Week 7 & 8 Statistics (combined)

 During week 7, we learned a the basics of statistics. I reviewed a lot of vocabulary previously learned in my statistics course. With the information I learned, I can better understand assessments and grading scales. Here are a few terms that we learned in week 7...

Population- Entire group of people

Sample- group of people who participate in the study

Norming- refers to the process of constructing norms or the typical performance of a group of individuals on achievement. 

Validity- Whether the assessment measures what it is supposed to measure. 

Reliability- whether the results can be reproduced under the same conditions.

Mean- the average of a set of numbers 

Median- The middle number in a set of numbers ranging from lowest to highest.

Mode- The number that appears most often within a set of numbers.

Normal curve- A bell shaped curve that represents a set of data. 

Standard Deviation- A set of data where the distant scores depart from the mean.

During week 8, we put used some of the vocabulary from the previous week to learn new things in excel. We learned how to find the mean, median, and mode just by clicking a few buttons and creating a formula for excel to solve for us. I found this very helpful for creating grade books and assessing student data. It will save me a lot of time by not having to mentally solve the problems. We also learned how to find the standard deviation of a set of numbers just by setting up a formula for excel to read. We used the set of data points to create several different types of graphs. Creating the graphs helped visually see the data set out. 

Week 6 Alignment and Lesson Planning

 During week six, I learned all about lesson planning and aligning the standards to the objectives. As I begin writing my lesson plans, it is important that the standard, objective, and assessment all align. If they do not align, you as the teacher need to make any changes to get them to align. I noticed that if you follow  a lesson plan starting with the standard, then objective, and the the assessment. It is easier to make sure that they all align before you start writing the procedures down.  If your lesson plan is not aligned then you are wasting not only your time but the students time. They are not going to be very confused and they are not going to grasp the information that you want them too. 

After writing my own lesson plan for the first time, I have already learned so much information that I can use in my own classroom. I think whenever I have my own classroom, I will not include so much detail within it. It is important to differentiate your lesson plans and sometimes the only way to do that is during instruction as you notice that changes are needed. Once you make one change to your lesson plan, more than likely, you will have to change the whole thing or a good section of it. This is why I think lesson plans should not be stuffed with procedures and step by steps but rather having just a general idea of what you plan to do with your students. 

 

Week 5 learning objectives & Lauren Wagner

 During week 6, we learned all about how to write learning objectives and why they are important. A learning objective is a statement that describes exactly what you want the students to know at the end of a lesson or unit plan. Learning objectives should be actionable, measurable, and student centered. They must be aligned with the assessments that follow your lesson. If the objectives are not aligned, the teacher should make revisions so that they align to each other. We learned that you can develop effective objectives by using the ABCD formula which stands for audience, behavior, condition, and degree. The audience is referring to the "who" portion of the objective which is almost always "the students." The behavior is referring to the "what" portion of the objective. What are you having the students learn at the end of the lesson. The condition is referring to what circumstances are involved. The degree portion is referring to the level of understanding. How much information do you want your students to be able to retain. Using the ABCD formula you will be able to provide clear picture of the instruction and how their success will be determined. 

Below is an example from the slideshow presentation used in class, of the ABCD formula in action. 

Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree. 

Given a blank map of the United States,
each learner will use a pencil to fill in the
names of at least 30 states in five minutes
or less, with at least 90% accuracy.

We had a guest speaker, Lauren Wagner, come into class to talk more about assessments. She went over a lot of material but the main idea I took away from her was that when doing an assessment report, you are not going to cover all the material in one term. By the end of the term, every column should have information but not necessarily for each term period. 

Week 4: Bloom's & DOK

 During week 4, we learned all about Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge. 

Bloom's Taxonomy is a framework for classifying learning based on different levels of cognitive rigor and complexity. There are six steps from top to bottom are create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, remember. You are supposed to move from the bottom of the model up to the top. The closer to the top you get the more thinking you have to do to produce an answer. 

Webb's Depth of Knowledge is a model to analyze how deep students must think to answer questions and complete activities. There are four steps which are step 1: recall and reproduction (acquired knowledge), Step 2: skills and concepts (knowledge application), Step 3: strategic thinking (analysis), Step 4: extended thinking (augmentation). This model follows the steps and with each step the level of thinking gets harder as you go. 

I am going to apply this new knowledge into my classroom when giving instruction or assignments to my students. Depending on the situation, Webb's depth of knowledge and Bloom's Taxonomy can be implemented with just about any lesson. I think implementing either of these models will help students grasp the information being taught a lot better. 

Week 3 Documentation

 Week 3 

Documentation- dynamic records of a child's progress. *includes photographs, comments, transcripts, graphs, drawings...*

    Week three we learned a lot about documentation and the different types of documentation. We learned about documentation panels. They are essentially a display of the child's work and what they are learning. The students can use the documentation panels to revisit what they have learned. We also learned about portfolios and how they can be used to document children's work. A portfolio is a collection of a students work set into a binder. It is used to store and display the child's work overtime. It can also be used to show how much the student has improved overtime. 

    I will use this information to apply it into my own classroom. Documentation is an important thing for not only the teacher but for the students and family. The family can use whatever documentation you provide to know what their daughter/son is learning within your classroom. The parents can then use that information to work with their child at home. This will help me provide the best learning experiences for my students because they will be able to reflect on their learning even while they are at home. 

Week 2 observation

 Week two

During week two, We learned a lot about observation and the different types of observation note taking strategies. We also went over a few different types of grading scales. While learning this weeks information, I was able to bring in background knowledge from whenever I was in grade school during centers, I remember my teachers walking around with a notepad writing down information that the students never got to see. After learning about this information, I can infer that my teachers were writing down running records of the classroom. 

Objective- based on facts and observable behavior, often quantifiable and measurable. 

Running records- detailed description of a sequence of behaviors, present tense, includes as much detail as possible.

Anecdotal records-  brief description of a single incident, what, where, when, written in past tense.

Time Sampling- used when there is an interest in determining frequency of behavior, observed for a predetermined time. 

Event Sampling- identify possible causes and possible consequences of certain behaviors, uses the A,B,C technique to determine why a certain behavior is happening. (antecedent, behavior, consequences)

Checklist- an organized list of skills, abilities, and behaviors. (yes/no, no details)

Rating scale- an organized list of skills, behaviors, abilities, and levels of performance. The degree to which they are observed.(highly subjective)

Rubric- an organized list of skills, behaviors, abilities, and levels of performance. defines the level of degree. 

Analytic Rubric- describes and scores each of the tasks separately. provides detailed feedback in areas of strength or weakness. 

Holistic Rubric- describes the criteria for one score. 

Week 1 Assessments

 WEEK ONE 

During week one, we learned a lot of valuable information. We went over different types of assessments and why we use certain ones. I believe that this information is very useful for my future, whenever I am creating a lesson I am definitely going to keep the different types of assessment in mind. Before taking this course, I knew that there were different types of tests for different reasons but I never expected there to be this many. I always assumed that there was only three different kinds of assessment, what you know before you learn it 

Assessment- process of recording, observing, and documenting the work of students and how they do it. It can be used as a basis for educational decisions. 

Formal- empirical research data, students are compared to levels of expected performance. 

Informal- "teacher created", multimodal 

Authentic- focused on real life activities

Performance based- action and skill based 

Formative- assessment that is taking during the learning process to help teachers evaluate the learning process of students 

Summative- helps determine students final knowledge of a skill. 

Criterion - Refrenced- high stakes standardized test. 

Diagnostic- assessment of what the student knows before you teach it.

Norm- refrenced- ranks students in terms of standardized distribution of scores (designed to compare scores.