• What growth did you experience as a future teacher this week?  

I actually feel as if I experienced tremendous growth! As far as assessments go I really enjoyed a few things from the lecture, I think that it is wonderful that you suggested we work "please" into our directions on tests in order to make students feel less pressure and create a sense of invitation rather than obligation. I also feel like I grasped the concept of formative vs summative assessment. I thought that if it closed a lesson and was measurable it was considered summative, however I understand now that summative is specifically things entered in a grade book and often times not included in lessons. I also taught a lesson to my 4th grade children and then again to peers in other classes and honestly it did so much for me, it helped me see many flaws in the way I wrote the lesson vs how it played out and also gave me many ideas on improvements. 

• What challenges are you facing in your growth as a future teacher?

I am finding myself a little intimidated by the idea of writing assessments and rubrics. The portfolio assignments seem challenging to me. I enjoyed listening and reading about writing good tests and good assessment questions, but since I have not practiced yet, it all feels new and quite foreign still. I also had the pleasure of going to a small Halloween party and observed a child with more energy than I could imagine, he was literally bouncing off the walls and could not sit still. I found myself thinking "what bad behavior," and then I realized I needed to check myself. That is not the perspective I want to bring to the classroom and it really made me stop and think. I am looking forward to further growth and lots more experience!

What areas of growth are you experiencing in regards to assessment?  

    This week has really helped me understand the difference between reliability and validity, and also that both are necessary for an effective assessment. Any assessment can be either, but an effective one must be both. I liked the questions from Wiggins, "the quick and dirty 2 question test of validity" in the lecture, 

1. Could the students do a great job on the task, but not meet the goal of the assessment?

2. Could the students do a poor job on the task, but still prove lots of evidence that they can otherwise meet the goal of the assessment?

    These questions seem like a great way to check the validity of a test, if either is a yes, then it is probably not a valid assessment. 

    I also found it really helpful to learn about assessment bias, I had spent some time learning about bias in regards to culture, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and other aspects of student life, but this was a new thought for me. I learned that this assessment bias can come in many forms, materials, activities, content, processes, and previous knowledge. 

How does your understanding of what you have learned impact your work as an educator?

    I have known that lesson planning is a process, and I assumed assessments were important, but I didn't realize that both of them had so many components. I felt intimidated while reading the book, and again while watching the lecture, however the zoom conference helped me put things in perspective. Both processes take effort and focus, but as we continue to learn and practice, I believe that it will just become a routine for us, the goal is to get it right from the start so that we always produce quality work. 

    As far as assessment bias goes, I am so grateful that these things are being taught to us, I think it is beyond important that we all learn to be self-reflective and aware, this week certainly highlighted that for me!

    

Blog #3

1. How did you grow as a teacher this module?

 I feel that I have grown in my understanding of how to write lesson plans, and why specific steps in the process are necessary. In the reading, they talked about standards, benchmarks, goals and learning targets and some of the differences between those. They also went over blooms taxonomy and how as educators we need to keep the different steps in mind when writing our lesson plan. We aren't simply giving them information and hoping they remember, we need to make sure that they are comprehending, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating their knowledge. The chapter also talked about gathering evidence based information on our students and the ways to go about that. We can use different observational techniques, questioning, student work, and more to assess learning. 

    It seems to me that there is a lot that goes into teaching, and I always knew that, but now I feel like I am gaining an understanding of how to accomplish many of those things and breaking some of the tasks down into more manageable processes. 

2. What goals do you have around lesson planning that you want to focus on as you move through the program?

    I would like to focus on deconstructing the standards still, I need to become more familiar with the process. I also want to learn how to integrate some of the higher level thinking from blooms taxonomy. I think familiarizing myself with the entire lesson planning process is a goal or focus of mine, I'm a firm believer in practice makes perfect and mistakes are really new opportunities to learn and grow. 

Blog #2

 1.    On a personal level how do I feel about standards?

    At first I thought the standards were quite intimidating, there are a lot of them, and some of them are just jam packed with content. Once we learned how to unpack them and I realized that they are end of the year goals meant to be learned over many smaller lessons, I felt a lot less intimidated. I think that it is necessary to have standards, I also think that it's important for them to be nationwide, everyone deserves an education and an equitable one at that. National standards mean that everyone will at least receive that basic level of education and so far what I see looks great. I am excited to dig deeper and learn more. 

2.  As a future teacher, how do I view content learning standards?

    As a future teacher I view content learning standards as the basic goals that we as teachers need to accomplish with our lesson plans, they are the minimum knowledge that our students need to attain by the end of the school year. I view them as a great tool to build our lessons around along with our districts curriculum. I like guidance, I don't want to "fly blind" as the article stated. For me personally it is reassuring to know exactly what direction I am to take my students in. 

3.  What did I learn about deconstructing standards and how confident am I about being able to do so?

    I learned that there is a verb or multiple verbs, in every standard and that is the process we want to teach; analyze, predict, compare, contrast, demonstrate, model, and so on. We don't want them to simply "understand," or "learn." We need to actually see that they can understand, a measurable way for them to demonstrate that understanding. I learned that standards aren't just taught in one lesson, we deconstruct them so we can make multiple lessons because they often contain many things a student is required to understand before they can actually meet that standard. I also learned that we have to deconstruct the standards because there is implied knowledge in there as well. In order for the students to identify plot and setting, they first need to know what those words mean. For students to demonstrate knowledge of decimals, they first need to understand place value. This week helped me become much more confident in deconstructing standards, though I know I still need some work!

Unit #1: Myself as a learner

1. What do you know about yourself as a learner? 

    When I took the quiz I found it interesting that I was deemed an auditory learner, I always felt I learned best by "doing," but I also know that I retain a new process or any information really when I am told why it is important, what it does or represents and so on. I am very good at listening, and I am always aware of the conversations around me, I always attributed that to my ADHD and my lack of focus, 5 thoughts all at once, but honestly it makes great sense! My ears are always on alert and I love talking through things I don't understand. 

2. What has impacted your life as a learner?

    I definitely know that my hypersensitivity to my environment and noises around me has made it hard to focus often, many times I find myself reading a passage in a text and realize that I'm actually thinking about that one time I totally embarrassed myself in middle school, what I'm going to make for dinner, what needs to be cleaned at home and what my kids are doing, meanwhile not retaining anything I'm reading. Now that we are doing classes online I am coming to realize that the in person communication, and conversation is pretty vital to me, reading the discussion posts and various online components is much more difficult for me than when we do small group discussions in class. 

    I would say the biggest impact on my past learning though was the fact that I moved pretty constantly, almost every year, and when I was younger I feel that it stunted those opportunities for discussion because I was always the new kid and felt it hard to express myself with people I didn't know. Not to mention the gaps in my education due to border hopping and inconsistency. 

3. How will you overcome the challenges that you face as a learner? 

    I feel as though I have a pretty decent grasp on some great techniques, I do speak up and join conversations, I ask the questions I may have been too shy to ask when I was younger, and I reach out for help when necessary. As for the ADHD I am aware of it now, I just assumed that was how everyone thought, and I am on medication which seems to help quite a bit. I would say the biggest challenges I face now are organization and procrastination, but those are life problems and not just learning ones. As far as those problems go, it's really still a work in progress, but with each quarter here at Eastern, I feel as if I'm improving, and I am just fine with slow and steady!