Evaluate 3.1.2 Self-Reflection on Teaching Abilities

In the past 10 years as a teacher and as a graduate student I've learned a lot about the importance of self-reflection.  Self-reflection is an important part of being a teacher.  As I've mentioned before in this blog, being a great teacher means being willing to try new things and sometimes they work wonderfully and sometimes they fail.  Reflection is as much about learning from your mistakes as it is about pointing out your successes.  We are all learners in the classroom not just the students.  I am constantly trying to grow and evolve both in my professional and personal lives and I strive to be better while also accepting my imperfections.  I've used a lot of authentic artifacts throughout this blog and also included my e-portfolio from my Ed.S. program at UGA which contains authentic reflections and artifacts as well.

Evaluate 3.1.1 Differentiation

Amidst STEM Education Hype, NoRedInk Is On A Mission To Fix America’s Grammar Problem by Rip Empson.  26 October 2012.  http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/26/amidst-stem-education-hype-noredink-is-on-a-mission-to-fix-americas-grammar-problem/.

I'm using this heat map found online as a sample.  At a glance I notice a lot of red towards the middle of the heat map.  I would definitely see the need to review concepts on plural possessive, singular possessive, and plural nouns.  Concepts with a lot of blue like general contractions, you're vs your, letters of the alphabet, and adjectives seem to be grasped pretty well by the class as a whole.  I can also identify particular students who may be in need like Gabriel Manos and Jessenia Rushing and pinpoint which concepts they need to review.  Towanda Saterfiel is doing very well and because of that it is easy to see that she needs extra help with plurals of numbers.  I can easily send notifications and remediation to students using this heat map because I can see exactly where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

Evaluate 2.1.2 Rubrics and Competencies

I love referring to the Georgia Performance Standards website for standards, essential questions, frameworks, assignments, and assessments.  Obviously instruction should be varied and not all of the activities fit into my teaching style but it's a great starting point and really helps focus instruction.  For that reason I've chosen the following competency.  The standards and the rubric are included.  This happens to be a pretty specific competency but the student could go various routes from Skype with the instructor to recorded project to prove understanding of the content.

Evaluate 2.1.1 Data Driven Instruction, Analytics, Reporting Tools

According to the artifacts given in the quest for this course the teacher is doing a great job keeping up with stakeholder communication concerning both negative information and positive information.  Documenting communication is always necessary.

I'm not totally sure if I'm analyzing this graph correctly but the quest states that the numbers on the left correspond to the number of assignments the student has completed.  The student does access the LMS everyday and seems to consistently spend more time.  There was a lot of reviewing of material on 9/6, 9/7, and 9/9 and then time seems to lag a bit for a few days.  It seems like the student is studying for the final exam on 9/15 and 9/16 and does review all lessons in the second half, 27/59 and after.  The student also spends a lot of time throughout the 2 weeks on lesson 58/59 which may be a study guide so that's good too.  Since I'm not the teacher I don't know what lesson 26/59 is but the student spent a lot of time there as well.  I might suggest the student be more consistent with daily use and access to all lessons.  I also may suggest to the teacher that lessons 26 and 58 are the most engaging and to model future lessons after those.

For the artifact above, I think it's great that the student can keep up with their own grades and receive detailed, useful feedback.  The student can also see that an assignment is missing but that due to the 45.69/50 average they can see that this activity has not yet taken place.

Reviewing missed questions can help the student identify areas of weakness to either be reviewed or to contact the teacher for remediation.

Once again, accessing grades and feedback can allow the student to see areas of improvement and focus concentration in those areas.

Overall, the students seem to be performing well and engaged in the activities so based on what I see from these artifacts, the teacher does not need to make any adjustments to the course at this time.  Communication and feedback are executed well too.

Evaluate 1.1.3 The Summative Assessment

There is definitely a place in the classroom for standardized tests.  It was really interesting reading in this quest how to create a valid exam because looking back on some exams that I've created, some questions probably weren't very good.  For this quest I decided to use a project-based summative assessment.  I really like to look to the Georgia Performance Standards website for units of study because I know that they'll correspond to the standards.  Here is a summative assessment found on that website that I would assign to a Spanish 1 student.  I like this because it is engaging and shows that the student understands how to use the learned material in context which is very important in language learning.  I also don't really have to worry too much about security because the exam would either be recorded or take place via Skype and in both cases it's evident who's completing the task and if there is any "research" going on during the exam.  The rubric is included and I really like the idea of having students do peer grading both to learn from each other and to double check the grade offered by the instructor.

Evaluate 1.1.2 Quality Feedback

Clear and precise feedback is very important so that students can get detailed information on what they're doing correctly and where they need to improve.  I've been out of the classroom for a few years so I didn't have access to student work so I created this example:

Assignment:  Answer the following questions in complete sentences in Spanish.

1. ¿De dónde eres?
2. ¿Cuántos hermanos tienes?
3. ¿Qué te gusta hacer en el verano?

Student: A.Brown

1. Yo soy de los Estados Unidos.
2. Tengo dos hermanas y dos hermanos.
3. Te gusta nadar en la piscina.

Feedback:

A. Brown, excellent job on this assignment and on answering the questions in complete sentences!

1. Your grammar, spelling, and comprehension are perfect!
2. This is great!  Remember that "hermanos" also means "siblings" so you could also answer saying "Tengo cuatro hermanos." but I like how specific you are!
3. Go back and review your notes on "gustar" and indirect object pronouns.  Remember they don't conjugate like regular verbs.  "Te" in this instance means "you" so how would you change that to answer for yourself?

Evaluate 1.1.1 Formative Assessment

Formative assessments are equally vital to instructors and students.  They are most effective when used frequently to gauge understanding before moving on to the next topic.  They can be as simple as asking students for a "thumbs up" if they understand or they can be more complex.  Here are a few quick check point formative assessments that I created for a Spanish class.