FIAE+B1+Chapter+3

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Abstract
This chapter has us jump right into the thick of things when it comes to assessment. There are three different types of assessment that all should be used through a unit. They are pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. The pre-assessment will give the teacher an idea on a students readiness for the content along with their skill development. Formative assessments are the assessment done along the way and done frequently. The last assessment is summative. This assessment is used at the end of the learning. This should reflect most if not all of the essential and enduring knowledge. Knowing that these three exist a few ideas/concepts need to be incorporated with them. A teacher needs to take the steps to use what they gather from the pre-assessment, not just continue on with what they were originally going to do. With the formative assessment you need to make them varied and administer them over time. Another point that needs to be looked at is the fact that assessments should be as authentic as possible. This means that the assessments will have real-world application behind them. The students should be able to know that they can perform, or use the knowledge gained in the real world whenever it may come up. Having fluff assignments is a teacher “no-no”. Make all assignments worth doing. To end, these assessments should never just be saved for the end of a unit, they should never be kept a secret to the students, and they should be conducted with multiple experiences throughout the whole unit.

[|Andy's Synthesis]
This chapter was a nice eye opener for assessments for this class. The main points that were brought up were the three different forms of assessment which are pre-assessment, formative, and summative. A few of my classmates have opened their minds by the process of this. We have all gone through this nation’s educational system and I am pretty sure that not many of us were given authentic assessments often. The “fluff” assignment was brought up and I can recall many of them myself. Summative assessments are most likely what most of us have had and the most familiar with. With this in mind many of my classmates also brought up the idea of “starting with an end in mind.” Just mentioning to students what they will be expected to know/do at the end of the unit is something that my classmates and I believe will give the students a bit more motivation to want to do work, because they will not be completely surprised when the summative assessments comes.

Cassandra
Even if the teacher using differentiation does their very best and plans for a glorious final assessment that tests complete understanding, what if the lesson wasn't reaching ALL of the students? The teacher wouldn't know this until the very end of the unit. For teachers who are given only a small amount of time to //cover// a whole lot of content, going back and teaching the students the same information over again would be negative productivity. To avoid this, homework should be a form of assessment instead of just busy work to add to the grade intake. Homework is a way for teachers to take in polls of a sort of how well the students understand the unit. This will prevent students from reaching the end of a unit and failing.

Darren
Because I have an English concentration, I //loved// that the chapter mentioned five paragraph essay as unauthentic assessment. The idea the author presents is that this method is not realistic when you consider the application of essays--or writing in general--outside of a classroom setting. Kids should base their writing on ideas and piecing things together. Paragraphs should remain consistent and manage ideas, but by hyping the five paragraph essay as the //creme de la creme// of good writing, students lose this form of management. This is an example of unauthentic assessment, something teachers don't want to use. Outside of high school, people will not be told to write a five paragraph essay. They will be asked to complete essays that revolve around authentic assessment, and it is then up to the student to decide what length and what content to include. In my English classes, students have a very hard time with this. They ask how to formulate ideas, because they are not told to write in the five paragraph form. In a way, it is a form of brainwashing. Students are not able to write concise, well planned articles without thinking about the five paragraph model. Yet, there is no reason to write in this manner to begin with. It is not authentic assessment. It is important for a student to know how to structure thought, not page length. It is important for them to understand how ideas fit together and compliment each other, but it is not important for each paragraph to be 5 to 7 sentences a piece. Authentic assessment revolves around real-world applications. In other words, it is about practicality.

Dan
It doesn't matter how you teach, not every student will incorporate all the information in the same way. As seen by the example at the beginning of the chapter, every student can see the teacher using emphasis on different things. This makes it hard to use the same assessments over and over again. Tests with multiple choice, true/false, and matching are not true assessors of information. Information needs to be assessed in many different ways using all the wide range of learning styles. The different types of assessment that can be used are pre, formative, and summative assessment. These need to be used because they help the teacher understand how much the student is mastering. Of course these assessments are not forced assessment, and if they are they are ungraded. This should only be used for the teachers persona use.

Ethan
In this chapter the discussion of assessment goes into detail. The reader is presented with some guidelines on how to get the most out of your assessment. I felt that all the ideas were equally as important because they all seemed to work together to ensure proper assessment. First off they elaborate on the idea of a pre-assessment. This means giving the students a quiz or something to help you determine the level they are at and also give you a bench mark for further development. The concept of repeated assessment throughout the lessons is the next key. This ensures that you as a teacher know where students are at throughout your unit. Many class periods lead up to the final assessment in the unit, but in order to make the students ready for the final evaluation is seems very important to give multiple,smaller assessments beforehand. Realizing that everyone learns at a different pace is also important and you will be able to better handle this through the smaller assessments idea. The forms of assessment discussed in this chapter I feel will be important for me to use when doing my own assessment in my classroom.

George
Chapter 3 This chapter was on assessment and there were a lot of overall themes that we have seen multiple times. Things like starting with the end goal in mind. Knowing your students and the knowledge of a subject they are bringing into the classroom. Crafting assessments that will help find what you're looking for. Then use it to help find out what went right and what went wrong, no just for the students but you as well. If all the student's in a class bombed one test there is a very good chance that it is not their fault.

Sean
Chapter 3 This was detailing what is considered useful assessment, and what is not. There was a section comparing substantive assignments to 'fluff' assignments, which were useless. Fluff assignments are to be avoided, as they do nothing to aid a students understanding of the content, and substantive assignments, things that involve analyzing and interpretation, carry more weight in understanding. Students will resent the teacher for fluff assignments, and won't be challenged to do what their classmates can. As a teacher, it's our responsibility to help our students to achieve mastery.

