FIAE+B1+Chapter+3

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Summary and Synthesis, Kay Sue Collins
This chapter dealt with how best to assess students. The analogy that was made in the book was that assessments should be more like a physical than an autopsy. This means that we should be assessing throughout the unit to find out how well the students are learning and adjust the teaching methods according to the results of those assessments. Using assessment appropriately can be a powerful tool. There are three kinds of assessment: pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessments. The kind that we are most familiar with is summative assessment which is the least useful kind. Its only use is to ‘autopsy’ the students learning when it is too late to do anything about it. [|Pre-assessment] given at the beginning of a unit, is useful for giving a baseline for what the student already knows and allows the teacher to adjust the lessons based on this knowledge, skipping some things that the student already know well, and giving small group help for those lacking essential readiness skills. One of the most surprising suggestions for most of us was that we could give the students the final exam at the beginning of the unit so that the students would know exactly what was expected of them. There should never be any nasty surprises. [|Formative assessments] are given throughout a unit to provide checkpoints and feedback for the student as well as the teacher. This gives information about what is actually being learned and what needs to be done to maximize learning. Thought should be given to what is important for the student to learn. Assessments should always be authentic and focus on the ‘Enduring and essential content and skills (KUD)’. This means we first teach the things that the students have to learn, then what they should learn, and only then the things that it would be nice for them to learn. They should never be asked to learn things that are inconsequential or ‘fluff’.

Olivia Wandelear
I was blown away when this chapter stated, “assessment is never saved for the end of a unit” (Wormeli 39). Throughout my twelve years of public school, I witnessed the same exact pattern of being introduced to the material, learning about the material, and taking a test or writing an essay on it when it was time to move on. Only a handful of teachers ever considered a pre-assessment to address what we already knew. I honestly thought this was the complete norm until reading this chapter, because so many of my teachers had never followed the steps to proper and good assessment like the ones introduced in this chapter. I also learned that “Will this be on the test?” is not a normal question students should be asking in the classroom, because the teacher should be clear up front about what they are assessing the students on. The test should never be a mystery, nor something students dread and fear because of the uncertainty associated with it. In my classroom, the assessment will never be kept a secret, because it is ongoing and easily understood by students because I initially addressed it at the beginning of the unit. A way to do this is to provide students with a copy of the exact test or project at the beginning of the unit, before I even begin teaching it. This way, students will always know the relevance of what they are learning, and can feel comfortable and confident throughout the learning process.

Dylan Stefani
In chapter three many things such as “begin with the end in mind” (Wormeli 21). were retouched upon. It said that if a teacher gives the end of the unit test on day one of class and have the students fill it out that they would try and the teacher can get a good sense of what they have already known. It said that if a student then learns in another lesson that it is the answer to one of the questions that this is what you want as a teacher. Having the students want to know these things and remember them is what a teacher wants. The reading also mentioned places where teachers can get guidance on what is important in the unit. Use other colleagues, standards, curriculum guides, and even professional journals to increase your knowledge on what is important. Three types of assessment are in place for teachers to evaluate their students. Pre-assessments are for the teacher to learn the students readiness. Formative assessments are “checkpoints” for each topic you cover and they provide feedback to the teacher about if a student has grasped the knowledge. Summative assessment is the big test at the end of a unit that reflects what a student has learned throughout the unit. Although there was much more information in the reading, I found that these topics were the most informational.

Courtney Burns
Assessments are perhaps the best way to monitor your students understanding of the content however there are right and wrong ways of assessing. One of the most important aspects of assessment is to make sure there is “clear and consistent evidence” collected before any conclusions are drawn (i.e. has the student mastered the unit). As a teacher it will be important for me to give frequent assessments that are authentic to how students learn and are based on substance, not “fluff”. When creating assessments it will also be important to keep the needs of my students in mind and understand that assessments, as well as units and lesson plans, are subject to change.

