Porscha Jones 14.1

(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.

For a lesson in a third grade classroom, there are many modes of assessments that can be used. Consider a lesson where the children are introduced to four different genres of stories: fables, folk tales, fairytales, and myths. First, the children would be given a pre-assessment worksheet to discover what they already know about these four different types of stories. Some children may have been previously exposed to these genres through reading books with parents or through watching movies. The worksheet would consist of different scenarios of stories and the children would have to select which genre of story the scenario is based on the description. This pre-assessment would allow me to find out where the children are in regards to their understanding of the four different genres. Next, based off of this assessment I would be able to construct activities that I feel will best help get the children to the level of acquisition that they should be at.

Following the pre-assessement, I would begin my actual teaching. I would create a document for the smart board that would go over the four different genres and demonstrate specific key points in the story that will determine which genre it is. For instance, I would have a slide that informs the children that fables always have a moral at the end of the story. Next, I would give specific examples of the morals. In "The Turtle and the Hare" the moral would be, "slow and steady wins the race". After my part of teaching, I would allow the children to come up and demonstrate their learning. I might have a game on the smart board where the children would have to drag the correct genre to the description offered. For instance, one blank would say, "this type of story contains a moral at the end of the story", and the children would have to drag the word, "fable" into the blank.

After this introductory lesson,  I would have the children make a flipchart. There would be four flaps that would have the four different genres written on the front flaps. Once they open up one of the flaps, underneath the genre that they have lifted they will provide examples of these types of stories, and anything else that would help them rememeber how to identify this story. There flipcharts would demonstrate what they know about each genre and also what clues they use to help them identify the genres.

Finally, I would test the children on the material using the same pre-assessment worksheet. I would hope to see significant improvement on the initial assessment due to the other activities that the children have done thus far to ensure aquisition of four different genres of stories.