Andy
This was a long chapter, but there were a couple of things that stuck out to me. The first one was about the way we prioritize standards and objectives. There are three categories and they are essential, highly desirable, and desirable. Essential objectives are the things that are vital in the student’s growth and for their success later on. Highly desirable refers to the topics that are important to the students, but do not necessarily a must have. Finally the desirable objectives are those that are not as necessary as the other two, but would be great information to have. The other part of this chapter is the realization of why teachers gave us quizzes. I now know that formative assessments are used throughout units to see where we are and so the teacher can then adjust the final summative assessment based on our answer/results.

Damian
Chapter 3; FIAE I can appreciate what the author is trying to say about conditioned learning. The example that was given attempted to make a point with flawed logic. The instructor in the scenario invites a group of students to view a picture that has been shaded to accentuate the details he wanted them to see, and then switched the picture after they left. When both groups of students viewed the picture (a third version devoid of shading) they argued for their perspective. Is this not leading a thought process? I would contest that it is, something which is not only blatantly immoral but illegal. How easy would it be for a social studies teacher to convince his class that Hitler had the right idea by only presenting evidence that supported his point? It is not surprising that a student forms an opinion in 7 minutes based on leading information, especially when that is all they have to go on. Since when is education based on manipulation?

Brian
The bashing of the 5-paragraph essay may be a delight to many of my colleagues, I feel that the 5 paragraph format is a perfect learning tool in which to teach how to write a persuasive essay. As chapter two said, the mastery of our curriculum is what’s important. If we can successfully teach the mastery of the 5 paragraph essay, we can see that it is not a way to limit the content of a students writing but a way to structure it. Very simply, we have an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. We know that an essay will always end with a “wrap up” summary that will really drive home the authors ideas, so the conclusion is a must. The introduction is also obviously vital to any form of writing, however through learning the mastery of the 5 paragraph essay, we can learn that the introduction is just a way to quickly advertise the evidence we are going to present in our essay. This means that the introduction does not need to be limited to one paragraph, or even two, it simply needs to successfully introduce all of the authors arguments. So by mastering the introduction, we can determine how many paragraphs we will need in order to fully support our claims. (This is assuming that each supporting argument will be granted a full paragraph) I love the 5 paragraph essay, it just needs to be taught, and mastered correctly , as does every other form of assessment. Although I may have gone off on a bit of a tangent, I feel like the main idea of chapter three was to be sure that we, as educators, assess at a differentiated level.

Zackary
In this chapter the author tells the teachers on how they should evaluate whether their students are learning what they should. First off they should take a pre-exam, on this test the teacher will be able to assess what the student needs to learn to do well. The second assessment from the teacher should be a formative assessment, making sure the student has learned what was expected of them. I feel this is the most important step in the learning process for a student. In the end as long as a student knows how to do it, the teacher does not need to make sure they know it in a longer period of time. This is because students should be able to recall the facts from a lesson quickly once they have finally mastered a subject. The last assessment is the summative evaluation, this is making sure the student remembers what was asked of them overhte

course of a year/semester.

CH. 3 Chapter 3 covers the ins and outs of assessments to ensure that teachers accurately judge each student’s understanding of the subject. A truly authentic assessment is one that takes into account the level at which the students started, and where they end up, and everything in between. It is important to find out what each student knows going into the lesson/s, so to better help them progress to where you want them to end up. That is why teachers should, “ start with the end in mind” (21). By doing so, teachers and students will have a clear understanding of what is expected by the time the unit is complete. Another important concept of assessing is to use homework as ways of assessing progress along the way, therefore, any misunderstandings can be corrected right from the get go. Many teachers use homework as busy work that results in a grade in the grade book (they check it off to see that it has been completed even if the answers are completely wrong). Lastly, a final assessment of student knowledge is too final, because students might learn a lot of things and have a great understanding of the information, but the questions on the “big test” don’t allow the students a chance to explain themselves.
 * Amy**

Liz
CH. 3 Chapter three analyzes how assessment must be made meaningful for the students. The teacher needs to recognize assessment as what they wish the students to understand at the end. Once they identify this they can create the lesson based on such goals. The lesson can be differentiated so long as the students reach the same goal. Why this affects the classroom is because it makes sense to know what you want to accomplish before you attempt to accomplish it. By setting what the teacher wants the kids to known and building from there the teacher can assure that all student needs are reached.

Josh
Assessment is a very important aspect in a differentiated classroom. It guides practice. Giving students information up front that they will need to know at the end of a unit is a positive thing a teacher can do because it gives students an idea of what is to come, and maybe what they can do to prepare. Students are likely to be more involved and actually do the work if they have a clear idea of what the finished product will look like. A stratedy to teach understanding can be done by offering essential questions; larger questions that are interesting to ponder and have more than one answer. I feel that students like to have discussions more than they would like to be lectured to. A teacher that assesses their own work benefits them because they can alter lessons as they go along. A teacher should be able to have a curriculum that can be changed, as through assessing students one will know what things need to be fixed.

Jennifer
I thought giving the end test to the students was a good idea. They'll know what the content is and if you teach that content, they will be listening and more motivated to learn it. If we did this we would need to pick out the essential information and content for our lessons, because we can not teach it all. We can do this throughout the year as well, to adapt to our students and how they are doing. Pre-assessments are a good way to discover what information we should be teaching, whether at great length or just review, and what information students already know and that we do not need to go over. There are many types of assessments teachers should be doing. The pre-assessments are before we teach the lesson, formative assessments give us ongoing feedback, and the summative assessment reflects all of the students understandings and knowledge after our lesson is done. These three assessments are very important.