Standard 6
The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
View all my artifact for Standard 6
Reflection 2016:
The teacher understands and implements a variety of assessment tools, and implement these tools in order to engage each student in their own personal growth, allows students to learn how to monitor their own progress, and is used to a guide the process of both the teacher’s and the student’s goal and decision making process.
Throughout high school and college, the first thing that I would do, when school was back in session was create a list of not only my goals, but if my past achievements. I would place this list up on my wall and would look at it every morning—it showed me that if I worked hard I would achieve these goals, and then provided me with the reassurance that I could, and already have accomplished a similar set of goals. When you start off with an end goal in mind, that last thing you want to do is fall short of it, because you scrambled to get it accomplished at the last minute. For example, if I was to say that my goal was to get an A in my Hydrology course, I knew that right off the bat I would have to put in a little more effort, than normal.
In every higher level class that I have taken, I have written and created lesson plans, for my students, one aspect that I have struggled with is how to grade and provide my students with the right feedback. I really like when I am able to, instead of giving them a grade, write comments and questions, or talk to the student about these assignment—I have found that when I do this, I am able to have a better understanding of what my students are doing. For example, when a student is writing a paper, instead of giving them a numerical grade right away, I like to sit down, and talk to my student. I like being able to discuss with and provide my student with constructive feedback—in doing so I am able to show them why they received the numerical grade that they did. I want them to know what they did correctly, and what they need to focus on more in order to earn a higher grade.
For the past four summers, I have babysat the same girl, and each day we have to devote time to school work, in order to stay on top of the game. Like any child, during the summer she is very reluctant; and wants no part in it. Therefore, it became my job to make these lessons fun and engaging for her, and together we decided that the best way to do this was by creating a game. For her math lessons we would use shaving cream, chalk, paint, and food. For social studies we would create and interactive map, to assist in learning all of her states and capitols. It became very important, for me to be able to take a lesson and teach it in a way that I was not just a drill sergeant. However, lessons like this though they are great, can have their own set of limitations, it is easy to do this for one child in the summer; it is harder and more expensive to create or buy materials for twenty-five students. But, I do not want to be the teacher, who stands at the front of the room and lectures. My goal is to find a happy and comfortable median. I think that as a teacher I cannot use the same tools, and progress monitoring skills for each method, I need to be able to adapt to use the best tools and methods for each lesson.