Week 9 Blog

 

      Hard to believe this is my 9th blog and that I am halfway done with Education 250! Dr.Clark told us that things will slow down from here and we will have more time to perfect assignments such as our philosophy of Education and wok on lesson plans and make them as detailed as possible. Today in class, we had a walking classroom that was focused on assessment. In groups and individually, we will be diving into how assessments work, the best ways to approach them, and laws about governing them. In the state of North Carolina, there are many standards and guidelines concerning assessment. On the DPI website it says,
"The mission of the Test Development Section is to oversee the design, development, and implementation of a high-quality technically-sound student assessment system that assists stakeholders in making informed educational decisions." All of the North Carolina Core Standards for Teachers stress that the student as well as the teacher must be at a full understanding of the content area. Assessment can come in many forms and should be reviewed and reflected on by the teacher and then the children should be able to give feedback. I have learned through studying this topic that "tests" are not the only type of assessment. There are three types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative. implementing a new activity in class, you can, through observation and/or surveying the students, determine whether or not the activity should be used again (or modified).

 

A study from the University of Illinois says that assessment is the process of gathering data. It said that assessment is a way that instructors gather information about their instruction. This article helped me put a real life model about assessment into play in my mind and it helped me understand a lot better!

 

http://www.niu.edu/facdev/_pdf/guide/assessment/formative%20and_summative_assessment.pdf 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 8 Blog

Hey Everyone! It's been an interesting week in Education 250! We had our first virtual classroom meeting with the Zoom application and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. This week we learned a lot about data collection and the process of assessment. Data can be feedback, notes, qualitative data, or qualitative data.
Can be tickets out the door at the end of the day. We collect data so that we can teach and then figure out where we need to go next. Teachers can collect data through pre-assessments and post assessments. The purpose is to help EVERY student learn. As future teachers we can learn to collect data through numbers, written things, or verbally.
  
We will be working with assessments for the rest of our careers in education. Assessment is the act of gathering evidence to determine what the student really understands. Self assessment is a meaningful way for students to learn.

Pre assessment and post assessment test are great ways to show improvement.
Assessment and instruction go hand in hand. There is a specific cycle to the assessment to instruction cycle. First you plan, teach, gather evidence, give feedback to the kids. Students now know where they are with their grade or how they did on the topic. Apply feedback and reflect from children to next lesson plan. Example: " based on what students have said,what do I need to do differently the next time I teach this lesson?" This is standard 5 on the North Carolina Teacher candidate Standards. We need to know how these things go hand in hand in order to assess properly.
"When a teacher puts a grade on student work, the learning stops. Example: getting a bad grade back and still knowing nothing about what you learned.

Assessments:
Students should know where they are with learning.
Students should know what else they need to learn
Students should know how to reach their learning target

 For the state of North Carolina Standards, they use
"Smarter Balanced"is a state-led consortium developing assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics that are designed to help prepare all students to graduate high school college- and career-ready.
Standard 5 for the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards says that teachers must reflect on their practice. This helps create the most engaging and effective classroom possible for students. 

http://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/Student%20Achievement_blue.pdf

This website is an education based and accredited source that helped me research this topic more in depth and learn about better data collecting techniques. 
"using student achievement data to support instructional decision making"

Week 7 Blog

We started out this week going over previous assignments and projects from last week. Dr.Parker made it very clear that small grammatical errors made in formal writing can make huge impacts on first impression and be the difference between landing a job versus not landing a job. If we submit for example, a philosophy paper to someone we would like to hire us that is filled with juvenile grammatical errors, we will come across as not serious or just unprepared for an adult job. Proof reading my work and double checking my work is absolutely an essential step in my future in this profession!

The next thing we touched in is the importance of having a reflection after we complete an assignment. If we don't reflect on what we have experienced or talked about, we aren't making personal connections. These connections are what make the learning stick with us! It is what makes class more relevant to us and shows us that everything that we take from his class is going ot be something we need to apply to our future classrooms. After all, this class is called "Teaching in the 21st Century." This generation is evolving faster than we can process and we need to reflect together and individually so that when we start our separate ways in the next few years, we are ready to use the "teaching moments" from our professors everything we learned in real life. Just going through the motions on assignments and not personally reflecting on them and trying to grow from them turns them into straight busy work.

Following this conversation, the topic of digital literacy was heavily discoursed. Teaching today looks completely different than it did 20 years ago. Technology is advancing so rapidly and becoming very integrated into everyday learning. "Literacy" has many different meanings regarding varying grade levels and types of communication. Digital literacy is becoming more and more important as we move closer and closer to a completely Digital Age. Aspiring teachers must adapt to this and be prepared. This will be easier and easier because (for my generation) I have grown up for most of my life with a lot of technology. I got my first iPod in 6th grade and iPhone in 9th grade. Of course that is nothing compared to 1st graders today who own iPads but respectively, I am more familiar with their generation. I must be prepared to incorporate relevant technology in my classroom as it becomes necessary.

Connections to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, or NCSCOS can be made through the topic of literacy. The State of North Carolina has a plan for literacy that can be found on the website. It says literacy education must be clearly articulated among and understood by all stakeholders and personnel. It says that each LEA must be data driven, research based, and have assessments embedded in instruction. This goes for all grades K-12.



What is digital literacy?
According to Cornell University, digital literacy is "the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet."


 This website features 10 Digital Literacy Resources for Teachers.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/ten-digital-literacy-resources-teachers.shtml

Week 6 Blog

"All means All"
This week in class we were introduced to the topic of diversity. A lot of background knowledge is required before current classroom connections can be made on a classroom. The class example that was made was that you cannot come to class talking about a zoo assuming that every a student knows what a zoo is. One child might have never been to a zoo and have no prior knowledge of a zoo. Dr. Parker said, "One size fits all" does not work in a class room and cannot be in a teachers vocabulary. Diversity issues can arise at any point and teachers need to know how to handle them. No one chooses to have a disability or be different from the crowd. If a child is completely blind, he is just as important as everyone else and his learning is just as important. Diversity laws in schools are completely different than they were 10 years ago and teachers need to evolve to standard 2 and help students have an environment to be successful. If you discriminate you will have your "face in a headline very quickly" -Dr.Parker
           

      This week on Monday was also our last classroom visit. We visited Crest High School. I had the chance to sit in on an 11th grade World History 1 class. It was very interesting and insightful and the teacher I observed actually happened to be teacher of the year the previous year. I enjoyed the different atmosphere with the older children and following the different structure of the lesson plan but overall I enjoyed the elementary and middle school visits more. I felt less stressed out and more in my element. High schoolers freak me out! I really loved the connections I saw with the teachers and the students at each of these visits. I think that was the mot valuable thing I got put of those visits. Everything else seems to come with studying, practice, more observations, and my professors, but getting to see teachers that really value their kids is priceless.