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Alex Randall
FIAE Chapter 3 This chapter talks about teaching with the end results in mind, assessment, and methods of assessment. The idea is that, when starting with teaching the end result and then teaching from the beginning toward the end result, the students will notice what is the most important and it will hold a higher standing in their minds, helping them to retain the truly important information. The chapter then talks about effective assessment focusing on "EEK" (essential and enduring knowledge, concepts and skills) or "KUD" (Know, Understand, and Able to Do) and focusing on those while assessing. What is important about assessment is that it makes teaching more productive. If you as the educator know what your kids already know, you can now adjust your schedule and assignments to that. If a teacher starts teaching you something that you have already exhausted, you are not going to learn and you might even feel as though your brain is melting away with boredom. Assessing as you go is necessary so that information can actually sink in. Making the mistake of spending a ton of time on one big final project or test will end badly if you do not first know exactly what your kids know - or what you need to work on with them - to make sure they know what they are expected to understand. Knowing effective ways to assess students is important to develop plans and lessons.

Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Chapter 3.

A good deal of this chapter deals with honesty. It emphasizes that teachers need to completely disclose to the students what it is they’re being graded on. It touches upon what schools are meant to do. If we do fully disclose what we want students to learn because we worry it will compromise any assessment, then the whole process becomes an assessment, and no real learning happens in the classroom. Instead, the kids are assessed on what they learned outside the class, which is equal but not really fair. If the students end up with the key understandings, then that’s what really matters. Give them a copy of the summative assessment right at the beginning, and then they can plan ahead. In many ways the balance is delicate. We want work that is open-ended enough to allow for student ownership but not so vague that the kids are left without any clear idea of what is expected of them, no clear idea of what to do and no ambition to do it.

There is nothing wrong with pruning. Sometimes, after all that work, all that reflection and planning and study, you find that your lesson plan just didn’t work. Or, that the execution was poor. In history, for example, there is always a retuning of the material to balance breadth and depth. The solutions are never perfect, and so you go back and try again. It’s part of the struggle of teaching, and a part of the fun.

toc

Sam Leal
One thing I had never heard of in a class is an example they gave in this chapter, and I loved it. Imagine in a math class the teacher gives the student the exam that covers the entire chapter before they even start working with the material in the chapter. This gives the students something to reference. The students will perk up and be engaged when they hear a topic or answer to a question that is on that test in front of them. To me this is a very cool strategy and something I’d maybe like to try out, it’s a new idea. The end is in mind and the students will be ready to show that they’ve learned all the concepts on the test once test day comes around. EEK, Essential and enduring knowledge, concepts, and skills or KUD, Know Understand, Able to Do. These are the focus of what assessments should be. The chapter talks about how assessments should be focused and show the students what’s they need to Endure, and is essential for them in the future. I agree with this, in my classroom I definitely will have all assessments be purposeful and have a focus. The grade for students is one thing, but you want your students to leave your classroom knowing that they have learned and have confidence to show their newly learned skills in the future.

Elizabeth Sargent
FIAE Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

Lesson plans are never the same, they are always changing. Making plan changes marks a good teacher from a teacher that teaches without differentiated instruction. From this chapter I learned that it is crucial to have assessments not only at the end of the course, but at the beginning and very often throughout the course. Having these assessments not only helps me as a teacher understand their progress, but it also lets the students know if they can apply their learning to real world situations.

Another thing I learned from this chapter is that students should be allowed to redo work for full credit. I think this is a great idea, and have often wondered why it has been applied more often in the classrooms I have been in. Maybe my teachers didn’t know about how often students could get distracted. As a teacher and in the classroom this would be a great addition to any syllabus. Not only would it give students the chance to do something better than they did, but it also shows that I am giving my students the opportunity to show their best work. Having a classroom that is a little behind because they were given a second chance to prove themselves after the death of a classmate is better than having bad test scores and no understanding or retakes. Being a reasonable or merciful teacher is one of the best things I can be in the future. Everyone makes mistakes, and it is my job to give them the second chance they deserve.

Colby Hill
FIAE chap 3 This chapter was chock-full of information. The first thing that I knew I was going to mention was the idea of giving students the end-of-unit test at the beginning of the year. It doesn’t really need to be the exact same test because events can disrupt the planning of your lessons, so the test given last year would suffice easily. I think this is a great idea because it gives students an idea of what you expect them to know, how you do tests, and the general feeling of what the course is going to be like. Another point I definitely wanted to pick up on was on page thirty-one. Here, Wormeli mentions that kids are not “on” 100 percent of the time. This goes for anyone, also; not even Batman can be 100% on all the time. The students have many other things to work on, and they are adults in the making, not adults. I do agree with Wormeli here: students should be allowed make up work. However, this is not necessarily appropriate all the time. Students make take advantage of this and turn in badly done work because they can make it up later. Sometimes students should have an ultimate deadline—real life can work that way just as it can work with extensions. The only real problem I have with the “assessment-guided, differentiated lesson planning sequence” (35) is that it sounds so sweet on paper, but being in field it is so much more difficult to pull off. Hitting everyone with their needs is insane. Wormeli mentions the idea of using sticky notes, but it just seems so time consuming. It’s worth a shot, but I am a tad bit skeptical.

