Double Entry Journal #11

1. What is formative assessment?Formative assessment means not always giving students a grade. Ungraded or "comments only" responses to students' work can be an important part of formative assessment. This is especially true if the responses give students clear suggestions about how they can improve. High-quality formative assessment is the feedback students receive--timely, specific, and task-focused--from teachers or other adults, peers, or through structured self-assessment, not the absence of grades. High-quality formative assessment takes many forms, but it always: emphasizes the quality rather than the quantity of student work; prizes giving advice and guidance over giving grades; avoids comparing students in favor of enabling individual students to assess their own learning; fosters dialogues that explore understandings rather than lectures that present information; encourages multiple iterations of an assessment cycle, each focused on a few issues; and provides feedback that engenders motivation and leads to improvement.

2. What is the central purpose of formative assessment?
The central purpose of formative assessment is student learning. Formative assessment to help teachers respond effectively to students' learning needs. Research shows that formative assessment can be a powerful means of improving student achievement; it is assessment for learning, not assessment of learning.

3. Connect a best practice in formative assessment to one research-based strategy.
I think the research-based strategy that goes along with this article the best is "providing feedback." In this strategy the teacher provides feedback that improves learning and is responsive to specific aspects of student work. The feedback must also be timely. If students receive feedback no more than a day after a test or homework assignment has been turned in, it will increase the window of opportunity for learning. I think this goes along with the article because the feedback that the teacher gives should be timely, depending on the task given. High-quality formative assessment also provides enough detail to give students a clear idea of what, why, and how they are to proceed as they continue to work on an assignment.

4. Give an example of how a specific assessment can be used formatively and summatively.
Formative assessment occurs during the learning process while summative happens at the end, but formative assessment is equally objective. The difference lies in how evaluative instruments are used. For example, a rubric that lists criteria for evaluating writing can be used formatively to help students understand what is expected and summatively to assign a grade.

5. Give an example from your field placement related to formative assessment and timing.
In my clinical placement, the writing assessment is coming up in the next week, so the teacher has been giving them a prompt and they have to write a story about it. She gives them ample time to come up with their "sloppy copy" and then they bring it back to her and she gives them feedback while they are standing there. They then will then write their final draft and fix anything that needs to be fixed.

6. What are some strategies to help formative assessment be more effective when providing students with feedback?
General praise about students' innate qualities or talents is not as helpful as careful attention to specific areas of strength in the work. For example, instead of saying "You are a great writer," a teacher who uses high-quality formative assessment will say "You used transitions very effectively in this middle section. See if you can do the same thing in the last section of the paper." High quality formative assessment provides enough detail to give students a clear idea of what, why, and how they are to proceed as they continue to work on an assignment. However, such elaboration needs to be offered in manageable chunks so that students are not overwhelmed.
 
7. Name two advantages to high quality formative assessment.
For teachers, formative assessment helps identify students who are struggling with particular tasks or operating under misconceptions. This, in turn, can lead to improved instruction that addresses student learning. Formative assessment also fosters student motivation, on-task behavior, and self awareness. Accordingly, teachers can begin to see students as partners who are able to take more responsibility for their own learning. For students, formative assessment offers increased feelings of confidence and control. Students who experience high-quality formative assessment are more likely to transfer learning from one class to another because they understand the given area thoroughly and can relate new learning to what they already know. In addition formative assessment encourages students to engage in more complex thinking and problem solving and to hold higher expectations for their own learning. It can help students to spend more time on challenging tasks, develop an ability to assess their own work, and become effective evaluators of the work of their peers.

8. What are some challenges to implementing high quality formative assessment?
From a policy perspective, the greatest challenge is to distinguish between high-quality formative assessment and assessment that is under-conceptualized or not fully developed. Another policy challenge is to develop mechanisms of support for teachers who employ high-quality formative assessment in their classrooms.

Double Entry Journal #10

1. Why is it the responsibility of all teachers to provide writing instruction for their students?

Providing writing instruction in multiple disciplines will help to foster literacy development. Writing instruction enhances student achievement in all subjects. Without strategies for reading course material and opportunities to write thoughtfully about it, students have difficulty mastering concepts. Students who can read with clear comprehension and write effectively about a given subject matter will learn the material much more thoroughly than those who do not.

2. Name and describe four research-based strategies to support writing instruction for students.

1. Use low-stakes writing assignments: Learning can be enhanced with shorter assignments that ask students to explain key concepts, summarize arguments on a given topic, or outline a procedure. Research shows that writing regularly in this way fosters learning because it strengthens connections with course reading.
2. Provide multiple forms of feedback: Student learning can be enhanced by peer responses to writing, whole class discussion of student writing samples, students' reflection on their own writing, and brief one-on-one conferences. Such strategies, combined with traditional teacher feedback, can help students develop metacognitive capacities that will enhance their learning.
3. Employ variety in texts and their presentation: Research shows that effective teachers use many different kids of texts--essays, primary sources, fiction, scientific reports, inventories and so on--to help students learn in all subjects. Teachers can help students improve as readers by giving assignments of varying length or reading difficult texts aloud and pausing to explain their own meaning-making process.
4. Employ a variety of levels of reading difficulty: Content-area teachers need to provide accessible materials for those who can't, and this means making available texts with varying degrees of difficulty. All students need to be readers and writers in a variety of subjects, but teachers need to scaffold their learning.