Dan Horne
In this chapter the book talks about the importance or assessments on students. It really stresses that assessments should be used in both the beginning and the end of units to provide a knowing of what the students already know before the lesson and what they have learned at the end. In high school I think I maybe took a handful of pre-unit assessments; it was usually always heres what were learning and then a test. In my classroom I plan on giving a pre-test to see where my students stand on the up coming unit and base my time on each segment on how the students do on specific regions of their pretest. This will allow me to spend the appropriate times on things they know and things they don't so that when the post-test is given they are prepared with the things they already knew and the things they learned.

Kay Sue Collins
This chapter reviews the ways that assessment can be used to further student mastery. The comparison that is made in the chapter is that assessment should be more like a physical than an autopsy. In other words it should be used all through the learning process to help direct learning rather than being simply a way to keep score of success or failure. There are three kinds of assessments: pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessments. Assessments are most useful when they are available to the student, documents real learning, and focuses on enduring and essential content and skills (a.k.a. KUD). I really got a better idea of how to design assessments to give me useful information about my students’ level of understanding through the examples and concepts described here.

Erika Tingley
The focus of this chapter was on developing and utilizing assessment in the classroom. I learned that assessment is meant to be a tool to guide a student to higher learning. While reading this chapter I realized how important and helpful it is to give regular assessments so as to evaluate student progress. When I am teaching a class I think it will be a good thing for me to utilize the different methods of assessment that were suggested in this book. If I start the semester off with some form of assessment to determine where the students are when they begin, and then regularly evaluate throughout the learning process leading up to the final assessment than progress is ensured. The students will also be able to see their progress and be given the tools they need to succeed.

Andy Shorey
Chapter three of Fair isn't always equal is discussing how students should be assessed. The authors discuss how it is important for students to have a pre test so that we can focus on parts of the unit that students don't already know as well. It is also important for teachers to assess throughout the unit. Teachers at the beginning of the unit need to break down information into what students must know, information students should know but isn't quite as important, and information that teachers would like students to know but isn't as important as the first two. There also needs to be a final assessment which is at the end of the learning in that unit and she reflect what students have learned. At the end of the unit teachers should take time to go over what students struggled with. This chapter also talks about staying away from fluff assessment like poster and things of that nature because that really isn't assessing. It also talks about what good assessment is. I will defiantly use assessment in the classroom but this chapter helped me to realize that I can assess in different ways before the formal assessment.

Timothy Grivois
“Begin with the End in Mind”. That is a sentence that a Catholic school honors student has never really come in contact with to be completely honest. Keeping in mind that my education was of a high level, now that I think about it, several of my teachers definitively kept the concept in mind, I was just never aware of it. This chapter elaborates on the importance of fair and effective assessment. Just merely giving students a slip of paper that says they were able to memorize information is not an adequate measure of how well they understand a concept. Assessments, and for that matter pre-assessment, should be tailored to the specific needs of students rather than the requirements of a school or state-mandated curriculum. Lesson plans must be substantial and full of valid meaning and information. It is unreasonable and unfair for teachers to expect students to learn irrelevant information. “Fluff” is just about the least appealing concept to students, and having been one, I can vouch for the validity of that statement. State-mandated assessments are perhaps the least liked institutional evil that permeate classrooms, but lessons must be meet state requirements //and// create functional and differentiated success.

Josh
This chapter is all about assessment. It introduces the idea that assessing at the end of a unit is not the best way to measure if students are learning the material because it is too late to help them. A lot of focus should be on formative assessment that will measure and help shape the learning as it is happening. This is important to my future math class because I do not want a bunch of tests on my desk with incorrect answers. If there are a lot of wrong answers on the end of unit test, then I have not done my job as the teacher assessing the class through the lesson. There is no reason to give a test if you know the students do not know the information.

