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Final 7th Grade  Poetry  Unit Assessment Project

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Advanced Curriculum  Design Presentation

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Research Paper Student Learning and Exit Tickets  A

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My original intent with the action research was to use Plickers as a formative assessment in the form of an exit ticket.  I had hopes the use of exit tickets would help students stay focused on the daily objective.  The results of the trial showed some improvements on some days and on other days my students struggled.  I felt this gave me an opportunity to reflect on my teaching strategies to determine what might need to change in order to help my students improve their learning.  Plicker usage attracted my students’ interests; I will continue to use them and hopefully learn to use them more effectively to increase student learning.

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For the technology class I put together a PowerPoint reviewing and “walking” my students through the writing process for a paragraph.  It takes the students from the first step of acquiring an idea, brainstorming, organizing, rough drafting, proofreading and editing, to a final copy and sharing it with me on Google docs.  Although actually putting a PowerPoint together is not really new to me, the process of teaching the students how to use googledocs is.   I have not been able to use it as much as I would like as our district has not released the information for students to set up accounts with the school district.  They were supposed to roll out the system at the beginning of this year, but due to some misunderstandings with Google it is not yet ready.  However, some of my students who have technology available to them at home have quickly found the advantages of sharing their documents with me when writing, as I can easily give them written feedback in the evenings, when I am not being pulled in five different directions by five different students asking questions all at the same time in a class room.  The other plus to using Google docs it has developed student communication skills in a different form and improved the rapport between my students and myself.  Although this is my primary example of technology usage from the technology class, I feel my most valuable technology usage was developed in my action research class where I learned to use Plickers as an exit ticket strategy.

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Assessment Reflections: I have always been confused about the difference between summative and formative assessments.  This class has clarified the differences much better than any in-service I have taken.   Based on what I’ve learned, my classroom is much more formatively organized than summative.   However, I have learned a few extra tricks with this class such as allowing the students to provide more personal feedback regarding their understanding of topics throughout the unit. I have found asking the students to write to me about what they don’t understand gives them an opportunity to truly vent without the whole class knowing their struggles.  I have started looking at refining my rubrics based on this course and also refining how I put my summative tests together.  I haven’t ever  used  a  rubric for written responses on tests, but now see how it would be useful for students to know what the teacher is looking for and also to keep me in line with what my expectations as I score  written  responses.  

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Assessment Reflections: I have always been confused about the difference between summative and formative assessments.  This class has clarified the differences much better than any in-service I have taken.   Based on what I’ve learned, my classroom is much more formatively organized than summative.   However, I have learned a few extra tricks with this class such as allowing the students to provide more personal feedback regarding their understanding of topics throughout the unit. I have found asking the students to write to me about what they don’t understand gives them an opportunity to truly vent without the whole class knowing their struggles.  I have started looking at refining my rubrics based on this course and also refining how I put my summative tests together.  I haven’t ever  used  a  rubric for written responses on tests, but now see how it would be useful for students to know what the teacher is looking for and also to keep me in line with what my expectations as I score  written  responses.  

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AD Curriculum Final Holocaust Unit Plan (Autosaved) 2

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Of all of the classes  for this  degree,  the advanced  curriculum  course, probably helped me to see how to approach  students  at various  levels with different  backgrounds.  I prepared a Holocaust Survivor’s unit.  I’ve used this unit before, but it needed fine tuning.  I took more time to help prepare the students for the reading selections in regards to learning the historical background of the implementation of Hitler’s master plan through a website exploration assignment.   It helped students understand why so few people in the nonfiction storied did not fight back. But it also helped them see the strength of those who did. The purpose of the unit is to teach empathy, to think independently, to write a character analysis, and to recognize how to have hope even in the worst situations. Because of the diverse number of reading selections, I was able to help students choose stories which I felt would complement their skills with a bit of a challenge if the student was a lower level reader.  I assigned my higher level readers the more complex stories.  The students don’t know which selections are easier or harder pieces of text. This saves the students the embarrassment of everyone knowing if one person is struggling more than another. Because students work at their own pace in this unit, I have more time to check in with them individually as they are reading and working on study guides and writing assignments.