Jordan Hale
The experiment a university professor did to prove a point of how easy it is to be conditioned to see only one perspective was eye opening. The image titled Old Woman or Young Lady Illusion was used with two groups. One group was conditioned to see the older woman by darkening those lines, and the other group was conditioned to see the younger woman by doing the same process. After seven minutes of each group, they were both pulled together with an unbiased photo of the old woman and young lady. This experiment told me to used differentiated instruction and assessment in order to expand the student’s minds, rather than condition them to spit back information to pass the tests. Good assessments need to advance learning, determine what is worth being assessed and provides enough information to the teacher to inform instructional practice (39).

One thing I loved seeing in this chapter was the author, Rick Wormeli, brought up students redoing work. I am a firm believer in letting students redo work. I am an advocate of make-up tests and work, but because they were given a second change and more time, than the product better be that much better. In other words, I will be harsher at grading the second attempt. As a student, I know when I redid a test by writing why I got the answer wrong, and then elaborating on the answer on a separate piece of paper concreted that knowledge more than studying for the test did.

Karina Sprague
I am still unsure whether I agree or disagree with some of the points in this chapter. The first one that stood out to me was the idea of redoing working for full credit. Although I believe that students should have the opportunity to redo their work, I think this privilege would be abused by some students. My teachers would allow us to redo work if it was obvious that we tried and put effort into it. After the two separate things pieces were graded, they would typically average them out. I think I will use this practice in my classroom. By average the scores, students have more incentive to do better on the first one. Some students will get the mentality that “I can do bad on this one and I’ll make it up later”. This way, both pieces count, so students will have a reason to work hard on the first piece and take pride in it.

One thing that I definitely know that I agree with is the pre-assessments. I think that this is crucial for lesson planning and gauging the students beginning knowledge. If you repeat information that they already know, they will get bored and distracted. This will lead to bad grades and a waste of the teachers’ and the students’ time and energy. By knowing what most of the students already know, you can spend less time on that section and more time on parts that the students didn’t really know. Also, I think that the pre-assessments help with accurately assessing student and teacher progress. If you start with a base line, you can see how much you have improved. You can also see what teaching techniques and lesson plans worked the best by observing what topics were improved on the most.

Cidney Mayes
For assessment to be effective, it must be used as a tool that nurtures learning and allows the teacher to gauge the mastery level of students. One of the things and educator can do for students in terms of assessment is to give, at the beginning of each unit, the actual unit test that will be used as summative assessment. This does not make learning “easier” for students, but gives them clear expectations and goals for what you want them to master. Students perform better when they have a clear idea of expectations, and by providing them with those goals upfront, they will be more attentive and aware of the material that is being taught. Using essential questions in the classroom, usually one to five per unit, also provides students with a clear idea of what will be covered that lesson. It is imperative to measure student initial understanding with pre-assessment, as it will shape lessons and units of study. This ensures that class time is used effectively and that lessons are meaningful. In pre-assessment, use skills that will be directly tested on the summative assessment, too.

Assessment plays a major role in the classroom, and I plan on using it a described in this chapter. I think that using pre-assessment to form lessons and units is tremendously important. Why waste time going over material if your students already know it? Or why assume that your students are proficient in a certain skill when the pre-assessment says otherwise? Not using pre-assessment could be a huge time waster, so I think it’s better and safer to gauge where students are at before beginning a lesson. I also will use the idea of giving students the summative assessment at the beginning of the unit so that they are aware of the content that they will be tested on and be more invested in the class.

Emily Haskell
Chapter 3 FIAE

This is not the first time that I have heard of a teacher or professor starting at the end. In fact, on more than one occasion I have had a teacher pass out a part of the final for the students to take on the first day of class. Of course in some of the classes I have been in where the final assessment was given on the first day, the students completely lost faith in themselves. They believed that they should know more and if not that then they were discouraged at the thought of having to learn so much material in what seemed to be such a short amount of time.

One of the things I find important here is to be sure the students know that it will not count for anything and that it is just to see how much they already know and how much more they have to learn.

I really liked the thought that we have failed as teachers if a student ever asks “will this be on the test?” After all the true point of teaching is to provide knowledge to those looking to better themselves, not to give them ability to take tests. This is why I find pre-assessments so important. If you provide a student with a pre-assessment and formative assessment then by the time they are given a summative assessment they will truly understand the material and really be able to see how far they have come as students.

Spencer Hodge
In chapter 3 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal the author discuses the several types of assessments teachers should use to evaluate student’s learning. Prior to starting a new unit, teachers should give all students a pre-assessment to establish the readiness of the class. This could also be a way to document development in the subject. There are many different activities that could be used to pre-assess rather than give a written test. Formative assessments are done throughout the unit and are done often. They can be quizzes, journal entries, reflections, etc. For each formative assessment a lot of rich feedback should be given when they are passed back, make no mistake, not all of these particular assessments have to be graded. Summative assessments are given at the end of each lesson, or perhaps the whole unit. These assessments are generally graded and cover all the material discussed in the lesson or unit. The purpose here is to assess the students on the unit’s objectives and understandings. Of all levels of assessment I should point out that the most emphasis should go into the formative portions as opposed to the summative assessment. Due to the formative assessments having the most frequent check in points, helpful feedback will help them grow and develop the unit’s objectives, whereas the summative assessment, being the end point, limits the ability of students to use the feedback to grow.

As a future teacher, assessment is crucial because every student in my class will not be at the same level; I saw this first hand while in the field. All students will be in different spots when it comes to different disciplines and even specifically in different spots within my social studies discipline. This is where using these important types of assessments and differentiated instruction will play a huge role in the success of my students and me as an educator.