cdyer31_journal3

Corinne Dyer EDC 452 Friday, March 6, 2009

Since my teacher was absent last week, my first-grade classroom spent the entire morning playing catch-up with all of the work they have been missing. I had no problem with this; I helped out the children whenever they needed me and performed odd jobs for Mrs. Moniz. One of my favorite things from today was organizing the Penguin Portfolios. The students had been working on penguins in science for a few weeks, and they completed various tasks related to penguins. There were about 4-5 activities to put inside each portfolio (a long piece of blue construction paper that had a penguin the children colored themselves glued to the front – so cute), and Mrs. Moniz wanted me to put away all the work in each child’s individual folder. I was happy to do this task, as it allowed me to look over all the individual pieces of work that were completed during this unit. One of the activities was a little globe the children colored themselves. There was a flap underneath with a hidden penguin that was revealed once you lifted the globe from the south of the equator. They made these to show that penguins only live in the South Pole. I liked this because it incorporated social studies into the science unit. They are already learning geography at this young age because it is in a context that appeals to them.

Another activity in the penguin portfolio was a little book they had to cut out and put together. All of the information was already inside the book; they really weren’t able to show much understanding here. All they truly needed to do was color a few birds and write their names on the front. Nonetheless, in a first-grade classroom, teachers are constantly trying to expose their students to print. I can see the merit in assigning this, if only to give the children another opportunity to read and develop vocabulary. There was another similar book activity and also a set of worksheets about penguins and ducks, but I did not look at these as closely. The final activity was a chart comparing penguins to ducks. The children were each to fold a piece of construction paper into three pieces like a menu so they could glue all the traits of a duck on one side, all the traits of a penguin on the other, and all the traits they have in common in the middle. This relates to one of the aspects of understanding that Wiggins talks about; they needed to apply their knowledge of penguins in a unique situation – a graphic organizer – in order to show that they not only retained certain facts about penguins, but that they were able to compare them to other animals that have similar and different characteristics.

This portfolio really impressed me to no end. I know that a lot of these activities may seem shallow when viewed separately, but considering the developmental level, there are a lot of different processes at work here. Also, when you put them all together and see just how many varied tasks the children completed, you realize that they have been exposed to a wealth of information about penguins in many different contexts. This is an example of affective assessment, which means that students are encouraged to want to learn more about the topic. The children are reading //Mr. Popper’s Penguins// with Mrs. Moniz every day as a class, and they are so eager to hear more because they love sharing their penguin knowledge. Moreover, whenever they get stuck and cannot recall a fact, they know they can just open the penguin book they made themselves and look up the answer. I love this portfolio because it provides the children with a wealth of knowledge through a collection of work they can look over proudly. According to Wiggins, portfolios provide a opportunities for self-assessment because they can track how their quality of work developed over time. This portfolio is not an evaluation of their entire year’s work (they’re only 6, so they have plenty of time for that torture in high school), but it is a small record of their progress in this unit. According to Wiggins, in grading portfolios, //value judgments// are made. In this case, it means that Mrs. Moniz will be looking to see if this work is at the level students should be at as first-graders in March. She should be looking to see if the work can be deemed acceptable at this stage instead of the individual grade of each piece of work. In short, I think this assessment is not all about understanding. The children will not recall every single fact about penguins and be able to recite them ten years from now. However, Mrs. Moniz can look at this wide range of works and determine whether or not the students are performing at the appropriate level.

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