Selden 14.1 & 14.2

Chapter 14

(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.

 

From what I have experienced in the third grade classroom that I am in now, these students have to understand and identify shapes. These shapes include cylinders, rectangular prisms, squares, spheres, and triangles. 

For the first assessment, I would use a pre-assessment. This pre-assesment would be a short quiz that would include various pictures of shapes and the students would be required to identify the shape. Based on the results from the pre-assesment, I would better adapt my lessons for the days to follow.

The actual first day that the shapes are introduced, I would bring in items that were of those shapes. I would pass them around and let the students handle them. Following that, I would informally asses by holding up the objects and asking the students to volunteer their answers and identify the shapes. 

On the second day I would bring in magazines. The students would be instructed to search through the magazines and find pictures of objects that match the shapes that we talked about. This would be a formal assessment because the students would glue what they have found on to card stalk and share with the class. 

The next day, we would make shapes from toothpicks stuck together with dots. I would assign each student a different shape and they would have to go about creating it. This would serve as an informal assessment.

I think by including some of the activities listed above, my third grade class would certainly gain a better understanding of geometric shapes, especially because they have searched and identified as well as created the shoes. Everything was very hands on and would also provide me with feedback as to how my students are doing with understanding.

 

Chapter 14

(14.2) Consider norm referenced assessment and criterion referenced assessment. Are there advantages to both? Are there disadvantages?

 

I think that both types of assessments have their advantages and disadvantages. Norm-referenced assessments are a good tool to use to compare children to other students either in the class or in the school. This can provide data for the teachers and help them to better plan on how to instruct their students. They help teachers identify those students who are struggling as compared to other students. These tests though, are time consuming and do not really help pick out individual students strengths and weaknesses outside of the test.

Criterion-referenced tests help determine if a child has reached, fallen short, or exceeded the set expecations of a child of that grade and age. These tests porvide a good comparison to levels of achievement, but they do not provide a good comparison to other students of that age. They also may be difficult to create.

In summary, one type of test will not provide all of the feedback a teacher needs. There most likely needs to be a combination of types of tests used. Also, it is important to consider that frequent assessment is necessary for both teaches and students to determine progress.