Tests, Rubrics, Evaluations...Oh MY!

This week's readings are all about evaluation and assessment! Growing up and going through school you learn about your teacher's favorite way to evaluate the class, whether it be exam, project, pop quiz or homework, you knew what classes you dreaded the end of the unit in. I learned that my least favorite form of assessment was Group Projects, I ALWAYS got stuck with the kids that never wanted to do work, it never failed. As I have grown up and made my way through college to
my student teacher preparation classes I have learned that there are many different ways to evaluate student performance, not just an exam, project, quiz, etc.

I think one of the coolest ways to perform assessment would be to use the E-Moments that we have learned about in the beginning of the semester. These are not only FUN but also ENGAGING. E-Moments also give you as the teacher a quick way to gauge where your class is at and what you need to go back and re-teach. Combining this idea with what I read in the readings, I was really excited to see that there were step by step instructions on how to create assessments that will be effective and helpful for both student and teacher use. I plan on using chapter 14 from the book a lot when I have to plan my unit assessments.

I also found both the readings on creating rubrics and evaluating in labs really helpful as well. First, I had never heard of a "vee map" but I think it looks really awesome! I honestly cannot wait to incorporate some of these techniques into my lesson plans. I think they will be really valuable for students to use as tools to help them retain and comprehend what they are learning. I also think it will be beneficial because these techniques can also help them to see the real life benefit of what they are learning. I found that rubrics are important because they give us guidelines for questions or problems that do not have a cut and dry, black and white answer. Rubrics help us navigate the gray areas. As a younger student I HATED rubrics, I always thought it was just something else for me to read and was just a pain. Now that I am older have rubrics attached with almost every project I am thankful for them because they have saved me several points on projects that probably would have not done so well had I not had one. Self evaluation is also a great way to get students to become accountable for their learning as well. As a teacher you can also see why a student may have thought they should have gotten point in that area and may be able to meet them in the middle for a grade!

To tie everything together for me, I read an ASCD article about "The Power of an Effective Teacher and Why We Should Assess It." The article started out with the quote:

This is the value of the teacher, who looks at a face and says there's something behind that and I want to reach that person, I want to influence that person, I want to encourage that person, I want to enrich, I want to call out that person who is behind that face, behind that color, behind that language, behind that tradition, behind that culture. I believe you can do it. I know what was done for me.

—Maya Angelou

I knew that as soon as I read that quote, everything was starting to come into perspective for me and make sense. As I read on through the article it talked about the qualities of an effective teacher, which we spoke about in class (BECOV!!) and how teacher effectiveness relates to student success! Up to this point, this article was like deja vu for the whole semester!!! Then, I got to the part about having high qualified teachers vs. highly effective teachers. Well that's an easy question Effectiveness over Qualifications (to some extent, you still need to have some proper qualifications, we cannot have Joe Shmoe walking in off the street and teaching children!)  I began to read on and think about what administrators and superintendents really look at when you go in for an interview; how can they look at how effectively you teach by just looking at your credentials. I know that in some interviewing processes they will ask you to do a demo lesson but that is not every school's policy. I thought it was something to think about.  Maybe that question will be answered as we travel farther and get closer to preparing for our future interviews? We may never even know the answer to that question.

I think that the readings this week have really given us something to think about because we are at that point in the semester where we are all starting to hit the unit plan and lesson plan creating hard, as we bring units to a close we need to find ways to assess them and will need skills for that. This weeks readings helped me to start thinking about the evaluation methods as a whole and not just individually for each lesson.

Just some words that we should keep in mind when we think about being an Effective Teacher!