cait_journal1

Cait Benson January 31, 2009 EDC 452 Assessment Journal # 1 The mathematics lesson began almost immediately after the students all sat down in their assigned seats. These seats were arranged in a semi-circle facing the whiteboard. The teacher started her lesson by displaying a half-sheet of paper to the classroom of thirteen fifth-grade students and explained that she would be distributing a pop quiz. Before the students could even sign with unhappiness, she then went on to explain to the students that this quiz was for //her// and not for //them//. As the students looked at her with confusion, she continued by telling the students that the quiz was meant to show her what she needed to revisit and re-teach before the final chapter test that would take place in one week. She then told the students that the quiz would neither count towards nor against their final grade. The quiz contained ten questions including multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and true or false. After the teacher orally described the pop quiz to all students, she passed each student one quiz. Once all of the quizzes were distributed, the class worked silently until every student was finished. As I circled the room, I could see one particular question that many students seemed to struggle with; however, all students seemed to have a fairly good grasp on the rest of the concepts represented in the pop quiz. After the students were finished, the teacher used an overhead projector to go over each question. While she displayed the answers on the overhead projector, each student was required to assess themselves by correcting their quiz. She spent the most time explaining the one question that most students struggled with. Once she finished explaining the answers, she collected all quizzes and the students began to work on other assignments. I feel as though this assessment style was an extremely beneficial way to “assess” the progress of all students. I can definitely see myself using this same method in my future class because it not only provides the teacher with a way to see how well or poorly all students are comprehending the material but it also allowed the students to honestly score and assess themselves. Since the teacher is not counting each student’s score on this pop quiz as a real grade, it allows her to assess her students’ understandings of the concepts and determine what she needs to improve on in her instruction. With that, it provides the students with time to practice the mathematical concepts that they will encounter in the final test and see what they need to study more. Overall, my reaction to this method was very positive. I believe that this pop quiz demonstrates an extremely effective and beneficial assessment style that many teachers could use. In addition to this, I do not believe that I would change anything about the way in which this teacher assessed her students.

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