Journal+5_Dyana

Dyana Brown Assessment Journal #5 Today in class, my teacher went over rhyming words with the students. She began by reading a Dr. Seuss story since it was the last day of Dr. Seuss week. She read the __Cat in the Hat__ and had the students finish the end of each page being read since it is a predictable book. After she finished reading the book, the teacher asked the students what words rhymed with “feather.” The students came up with a lot more words than expected, so the teacher wrote the students’ responses on a piece of chart paper. She also asked the students to spell the words that they found to rhyme with the word, “feather.” The teacher guided the students through spelling the words by writing the beginning letter of the rhyming words in a different color than the rest of the word. She continued this process with rhyming words and spelling these rhyming words with other words such as, “mice.” After this activity, the teacher had the students finish and re-edit their rhyming pamphlets that they had worked on earlier that week. The worksheet consisted of pictures and fill-in-the-blank. In the beginning part of pamphlet, the children had to write a word that rhymed with the word presented above. For example, there would be a word, “boat” next to a picture of a boat. The students then had to come up with the word and correctly spell the word, “goat” since this was the picture provided under the picture of the boat. There were three other sets of these picture and word pairs so that the students had to find a word that rhymed with the previous word and its accompanying picture. The last part of the pamphlet required the students to come up with five of their own rhyming pairs and to draw a picture representing each of their chosen rhyming words. The teacher primarily assessed the students on the spelling of their words and the words’ rhyming nature. She also looked for word pairs that were similar in spelling than in rhyming so that the students can focus more on the spelling and changing beginning letters of the words. I think that this assessment is effective because it remodels what the teacher has gone over with the students and reiterates rhyming words and the rhyming nature of the words. As the students become more familiar with how words rhyme, they expand their skills in rhyming and can think beyond the obvious and typical word rhyming pairs. For example, one student came up with the rhyming pair of “mice and advice.” The last part of the assessment asks the students to come up with their own pairs of rhyming words. This part of the assessment challenges the students in a different way and asks them to be more active in their learning as opposed to just writing in the expected answer to the rhyming pair. I overall feel that this is an effective assessment because it assesses the students on the same concept in more than one way. These different ways are both developmentally appropriate and challenging enough for the students to expand their learning. This also gives the teacher a better sense of which individual students actually understand the concept and who just know when the change the letter of a word to make a rhyming word. I do not think I would change something about this particular assessment since there are also supplementary assessments that further this concept. The last part of the pamphlet also provides the students with a sense of ownership since they are creating their own words.