**Shila Cook**
What stood out most to me in chapter three was the huge chunk about assessments. I didn't realize before reading the chapter that there are three main ways to assess the students: Pre -Assessments, Formative Assessments, and Summative Assessments. After reading this chapter I feel like the Formative Assessment is the most important type of assessment. Monitoring students as they are learning the information is the best way to see if they are actually mastering the information that we as teachers have handed them. I plan on making this form of assessment hold more weight than a final exam like many teacher do. = =

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Caitlin Alexander
This chapter of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// presents the fact that students are already entering the classrooms with preset thoughts, beliefs, and ideas about what is true. It reminds us that it is a teacher’s job to correct what errors we find in their understanding of “truth” as best as we can. The author presents the idea of offering students the final product (i.e. showing them the final test of the unit) as a way of encouraging interest in the learning, as well as to present clear expectations of learning goals. I think that this is a very useful teaching technique to use in the classroom, and while handing out a final test to students on the first day might initially be frightful, it presents them an opportunity to track where the learning is eventually heading and shows them how learning builds upon itself. He also presents the idea that it is not important to follow a strict agenda, but instead to go along with it as far as the students’ understanding allows for. This is a very logical thing to do, and would be very useful in my classroom: if I as a teacher were to follow a strict agenda I would be ignoring the needs of the students, and it is more important to check for understanding and reinforce where it is needed, rather than meet some deadline.

Kyle Rines
This chapter talks about assessment and how educators should really focus on using student assessment to their advantage in the classroom. This is something that I really believe in. I'm not talking about having my students take some standardized, computerized test that they won't care about. Rather, have them sit in my own room and fill out a pre-test that covers some of the material that I will be covering within the semester. Getting the students to care about it and seeing where they stand academically in my class are two big stepping stones on the way to better learning and achievement.

Kasey Darnell
====“ Its emphasis (assessment) is not so much on documenting deficiencies as it is on shaping our instructional decisions” (Wormeli 20). This line stood out to me because I think many students see assessment as documenting deficiencies. The latter part of this quote is the educator’s viewpoint. By looking at assessment from this perspective, the educator can focus on student needs. This chapter also discussed how students will learn more when they know exactly what the expectations are. Using pre-assessments and ongoing assessments, educators can see where their students are at in their understanding of the material. Assessments should be authentic and check for understanding of essential questions that are the basis of the lesson plan. This chapter provided many great examples and advice for assessing that I will use in my classroom.

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Tyler Brookings
Once again this chapter focused mainly on assessment and reasons the assessments allow teachers to correct some of the information the students were given that was incorrect throughout their years. Many teachers, like students believe that standardized tests are simply an annoyance put on by the state, however, this chapter stresses the importance of using the tests to your advantage in the classroom. If a student has at least the slightest knowledge of the classroom expectations their ability to do well in the classroom will be significantly higher. In my classroom, I, like many teachers will not like to give these standardized tests and will eventually work to not have them but for the time being I will use what I know will be on the tests to best prepare my students for success.

Ben Villeneuve
Chapter three of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// talks very broadly and at length about assessments. Assessments are an important part of teaching. We can use all the fancy teaching methods we want, but if we don’t assess students appropriately, we can’t know that what we have been doing has been working. The most useful pieces of information to me in this chapter were the descriptions of the three different types of assessments: Pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. In my six days watching Mr. Ryder’s methods, I have seen many examples of assessments, and I’m sure I will see many more. For example, there has been a vocabulary quiz. I believe this is a formative assessment, or a summative assessment. The time scale might be too short for it to be the latter, but it is testing material at the end of a section of learning. From here on out, I believe I will pay attention to what types various assessments fall into. = =

Heath
How do we as assess our students? This chapter discusses strategies for assessment. The text advises the best strategy is to have built it into lessons from the very beginning. Teachers should plan to pre-assess student’s prior knowledge, develop low risk formative assessments that provide both student and teacher with insight into how the learning is going and be flexible enough to respond to all of that information. We will have already completed the proactive portion of designing and planning the lessons, we then need to be able to react to the results of the ongoing assessment.