FIAE+B2+Chapter+2

FIAE Chapter 2 Synthesis by Megan Wallace
Abstract: Chapter 2 in __Fair Isn't Always Equal__ deals with the concept of mastery. What does it mean for a student to have mastered the material? Just repeating information back during a test isn't enough. The students need to understand the information and be able to use it outside of test. The suggestion is made to speak with colleagues to determine a consensus on what it means for students to have mastered material. When everyone is in agreement it makes it easier on the students. The chapter also gives the advise of using [|multiple assessment techniques]. When students are given more opportunities, they are more likely to succeed.

Reaction: When reading the reactions written by my classmates there seemed to be a common these of wanting to make sure our student truly understand what they are learning. We want more from them than to just be able to spit information back at us. Several people mentioned using [|different types of assessment]. A few talked about working with colleagues in order to better support their students. Some spoke about using the six facets of understanding to help their students master the material. From all the great ideas I have no trouble believing that we will do just that. toc

Charli Sayward
Chapter 2: Mastery I’ve realized it’s going to be a lot harder than I expected to assess a student’s mastery. Mastery is much more than just knowing and memorizing facts; it is having a complete understanding of facts, ideas, and concepts, while being able to apply this understanding to other situations. Many times throughout my high school career I was able to memorize facts for a test, but I definitely did not master the material. I no longer remember what I learned; I can no longer make meaning of the information. I hope that I will be able to prepare my students beyond what is necessary for a test. I believe if I allow students to do more board work and group work, their assessments will show a variety of skills and understandings beyond being able to just solve problems on paper.

Kassaundra
Chapter 2: Mastery Each teacher has his or her own idea of what mastery means to them or for their subject but usually their definition includes the idea that students are able to understand a concept to the point where they can explain it as well as apply it to varying situations. This means that just forcing facts into my students’ heads through repetition will not be helpful. I will need to teach in a way that promotes mastery. That promotes them being able to manipulate and utilize the information I am teaching them. The idea of demonstrating mastery comes when students have to explain how they came to their conclusion. I, as a teacher, cannot assume they have mastered a concept just by seeing them do it correctly one or two times. For all I know these could have been guesses. There are obstacles that can prevent teachers from helping their students achieve mastery and this includes isolation. If no one is willing to talk about mastery then we as teachers are just hoping that we are teaching effectively enough to get it. If we just hope to get it then our students may never reach mastery at any level.

Alyssa Wadsworth
This chapter was about mastery. I learned that there are so many definitions of mastery, just like the word "understand," that the chapter encourages us to use our colleagues as resources. The book also promotes basing our meaning of mastery in the classroom on one that the faculty agreed would best assess the students. This will affect me as a teacher because, even if I choose to use a definition of mastery reached by my colleagues and me, I still have to choose what my students have to master, and assess how well they have mastered the content I gave them. Collaboration among colleagues is also supported in this area—which also means that if we have the same idea of what the students have to master, and how to asses what they have mastered, the students will not have to meet varying levels of mastery in their classes. This affects my students because if I can tell them exactly what they have to master, and what my definition of “mastery” is, they don’t have to guess what they need to achieve, and might be able to reach the standard with more diligence.

Bri Douglass
After learning from chapter one about what differentiation is and what it means within the classroom, chapter 2 talks about mastery. In this chapter I learned what it means to actually learn or master a topic. As teachers we don’t want students to be banks where we deposit information but never ask them to think about the subject. By using the facets of understanding “Explanation, Interpretation, Application, Perspective, Empathy, Self-Knowledge” (12) students can demonstrate this understanding. I totally agree with this idea because through my own experiences in high school many times students are solely expected to memorized and spit out information instead of understand or master the information. In my future classroom I want my students to become masters, of mathematics. To grasp why some actions are possible and some are not, instead of memorizing. I will have to use the 6 facets in order to determine if I have succeeded or not.

Darcie Simmons
In this chapter it discussed the difference between students knowing the material that is being taught to them, and mastering the material. It talked about the six facets discussed in UbD/DI. However, it went even further to say that there are two ways to obtain good examples of mastery. The first being multiple assignments, and the second of tracking the progress of important works over time. In order for the students to be able to know the material that they are doing in class, they need to be repetitively doing the work. This can happen with homework assignments every night, and it can also be done with projects. Personally, as a student I always found that by doing a project I learned the material the best. In the classroom, as a social studies teacher, I would be more likely to expect my students to learn the material via projects, rather than essays and tests. While essays and tests are a good source for the students to learn the material, it’s not a successful way for them to master the material, like it would if you were to have them create a project that requires many components to lead to understanding.

Jenn Baum
Chapter 2: Mastery In this chapter, assessing students through mastery was introduced. In order to truly assess whether or not a student has mastered material, we as teachers need to find appropriate ways to assess them in order to determine whether they can go beyond just knowing and regurgitating the information. The six facets of true understanding are ways to ensure that students hold a deep understanding of given material. By being able to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through these facets, which include “explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge,” we are better able to assess mastery of content (12). Speaking from the perspective of a student, I can attest to the fact that I have definitely taken classes that have only forced me to memorize material for a test and as soon as I was done taking the class, found that the material was already lost or forgotten. As a teacher, I want to ensure that my students are able to do more than just memorize a list of words, or concepts. I want them to be able to remember it in great detail and understanding, both of which would last longer and be more useful. In order to assess my students most effectively, I will make sure to assess them in multiple ways as well as tracking their progress over time in order to fairly assess, giving multiple learners various opportunities to show deep understanding and mastery of the subject.

