FIAE Chapter 4: Analysis and Synthesis

Chapter 4 went into a basic description of three forms to assess students rubrics, self-assessment, and portfolios. Rubrics are lengthy processes that are created and should be examined by teachers for content, clarity, practicality, and technical quality. These are used as powerful assessment tools. Self-assessments are important in the class to help students better understand as well as give them feedback they may need. The book described many different ways to do self-assessments such as self-checking lists and rubrics, videotaping performances, fill in the blank responses, interactive notebooks, etc. Wormeli discussed portfolios and how they could be as simple as a folder of collected work to as complex as multi-year selected and analyzed work pieced together to represent a student’s life. Portfolios often act as showcases for ones information. This chapter was a good way to determine the best tools to use for assessing students that you felt would fit best in your classroom.

            All of us are going to have different classrooms and have different ideas about how to run our classrooms; however, we also shared many similar views to what we thought about these methods for assessing students. Many of us were fond of rubrics, stating that they were a good simple way to make objectives clear for our students. Clarity is an important aspect when teaching and these rubrics do a good job of incorporating important information in a clear and precise way. Many of us had a tendency to list off the many steps in a rubric and this made some nervous, but like many things we will get better at it with time. Many agreed that portfolios were a good method to assess students’ mastery of a topic or subject. They show students growth while also keeping every aspect of it organized and orderly. Portfolios seemed to be thought as very flexible being either simplistic or complex at any given time depending on what the teacher wants. Portfolios are a good way to have students and teachers both set goals. It was an anonymous decision that self-assessment is a good way to keep students on task because they use goals and the idea of setting goals. Many self-assessments have the ability of getting students to work harder to reach the goals they set out for themselves. Student self-assessments are a great and simple way to see how much your students have learned as well as get feedback on assignments. Overall all three systems seemed beneficial to us and are certainly forms of assessing students we can see ourselves using in our classrooms. 

 

Links for rubrics:

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/

How to Self-Assessment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XJ8f9yLteQ

Example of self-assessment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxhRNtJkROA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIflgA-ngVk&feature=related (like this one better)

Page on interactive notebook:

http://www.squidoo.com/interactive-notebook

http://www.slideshare.net/danahuff/interactive-notebooks (Cool incorporates technology.)

Portfolio:

http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/portfolios.htm

Chapter 9: Abstract and Synthesis

In Chapter 9 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Wormelli describes ten mistakes that we should avoid making when applying differentiated instruction. The ten tips are avoid incorporating non-academic factors, avoid penalizing students’ attempts at mastery, avoid grading practice, avoid withholding assistance, avoid assessing students with invalid assessments, avoid allowing extra credit and bonus points, avoid group grades, avoid grading on a curve, avoid recording zeroes for missed work, avoid being norm-referenced. These are important pointers to help teachers with figuring out the best grading system for their class. The chapter says that we do not know the perfect day for every student to assess them on. So through our grading system and by using the ideas brought forward in this chapter we can help assess our students on both bad and good days. This will help in giving us the best understanding of student mastery.

Throughout the reading of this chapter many of us seemed to find the same things interesting. Certain aspects brought forward seemed to catch the attention of many such as the idea of homework being practice, so it should only be graded on completion and the effort put into it. As teachers, we should also make sure to give each student feedback on the homework to help them see the areas they did not quite understand and to better remember it for later. However, some seemed to think when dealing with homework it could be tricky to not grade it. This could either go very poorly or be very beneficial to the students, which is why it would be better to grade it in some way like by effort. Some of us seemed to agree that it is important to have students re-do work to get a better mastery of the subject. Yet this should only be partial credit when being re-done instead of full credit. Some believed that both effort and participation were important to helping lead students to mastery and should be added in the grading system. Though they believed they should be added to grading they thought that this grade should be a small percentage of the whole final grade. Many of us agreed that extra credit could be very beneficial to the mastery of a subject. However, it can only be beneficial if it fully relates to the subject matter we are trying to have them master. Many also seemed to think students should be helped when they don’t understand and do something wrong; rather than be penalized for doing it wrong. We as teachers should help our students better understand what they are doing wrong by giving them other tools to help them understand and master the subject such as, graphic organizers, questionnaires, etc. Another issue that seemed kind of controversial was the issue of grading students in groups. Some seemed to think it would be a good method sharing stories of past teachers who did this and it was a success for them. However, others seemed to think it is hard to tell one student’s mastery based on group grading; therefore, they seemed to think it was better to grade an individual on the work they brought to the group. Either way seemed to have evidence to back up the point and both would probably work. Overall this chapter had many issues addressed that we seemed to find important to discuss when thinking about grading students on mastery of the subject area.

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/cii/resources/teaching_tips/assessment_grading.asp

http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/grading-and-communicating-about-grades

http://www.graphic.org/goindex.html