Final Reflection

Assessing prior knowledge before a lesson is very important part of planning a lesson; it helps save time because teachers know what to focus on or where to begin with a lesson. As I have planned assessing prior knowledge, I think assessing prior knowledge is a difficult thing to do without having students on a regular basis. The easiest way to assess prior knowledge is to base it off of students’ previous work and lessons but teachers get new students from different schools and different states and we need to be able to assess what they know about each skill; also, not all students enter a grade with the skills that were taught the previous year. Even with adults, it was apparent when one of us tried a lesson before we covered the content well. For my second lesson, I taught how to use the technology for my lesson but had forgotten to discuss the skill of equivalent fractions which resulted in my doing instruction during guided practice.
Once an objective is written, the lesson planning process seems to follow pretty easily. To plan instruction, a teacher needs to choose a goal or standard to be met and decide how the students will demonstrate that they have acquired the skill and/or knowledge anticipated. I know what my strengths and weakness are and realize that I have a tendency to get off task so planning and organizing my instruction is something that will be very important for me to do so that I can be an effective teacher. Planning my instruction will help guide me through the teaching the standards, especially long-term planning.
The part that I really had to work on was figuring out how to implement technology or which technology to use while I designed my lessons. I did not grow up using a lot of technology and I am not familiar with all the technology that is available today. I will have a lot of playing around to do before I decide which technologies to implement into my lessons with students. For my first lesson, I really struggled to find a technological resource to use to assess my lesson and ended up not using any. The students used the internet to research but in my 20 minute lesson, that was all technology was used for. Time was definitely an issue with the planning of that lesson; I tried to get too much done in a short amount of time. For my second lesson, I discovered an interactive website that keeps track of how well a student is doing during an activity; it records how many times a student attempted to create an equivalent fraction and how many times they were correct. That website had a large variety of useful interactive math activities which I hope to use in my future classroom. I found it interesting to see what my peers thought were age appropriate and time appropriate lessons. We were all able to learn what worked well by participating in each others’ lessons and discussing the lessons with each other.
I find informal or authentic assessment to be the most beneficial to the students and the teacher. It encourages students to look at their results and evaluate their work. When I did my equivalent fraction lesson, I had one of my classmates ask me twice if the assignment would be graded in a classroom; each time my answer was no, it would not be recorded as a grade for the grade book. I would want to see how well the students could perform the skill and I would write down what the students scored, but it would not be recorded in the grade book; it was guided practice.
By the end of the semester, it became easier for me to not only integrate technology into the lesson but plan the assessment using technology. I like students to use their higher order thinking skills and they can use those by posting on a class blog or wiki and then responding to their classmates. For my last lesson, students used Pixie to express themselves in a very individualized lesson which I could assess if they understood the concept by their finished products. Students were not assessed on creativity but on the specific tasks that needed to be performed; the finished creation was up to each student.
Before I took this class, I never would have thought of using a program such as Pixie or Inspiration as an assessment tool. By assessing students using technology, it cuts down on papers that pile up and the less clutter I have around me, the less I have to clean up. Some technology such as Spelling City will keep track of students’ scores for you and then you just need to import the grades into your grade book.
Assessing what students learned from a lesson that was taught lets the teacher know if the material or skill was understood and learned; if the skill was not learned, the teacher needs to review the information again or try teaching it using a different approach. I do not see much point in moving on to a more difficult task or one that builds on what was supposed to be learned if a teacher does not assess if students gained the previous knowledge. Assessment is also a way to evaluate if the teacher needs to modify his/her instruction.
I needed to make instructional decisions during my first two lessons to modify the lesson as it occurred. As a group, we discussed what needed to be changed to make a lesson work in a classroom of 20-30 students with the majority of our lessons. I plan on learning throughout my entire teaching career. I have some practice in the classroom but I think that my first year or two in my own classroom will be filled with learning what works and how it could work better. Teachers make decisions all day long every day; I am hoping if I plan well enough then I will have fewer instructional decisions to make during a lesson. I try to write lesson plans that implement differentiated instruction. If most students can be included without instruction needing to be modified, the greater chance each child has to learn what is being taught; I also hope that this will eliminate the feelings of who is “smart” and who is “not smart”.
When I assessed learning from each lesson, it really reflected on how well I had presented the material for the lesson. The feedback from my classmates also helped me understand on how I could improve when I did not teach the skills well for a lesson. There was one person in my group that I never understood how he/she was assessing our knowledge. I don’t understand what that individual will do to assess students in a classroom and I also do not understand the point in teaching a lesson if you don’t assess learning afterwards, unless it is just for fun. I am not opposed to doing fun things at school or in the classroom; I think it is highly effective to make learning as fun and engaging as possible but I also think that teachers should constantly be assessing their students.
I learned about a variety of technology that will be useful to my future teaching career. I was only able to use a limited amount during class but I have the knowledge that the technology is out there for me and my future students. With each week that we had class, I became more familiar with different technologies, how to use them, and when they could be used. I think that collaborating with other teachers, just as we did in our groups, helps keep ideas moving.