided to talk about the reasons and also spend some time on the gold rush because of high interest. Using images also made it really easy to get a range of abilty students involved. If anything they could answer the question 'what do you see'. The students did a very good job figuring out reasons for going west from the images. They also did a good job at identifying reasons why people left the east from the images. It felt like a large and open discussion rather than a lecture of material. The students were very involved. They were also very excited about the gold rush and I think this concept appealed to every student.
After listing all the reasons, I had them make an advertisement discussing one of the reasons for moving west. All but one student participated in this. One student just would not write antyhing. He kept saying he didn't understand and didn't know which idea to pick. I repeatedly told him the directions and then assigned him the easy and fun topic of gold. He wrote half a sentence. I was quite disappointed because I was providing as much support as I could without neglecting the rest of the students. The other advertisements were fabulous and I was very impressed with everyone's creativity and understanding of the allure of the west.
I finished with five minutes left and I passed out the study guide for the test and allowed them to finish the posters. I was a little unclear of what I wanted them to do with the extra time and I wish I had went over the study guide in more detail with the students so that they would be able to navigate it easily and have a better understanding of what was going to be on the test on Monday.

West: Day 3. Thursday, March 15th

Today the students performed their skits on the national park they had researched. They blew me away! After seeing some of their answers on Tuesday, I was a bit worried whether the groups were going to get all the right information. I was not there on Wednesday, but I highlighted information I thought certain groups should look over before making their skit. There was one group in particular that struggled in motivation for research and this was one of the best presentations. I was sure they had taken a look at the highlighting. Another group had a wrong answer and I had written them a note telling them where to find the right information and they presented the correct material perfectly today. I learned that certain students need more scaffolding, but with that they can excel. This is always something I believed, but I was still worried about some groups.
While the groups had great information and presented loudly, I was also sure to review after each presentation and point out where each place was on the map. I think this really helped the students understand the main points. It also ended up feeling more like a discussion with great questions from the students in this period.
Afterwards we switched over to a map exercise that examined the many cultures in the West. I used a direct instruction model where I modeled the first map and then one map was a guided with more participation and then I let the students complete answers to the last map alone. The students did great job interpreting this map. I think the clear instructions and steps of interpretting a map helped.
The only part of today that had me concerned was that the same students raise their hand. I tried to be sure people were understanding the material by having an informal formative check where I had them close their eyes and raise their hands if they had a problem understanding the map, but no one raised their hands. When looking at the answers, I realized that most students did get the concept. A few did not answer at all but when guided through it, they were able to.
I hope the review tomorrow also helps them remember the information.

West: Day 2. Tuesday March 13

Today in class we started group research projects of a national parks in the west. After looking at their preassessments, I realized the students could not name many landforms in the west and thought these would give the students a better idea of what is out there.

After the groups I had put together yesterday did not work well together, I decided to talk to the class about my expectations and I then allowed the students to choose groups. This went really well for some students. They grabbed some people they worked well with and ran off into a corner to eagerly start working. On the other end of the spectrum, however, one boy was upset by group pickings and started to cry. I felt awful, but getting to know this student better I would not be surprised if something like this has happened before. But still, I am not sure this was worth the group choice, particularly when I had this student in mind when allowing the students to make the choice. Another change I made was I was not satisfied with some of the answers students were giving to questions the day before so I created a 'Do Now' based on the question. This worked very well and I was very satisfied with the number of students who understood the point.

The group choices made groups work better together, but I was also aware of more homogeneous ability groups. I was careful then to scaffold the groups that needed the most instruction and guidance staying on task. They were suppose to work on one sheet as individuals with the provided research materials we found for them and then on one sheet as a group. The purpose was to get accurate individual assessment and group assessment. While my directions were very clear, I noticed gradually and inevitably possibly that the students were sharing findings. This is great for understanding, but I am not sure which students actually found the answers. I think this could have been prevented with the material access. My partner and I had done all the research for them and found several sources in which they were suppose to share and pass along. The amount may have been overwhelming to some and then some were holding on to more than their share. Next time I would have provided each student in the group one page of information that was all the same. This way they would be more likely to be working along and not depending on the person with the access to materials and would not be overwhelmed. Then we could also gauge individual acheivement but with the group aspect, all students would come to an understanding.

