Evaluación

This past week went by extremely quickly yet again. It started out a little rough with illness, but the rest of the week went much better. I was even able to manage the classroom completely by myself this week Thursday as my cooperating teacher was gone to prepare for her wedding, which was Friday. We also had conferences this past week Tuesday and Thursday nights. They went well and I learned a lot about dealing with parents. On Thursday night I had the opportunity to do the conferences on my own as well, which was great practice.

Last week I set two goals for myself: to set up a mock interview with the superintendent in my district and to work on calling some of the more quiet students in class to make sure they are participating and feel involved. I feel as if I was able to fulfill both goals. I set up an interview with Superintendent Klaisner for this coming Wednesday and I worked hard at calling on students that are more quiet this week to make sure they were participating in class. 

This week I would like to set two new goals: to look at the results of each students quiz and figure out which questions many of them got incorrect. Based on these results, I will review the material to make sure they understand before moving on to new topics. I would also like to make it a goal to have a good mock interview with Superintendent Klaisner and to learn a lot from him and the experience.

One word I would choose to describe this week would be tiring. I was sick during the first part of the week, which drained energy out of me, especially when I returned back to school on Tuesday. Then, my cooperating teacher got married on Friday, which meant that I as on my own Thursday for the school day and also for parent teacher conferences at night. Everything went well, but I was quite tired by the time I reached Friday. Thankfully it was Veterans Day on Friday and we didn’t have school. I felt like the weekend was a good time for me to get some extra sleep and completely recover.

Throughout the course of my student teaching I have learned a lot about assessment for two main reasons. The first reason is my action research project. In order to monitor students’ progress and see their improvement over a course of six weeks, I used many different forms of assessment. It was great practice and it allowed me to physically see how my students are doing and what we still needed to work on. I also liked using different forms of assessment, because it gave a wide variety of students the opportunity to show me their comprehension through using their strengths.

Another main reason I have been able to learn so much about assessment is because of the new standard based grading my school has just switched over to. In order to see if students are actually meeting the different standards we have to form assessments that are going to prove whether they did or not. Instead of receiving only a percent grade, we also rank their scores as a “warning,” “below expectations,” or “meeting expectations”. In order to receive a “meets expectations” students have to score at least a 70%. Because of this new system, it has made homework not actually worth any points because it doesn’t count as a true assessment unless it is graded based on accuracy. (We typically just check if the homework is completed and go over the answers as a class.)  Unfortunately many students see the homework as unnecessary because it doesn’t actually affect their grade directly. We try to remind them, however, that because they don’t do the homework, they will most likely receive worse grades on the actual assessments because they haven’t had enough practice with the material. A few students that had this mindset at first have figured this out, but there are some that are still just struggling with seeing the relevance of the homework we assign.

Whenever I give an assessment I look at the results to see what students seem to be struggling with in particular. If I notice a trend in their struggles, I make sure to cover that area more carefully after the assessment to make sure they aren’t missing anything. I try to have the students that already understand help explain how to do whatever other students are having trouble with. This goes along with my first goal, as I will be sure to study the results on my students quiz to make sure they understand the material. If I notice they are having trouble with a certain area I will be sure to review it again in class.

Studying the results of assessments is also especially useful when I give students informal assessments. These are usually only worth between five and ten points and are often while we are still learning the material. I allow students to use their notes as I simply want to make sure that students are understanding what we are doing and are getting practice with it.  I grade these the night before and give them back to them the next day. Based on how students do, I know whether or not I have covered the topic well enough or if it still needs some more instruction. If a lot of students are having trouble with the material I make sure I explain where they are going wrong the next day in class. Then, I give them another informal assessment to make sure they know what we’re doing this time. Sometimes I notice that a student is completely not understanding the material being taught. When this happens, I write on his/her paper to come and see either Miss Ricotta or I to get help. I do this so that the student can get the help they need without slowing the whole class down with explaining things that most people already understand.

So far the only time I gave students the opportunity to do self-assessments was for part of my action research. Before students took the post-assessment, I gave them a sheet that had a list of all of the categories that were included on the test and the questions which fell under each category. Then, I gave students their answers to the pre-test (without the questions) and they marked off each question they got wrong on the categorized sheet. This way, students could see what they had had the most trouble with. Then, I told them to make sure they understood the topics they had the most trouble with before they took the test at the end of the review.

Involving students in self-assessment activities is helpful to them because they become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. In the future I plan to use more self-assessment activities to encourage students to establish goals for their own learning and to take responsibility for it. I think it is a really useful tool.

Unfortunately I have not learned a lot about monitoring the progress of students with disabilities during my student teaching. Because Spanish is a class that students only take if they’re not in the special education program, I don’t have a lot of students that struggle with disabilities. I do know, however, that it is important to monitor the progress of each students, including students with disabilities, because it gives teachers and students the ability to see what students need to work on and what teachers need to cover more clearly. Assessment is the teachers window into his/her students brains. It lets us see what students need help with and what they are grasping. Sometimes some students struggle more than others, which may call for a different form of assessment.

My cooperating teacher and I recently started creating some modified tests for a few of our struggling students. Because many of our students already speak two languages besides Spanish we find that they sometimes get Spanish a little mixed up with the other language they know. For example, I have a student that is Greek and went to Greek school for nine years when he was younger. While learning Spanish, however, he says that he sometimes gets it mixed up with Greek. This made sense to me, because he had answered a question in class before that didn’t make any sense to me. It turns out that this was because he had answered using some Greek as well.

In order to modify a test for students like this or students that struggle for different reasons, my cooperating teacher and I make changes to take off some of the stress. For example, in the last quiz, we offered a word bank for the vocabulary section, which other students did not get. This way they didn’t have to worry so much about spelling, because it was right in front of them. They just had to be able to identify the different object in Spanish. Slight modifications like these made sure that these struggling students were still being tested on the same material and had to know what the different things were in Spanish, it just allowed them to not worry as much about petty things such as spelling and accents.

In efforts to help students assessment scores, it is also essential to give students time to practice. Each day in class, we take time to practice what we’re learning. Usually this take place through some sort of activity. I also give my students homework nearly every night, because 103 of my 108 students wouldn’t be going home and practicing Spanish otherwise because no one at home speaks Spanish.

Sometimes, however, students get things mixed up in their head even when they’re getting practice. When this happens it is important to make sure to give students time to correct incorrect ideas. This can be done in several ways. One of the ways I give students the chance to correct incorrect ideas is by reviewing the homework as a class. If students have any questions about their homework, I encourage them to ask. This way, if there is something they are not understanding, we can get it taken care of by answering their question.

Unfortunately, some students are more shy than others, which means that they might not ask a question even if they don’t understand something. So, just to make sure students are comprehending the material, I often give short, informal assessments in class to see what mistakes students are making. Then, the next day in class I address the most common mistakes so that they correct their incorrect thoughts.