Double Entry Journal #9

Copy and paste three quotes that have moved you in some way (i.e. surprised, confused, disagree, strongly agree). Then in a paragraph state why you have selected each quote and include a hyperlink to an online article, blog posting, video, or podcase related to what you have read.

Quotes:

1. "Young children work hard at play. They invent scenes and stories, solve problems, and negotiate their way through social roadblocks. They know what they want to do and work diligently to do it. Because their motivation comes from within, they learn the powerful lesson of pursuing their own ideas to a successful conclusion."
2. "Research shows that children who engage in complex forms of socio-dramatic play have greater language skills than nonplayers, better social skills, more empathy, more imagination, and more of the subtle capacity to know what others mean. They are less aggressive and show more self-control and higher levels of thinking."
3. "Kindergartners are now under great pressure to meet inappropriate expectations, including academic standards that until recently were reserved for first grade. At the same time, they are being denied the benefits of play—a major stress reliever. This double burden, many experts believe, is contributing to a rise in anger and aggression in young children, reflected in increasing reports of severe behavior problems."

Paragraph:
         Young children need to have play time where they can learn and grow, and not have to worry about instructional time. I chose the first quote because I do believe that when they are left to use their imagination, children will make and solve problems. When children are able to use their own ideas, it is simply amazing the things that they come up with. This does teach them intristic motivation, where they achieve things for themselves instead of outside rewards. When children are playing, they don't realize they are learning. They just think that it's fun time. I chose the second quote because I thought it was very interesting that research shows that children playing is beneficial. I think this is a very important point that the national needs to consider. Students are so much more rambunchious now than they used to be, could this be due to the fact that they don't get time to simply play? I don't think it's just a concidence. I believe that if children had time to be children, the world would be a happier place. I also believe that instead of teaching to the test, teachers should go back to the place where learning (and teaching) was fun. Students would be more at peace and want to come to school because learning is fun. The standardized testing takes all the fun out of learning now. I chose the third quote because I do believe that the bar has been raised. Kindergarten used to be the year of introduction to school, learning the alphabet and numbers, having time for play, nap time, snack. Kindergarten was fun. Today, it has shifted to mostly instructional time with a little bit of fun time. There is way too much expected of them at that young of an age. When I was in Kindergarten, we went every other day with ample time to play and have fun. They are now expected to go everyday and basically sit and do work the entire day. Children get restless and need to have time to get that energy out. In my opinion, children should be allowed to be children in Kindergarten.

Related resource:
Top 10 Signs of a Good Kindergarten Classroom

WebQuest: How Do We Use Money?

I want to do my PBL activity on being a smart consumer and talking about earning, saving, spending, and sharing money. I found this WebQuest, which deals with part of what I want to teach about. Here is the link to the website: How Do We Use Money?

Struggling Student

This student is an English Language Learner, who is from Germany. She has a teacher who helps her with reading, but she is otherwise in the classroom for regular instruction. The teacher said that she has made great improvements throughout the school year. I had an opportunity to help her with her reading test last week and was very impressed with how well she was reading. If she came to a word that she didn't know, she first sounded it out to herself and then said it out loud. I only had to help with a few words because she was so good at sounding them out herself. In the classroom, the students are all very supportive of her. If they are working on an overhead language problem and she gets it correct, everyone claps and congratulates her. They were working on the parts of speech and the teacher was showing them how much they had learned throughout the year by having them say each what part of speech each word was in the sentence. This student answered it perfectly. I am very impressed by her progress!

Double Entry Journal #8

1. What are some challenges to inquiry approaches to learning?
I think one of the biggest challenges to inquiry-based approaches is for the teacher. It is a lot more work to create lesson plans with an inquiry-based approach. Teaching from the manual is less work for the teacher, but far less engaging for the students. I think this is why most teachers teach from the book. They don't have the time to create lesson plans where the students have to make something. Another challenge is covering all of the CSOs. Some people think that because you are not teaching from the book with prepared worksheets that you are not teaching what you are required to be. This is however not the case, but people don't understand that. The final challenge is figuring out how to cover the standardized tests concepts. There is entirely too much emphasis placed on standardized testing now that students don't even have time to have fun while learning. Everyone is so worried about those test scores that they are strictly testing for the test. I don't believe that students are truly learning anything that way. There are so many variables when it comes to taking tests that they are not always accurate.

2. Make connections between project-based learning and three research based strategies. Give a brief explanation of the connections.
Thematic instruction and project-based learning have a lot in common. They are both based on authentic content in which the student enjoys doing. They take school subjects and help the students apply them to real-life situations. They employ cooperative grouping; using small, cooperative learning groups to support problem-solving and cooperation. Designing hands-on, "minds-on" activities help students make real-world sense of concepts by applying what they are learning. Thematic instruction is centered around project-based learning. Project-based learning incorporates cooperative learning, which is where students work together to accomplish shared goals. A variety of strategies to choose student groups are used , such as : common clothing, favorite colors, letters in names, birthdays. Simulations and games is also similar to project-based learning. They both provide students the opportunity to visualize and model which improves their chances for understanding. They create a demand for knowledge and enable students to discover knowledge through exploration. All of these are intertwined with project-based learning on some level.