Artifact #16.1: PM Comment
11/19/2013 5:40pm
Your in-depth analysis of this literature assessment reflects the strength of your rationale for including the questions you did, willingness to afford your students freedom in demonstrating the concepts they knew on the quiz, and appreciation for the information you gained from determining the level of understanding your students possess, which is helping to inform next steps in the instruction process. Though you most likely gained valuable experience using assessments with your college students, you need to know that this is very impressive work for a new high school teacher! How do you interpret the students' dependence on teacher intervention to help them "connect the dots" on the quiz? Is it lack of confidence, lack of attentiveness during instruction, poor study habits before an assessment, a deficiency of interest in the material or in achieving good grades? Most likely it is a range of reasons, though I'm wondering whether you could begin to ask students to monitor their meta-cognition immediately after self-contained tasks, such as quizzes, to increase their self-awareness and to illuminate your teaching decisions. The extent to which you infer your students' understanding through their answers and decisions during the quiz is a first excellent step. Going forward, as you continue to merge practice and theory,I encourage you to integrate some relevant thoughts from seminar readings into your journal entries. For example, Wiggins and McTighe's work on assessing understanding or Jonathan Mueller's work on authentic assessment might serve to expand and underscore your own great insights on the complex and compelling topic of assessment.
Your in-depth analysis of this literature assessment reflects the strength of your rationale for including the questions you did, willingness to afford your students freedom in demonstrating the concepts they knew on the quiz, and appreciation for the information you gained from determining the level of understanding your students possess, which is helping to inform next steps in the instruction process. Though you most likely gained valuable experience using assessments with your college students, you need to know that this is very impressive work for a new high school teacher! How do you interpret the students' dependence on teacher intervention to help them "connect the dots" on the quiz? Is it lack of confidence, lack of attentiveness during instruction, poor study habits before an assessment, a deficiency of interest in the material or in achieving good grades? Most likely it is a range of reasons, though I'm wondering whether you could begin to ask students to monitor their meta-cognition immediately after self-contained tasks, such as quizzes, to increase their self-awareness and to illuminate your teaching decisions. The extent to which you infer your students' understanding through their answers and decisions during the quiz is a first excellent step. Going forward, as you continue to merge practice and theory,I encourage you to integrate some relevant thoughts from seminar readings into your journal entries. For example, Wiggins and McTighe's work on assessing understanding or Jonathan Mueller's work on authentic assessment might serve to expand and underscore your own great insights on the complex and compelling topic of assessment.