Digital
Badge #7--Chapter 4
Looking at the student learning
objectives on page 78 made me wish this had been presented as concisely when I
was preparing to be a teacher. Instead
of acronyms (SMART goals) and fancy language (relevant, attainable), the bottom
line has to be determining "WHO is going to do WHAT, WHEN, HOW much or how
often, and HOW it will be measured or evaluated" (p. 78). This is really what planning is all about:
deciding what you want your students to be able to do at the conclusion of the
lesson.
Once you have decided what you want
your students to be able to do after the lesson, it's time to decide how you
are going to determine IF they have met the objectives; this is where
assessment comes in. Many people do not
realize that assessment is not just what happens after the lesson is completed,
it also includes what happens during the lesson as the teacher monitors student
performance (p. 83). As a classroom
teacher, I had a progress check at the beginning of each class. Without going into all the details, there
were a couple of review questions, a couple of questions from last night's
work, one problem-solving question, and one question from today's work. Students could earn up to 106 points, so
there was really no penalty if they didn't answer today's new question
correctly. At the time, I had to write
each quiz on acetate for the overhead projector; how much easier it would have
been to use Kahoot! to create these quizzes!
Any discussion about assessment has
to look at high-stakes standardized tests (pp.86-89). I was saddened to see the consequences that have
resulted from the overwhelming amount of standardized tests: focusing only on
the information from the test, abandoning "teachable moments" in
favor of teaching to the test, and adjusting testing conditions, even actually
giving answers! (Popham, pp. 1-3) It
seems that every year we hear about another teacher or school being
investigated for questionable testing practices. With the stakes so high for students,
teachers, schools, and districts, it's no surprise that students (and teachers)
have upset tummies on test day, that administrators do not allow any extra
activities that don't directly relate to the test, that districts cut budgets
for field trips in favor of extra tutoring.
I wish I had the answer!
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,
Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies.
2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Popham, W.J. (2002, May/June).
Preparing for the coming avalanche of accountability tests. Harvard
Education Letter, 18(1), 1-3.
You are so correct about the nature of assessment - it needs to be a constant to truly do its job and unfortunately, when the politicians came along with the edicts of standardization, they were not aware of the various implications. I like your use of assessment as a regular part of the feedback cycle - it definitely provides a more realistic view of the process of learning. Hopefully, the tide of the singular focal point gets more "in balance" - I do see the tide turning a bit.
ReplyDelete