A Variety of Assessments

Padlet

Marquetta Strait October 12, 2013 EDUC: 327: Elementary Education Curriculum and Assessment Mrs. Wright

M. Strait|2 Marquetta Strait October 12, 2013 EDUC: 327: Elementary Education Curriculum and Assessment Mrs. Wright

Types of Assessment Utilized in My Field Experience Classroom

While completing my field experience at Marshall Elementary School, I had the pleasure of observing Ms. Waymyers' fifth grade class. Ms. Waymyers teaches four fifth grade classes in social studies and writing. Through my observations, she notably used engaging activities that were hands-on and encouraged students to engage in discourse by placing them in groups. During my observations, it was evident that Ms. Waymyers used a myriad of assessments to assess the students comprehension. Her instruction focused on the Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan. Her main assessments were through media, quizzes, and projects. As a prospective student studying instructional technology, I find it very essential for educators to integrate technology into their classrooms. One way to achieve this is by using Web 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 technologies enable teachers to use Internet resources that are beneficial and educational to the classroom. Ms. Waymyers integrates many of these technologies to assess students comprehension, while still meet 21st century skills. While the students were learning about the Reconstruction Period, their teacher used Padlet to assess their comprehension of the amendments. Padlet is an internet application that will allow people to express their opinions on a common topic. It takes the form of a blog and allows the students to respond to a question that the teacher poses online. For example, Ms. Waymyers questioned her class on the meaning of the 14th, 15th, and 16th amendments and their advantages and disadvantages. To complete their

M. Strait|3 formative assessment, each student was given a laptop and received an allotted time to respond to the question. Ms. Waymyers would then assess the students responses and determine

whether or not she should reteach or use a spiraling curriculum to serve as a review. To reinforce the students comprehension of the Reconstruction Period, Ms. Waymyers had the students to create a Reconstruction Book as their project. To prepare the students for the project, she provided them with a detailed outline and rubric. Her main focus was to get the students to comprehend the amendments and the advantages and disadvantages that they had for minorities. Along with the amendments information, the students had to also provide pictures. One of the challenges that Ms. Waymyers expressed to me was the students parents taking over the assignment. For this reason, one of the requirements for the project was that the project must stay in its original format. Along with the outline and rubric, she gave them sheets to insert in their book. Many of the students followed the instructions, such as not recreating the assignment page. Although these were the instructions, there were still some parents that retyped their childs assignment, which changed the format. Lastly, Ms. Waymyers utilized quizzes to assess her students comprehension and analysis of the content. On her assessment, she gave the students ten questions. Eight of the questions were select response and the remaining two questions were short answer. While viewing her assessment, I noticed that she avoided long answer choices, which I recall learning in my Curriculum and Assessment course. By using the short answer questions, she enabled the students to display more content knowledge because they had to use recall. Overall, I believe Ms. Waymyers administers a variety of assessments. This is essential because she is able to gain a better perspective on how the students learn, are motivated, and their interests. There are many students that prefer to have discourse, whereas there are students

M. Strait|4 that prefer projects or simulations. To enhance her knowledge of assessment, she also has a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction. This increases her methodologies of assessments and creating more measurable learning targets. Through my field experience, I am hoping to acquire some of her tactics that she implements in her classroom, especially through technology. Through my collected data, I plan to evaluate the students comprehension to evaluate my instruction. By improving my instruction, I will be more capable of knowing where students are misunderstanding and procedures I can take in order to create more comprehensible concepts.