The timing of the lesson went well and I was able to provide individual feedback on responses as well as group feedback for the work the next day.

First Teaching: Monday March 12th

For the first day that was packed with activities, today went exceedingly well. I had the students working in groups to complete an activity where they would examine maps on rainfall, terrain and temperature in the west to make settlement and exploring decisions. I had grouped the students according to the pretest and other general knowledge about their ability and how I have seen them work together. I wanted mixed ability groups so that the students who had a more difficult time reading maps would have students in their group to help. It was my concern that some students who felt they couldn't answer the questions and intimidated by another student would not participate. While there were four separate maps the students could be looking at, there was only one copy of each map per group. I was hoping they would all have a chance to look at the map, but I realized that some students who were more eager would take hold of the map and the less eager gradually became less involved. In addition, there were some issues of fighting and not listening in two groups. This had me seriously concerned because I was planning on using these same groups for the next couple of days. I made some rearrangements to the schedule the next day to talk about how to work in groups together and decided to allow them to choose their own groups the next day.
My partner and I uses three different characterstics (rainfall, temp and terrain) to find maps on and distribute. In the end these may have been too many maps. In the beginning on the activity we brainstormed many different characteristics but then only had three differing styles of maps. I think using just temperature and terrain would have been more manageable for the students. In addition, next time I would include at least two copies of the maps so that more students had the opportunity to view them.
Overall the students worked well to examine the maps and plot exploring paths. I was very impressed by discussions I heard and was impressed with how they followed directions. They were a complicated set of directions so I was sure to be very clear and assigned one person in each group to act as a task keeper to make sure they had completeted all the steps. This helped students to stay focused and on task and I was pleased with how it worked. The timing went very smoothy due to this as well and we had plently of time to debrief and review.
When I went home and looked at the answers though I was not entirely satisfied with the number of groups that got to this part so the next day I decided to have a 'Do Now' activity that would get at the main point from today's lesson.

March 1st, 2007: Fourth Grade Social Studies

For the first section of social studies today, a parent came in a gave a presentation on Texas. The teacher was very enthusiastic and privately told me how parents can be great resources. The fourth grade curriculum for social studies just made a change from Virginia history to American geography and I can tell the teacher is still adjusting to the change.
I was very impressed with the parent's presentation, but I chose to observe student interaction, participation and overall behavior during the presentation. When the parent was asking students what they knew about Texas and the Alamo and such, I was not terribly surprised that certain students knew a ton and others not much at all. I really enjoyed observing the notes that students were recording during the presentation. One student had written over a page of notes, but other chose to write down important information. I was surprised at the information they chose to record. They were picking out the most important facts to write down and paying attention to the parent, showing they did not view this as down time.
As the presentation wore on, I noticed that half of the class was not paying attention. Even though it was a very interesting and interactive talk, talking for 30+ minutes was too long for the kids. They definitely needed more hands on and moving activities. Overall, I was swayed that using parents could be very useful but it should be thought out about timing before hand.
The parent (unexpectedly) did not stick around for the second section so I got to see some very improv teaching. She prepared them ahead of time and told them that a parent had come to the first class to talk and also given out stars to the students and they would not get any. She explained that it was not fair, but she didn't want to hear complaining. I liked the way she confronted it before it became an issue. The students accepted it and even recalled situations where they had received something special that the first block had not. For this section she mainly just talked about issues of current day oil crises, credit card debt and other off-topic subjects. This works well with the class, though. She is very knowledgeable and present complicated topics in simple terms. It is important for students to be aware of issues and in a way she is teaching them to be good educated citizens.
I was trying to think of what I would have done in this situation because the last thing I would do is try to lecture about Texas because I do not know much about it. I may have tried to present the main points and gone back to yesterday's topic or a current event that I knew about to discuss. I suppose quick thinking will come with more practice.