Kelly Steinhagen
There is not just one way to decide if a student has mastered a concept. In fact, as a teacher I must have my own criteria for what the students will need to understand and assessments that prove that they do. This chapter stressed how important it is to have clear objectives before creating lesson plans because differentiation instruction can not come before an idea of what mastery is. Although grades are "necessary" and give some insight as to how a student is doing, I will be able to use the six facets of understanding as a way to tell if the student has mastered the topic past major assignments. I think it will be more important that they can demonstrate the knowledge through all of the facets because it is a wider range of evidence compared to a couple grades. It might be necessary, however, to include projects that span across the facets of understanding and relate to the real-world because then the students will have to effectively reach each of the facets to do well on the project.

Ryan Pelletier
“Tim was so learned, that he could name a horse in nine languages” (Ben Franklin). This quote reminds me of our MEL presentations that we made in our other class. Our class presentations all explained the same graph, but we did it in many different ways. The presentations were auditory, visual, and physical. They all explained the same thing, but explained it differently. This made it more exciting to learn about the graph, because they contained different learning techniques. By learning what the graph was and then presenting the graph, it made us all masters of the graph.

Megan Wallace
I learned that there is so much more to seeing if a student has mastered the material than just a test score. Just because a student has passed a test doesn’t mean that they have mastered the material. It is easy to memorize facts for a short period of time in order to repeat them on a piece of paper. The harder part is being able to remember that material later on down the line. When I become a teacher I plan on making the material relevant to the students’ lives. If they care about what I am teaching them they are more likely to not only remember the material but to be able to apply it as well.

Taylor Kemp
This chapter is all about mastering what is being taught. It explains that simple tests are not a way to actually tell if something is being mastered. More often then not, information is being committed to memory until the test and then it is not longer there. This is not mastery. Mastery can be tested by more in depth assessments, putting the knowledge to use, as well as other practices. How this will impact me and my classroom is that I will make sure that when I am assessing my students on their knowledge, I will be specific with my goals of what I want them to learn, but also with how I am testing them. The tests will not just be a fill in the blank test or something to that effect, it will be an applications test, one that has a place to explain what they mean. More of a test that has open ended questions, not cut and dry answers.

Justin Stewart
Assessments are difficult to give students because teachers need to see mastery of the subject not just lucky guesses. Teachers must assess students in ways that they can be sure that the students truly understand what they had done with a certain problem. I will have to find ways in order to create assessments that demand true understanding of the ideas. I will need to become creative when I create my tests and assessments because I will differentiate the assessments in as many ways as I can; at the same time I will make sure that the students will truly understand the point of each topic they are learning. My students will have to write out their reasons for certain answers. I will require them to do different types of questions using the same knowledge with different contexts.

**Lyzz Stevenson**
**Chapter 2**: Mastering a subject is important to both students and teachers. Students’ mastery of a subject can tell a teacher that they are covering the subject completely. It is important for teachers to make sure that students fully do understand a subject as they will be continually tested on their knowledge. This ties in well with chapter 5 of UbD and DI as it talks about the different ways of assessing students learning. It will be important to make sure students fully understand and assess them over several assessments. = =

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Erin
Chapter 2: Mastery discussed the issue of whether or not students or the teacher understand the material to a certain point. I learned that just because my students can memorize a list of things does not mean that they have mastered it. This impacted me because I had to memorize the times tables in fourth grade. What our teacher had us do is report to her at the end of school and we would have to recite them. We did not understand why 5x6 was 30, we just knew the answer. We did not understand that 5x6 means that we are adding together 6 groups of 5 units. At a certain point I did learn to master it, but that should have been introduced to us earlier. How this would impact my classroom is that I will assess my students in a way that would show that they understand and have mastered the material.

Linda McLaughlin
//Chapter Two: Mastery// This chapter tied in well with UbD/DI because it discussed the six facets of true understanding to help show whether or not a student has mastered an idea. I learned that mastery is difficult to assess because sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between true mastery or just being able to memorize and spit out facts. “Students have mastered content when they demonstrate a thorough understanding as evidenced by doing something substantive with the content beyond merely echoing it” (p.12). This impacted me because I realized that it’s going to take a lot more than I originally thought to determine whether or not my students have successfully mastered a topic. I don’t want to be one of those teachers who make their students memorize a bunch of information for a test, and then those students remember it only long enough to do well on the test. It’s going to impact my classroom in a way that I’m going to try to create lesson plans that provide meaning and engagement so that the students are truly understanding and learning the content in depth. I want them to be able to be successful learners and be able to show me they’ve mastered the material.

Kaitlyn Haase
Chapter 2: Mastery In chapter 2 I learned that determining if a student has mastered material or a subject can be a very difficult task. One great way to determine evidence of mastery is to avoid activities or lessons in which students only give one-line or minimal responses. It is important to have students elaborate on their work because we, as teachers, can then see their thought process. In my classroom, I will emphasize showing all work on math problems. This will allow me to see the processes the students use to get their answers. It is much easier to see why someone didn’t reach the correct answer when all work is shown.

Matt Towle
 Chapter 2 discussed ways in which teachers can judge mastery. It is a very difficult task to analyze student's work to determine whether they have gained mastery and understanding of the topic or not. I learned that the best way to determine mastery is by analyzing a variety of assignments, projects and tests. This way, you can make sure that student's are able to apply the knowledge they have learned to different situations.  This will affect my classroom because I will need to be able to find multiple ways to grade students. I will not be able to just give out a final unit test and call it good. I will have to come up with a number of projects that, when completed, will show me that students have gained mastery of the unit.

Olivia
Chapter two of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, the idea of what mastery is was discussed. Mastery goes beyond regurgitating facts. Mastery has to do with knowing what something is, and using the information in everyday life. As a teacher, I will try my best to make sure that my students are not just memorizing the information I give to them. I know that I can track this by looking at a tests, projects and other assignments to see how each student is doing. I hope to be certain that my students have mastered the material and I will do this by assessing them often in the specific topic areas I have taught.