Ciera Rinck 14.1

Think of a lesson plan from your licensure area. Knowing that assessment is an integral part of teaching, explain at least four informal and formal assessments that you will use in your lesson plan to provide you with feedback and involve the students in assessing their own learning.

In today's testing world, assessment is a big deal and can cause much anxiety and worry among students and teachers alike.  Before I started studying to be a teacher I thought the only form of assessment was taking a test on paper and waiting for a score to come back.  Today, as I am in full swing of my education classes I realize that assessment is so much more than taking a test, and that it can be very beneficial for teachers and their students.  I really like the idea of informal assessments and hope to use a lot of informal testing when I become a teacher, but I will also need to prepare my students for their future careers in education and the real world, so I will have to include some formal testing in my classroom as well.  In the classroom I think that daily assessments are important and necessary to determine and monitor the progress of my students.  For my lesson plan assessment example I am going to teach a second grade classroom about nouns.  

On the Friday before we begin our lessons on nouns I would give my students a pre-assessment to discover what the students know about nouns--this test would be reliable and practical.  This would be in the form of a formal assessment because it would be a systematic attempt to ascertain what students know and can do.  I would review their answers and thoughts about what they knew about nouns and then would design my lesson plan based off of the needs of the students.

On Monday when the students returned to class I would have a discussion with them about the people, places, and things in their lives--this discussion would serve as another pre-assessment tool for me as the teacher, but would be informal in nature because it would result from my spontaneous, day-to-day observation on how the students are performing.  Then I would tell them that what we were just discussing is nouns!  From here I would teach the lesson about nouns to my students.  

On Tuesday when it was time for the students to begin the grammar lesson again we would review what we learned about nouns and then read a story about a hero.  This story would allow students to hear many nouns within a piece of writing.  After the story was over I would informally assess my students by discussing what we had just read and asking them if they heard any nouns within the duration of the story--this would allow me to informally assess my students.  Then, I would have the students discuss with a partner who their hero is--while one student is telling the story their partner could be writing down the nouns their partner uses and tun it in.  This would allow me to formally assess my students grasp of nouns while they are discussing a topic that interests them while simultaneously allowing the students to assess their own learning and their peers understanding of nouns.  

On Wednesday, I would incorporate games into the day so students could learn nouns in a fun way.  The fist game I would play would be a way for me to informally assess the students from my classroom it is called ABC nouns.  This is a fast paced game that would get students really thinking.  I would split the class into groups and walk around and monitor the students to check their progress--this game would allow for students to check their own progress and each others.  Then, we would play another game that would allow me to formally assess the students and would offer extrinsic motivation.  This game is called longest list, and the students would work alone to come up with the longest list of nouns they could--the winner would receive some sort of prize.  This would allow me to formally assess the students because they could turn in their lists and I could make sure they were all on the right track with naming nouns; I would return their work with feed back so they would know where they stand with nouns. Here is a video describing the games and some other games to teach nouns--but they could certainly be adapted to teach other parts of speech or even other subjects!

On Thursday during grammar time I would show students the School House Rock Video on Nouns.  I would have them get in groups and come up with a song of their own about nouns and they could perform it in front of the class.  This would be a way to informally assess the students on their understanding of nouns and it would be a fun way for them to be involved in their learning.  Through this activity students could assess their own learning and the learning of their peers so their song only included nouns, and after their performances I would give verbal feedback so they knew what kind of progress they were making.  Finally, on Thursday I would give the students a final formal assessment on nouns.  This assessment could be from the book and would test their knowledge about nouns while also allowing me to check their progress compared to the pre-assessment given the previous Friday.  I would return the students tests and pre-assessments the next day with feedback--this would allow students to see how much they progressed which would hopefully be a significant amount--this may intrinsically motivate them once they see how much they improved from beginning of the week.    

Overall I think that assessing students within the classroom setting is very important, but it doesn't always have to be tedious paper and answer tests--it can be made fun and used for many different purposes.