Assessment1

Katelyn Kaufman Assessment Journal #1 February 9, 2009

On my first visit back to North Scituate Elementary I worked with a substitute teacher. I noticed that she was assessing the students anecdotally. She was walking around the room and glancing at a chart that the students were supposed to be filling out. The whole class needed to keep a neat and clear record of the books that they were reading in their free time and identify some major ideas. They needed to keep track of the climax in their stories and also what came of the situation. It was a relaxed situation because the teacher was taking down notes of who was grasping the idea of what a climax was and who was struggling. She did not really offer any suggestions for the children because she wanted to see what they knew without receiving the help of the teacher. I think that this form of assessment was pretty beneficial because this allowed the teacher to see if she needed to refocus on this lesson or if she could move on. The teacher just walked around with a classroom list so that she could take notes on every child. If she saw that students were struggling she wrote down the specific concepts so that she could see the areas that the class needed the most help in. When she looked at the results, she realized that many of the students were struggling with understanding what a climax was. She then decided that she would focus on the lesson for another day and try to teach it in a different way. Before she used a lecture type style but now she told me that she was going to have different examples and have the students try to pick out the climax. The students could take turns writing their ideas on the board so this kept them excited and engaging with the lesson. I think that the way that she assessed the class was beneficial because it allowed her to see that she needed to backtrack. I would use this method when I am teacher because I think that it was a relaxed way for the students to be assessed. I do not think that they realized that they actually were being assessed. In this way, it was effective because the students did not feel nervous and thus it probably did not affect the assessment. Although tests can be an effective way to assess students, it is always a good idea to use multiple varieties. A student may get too nervous during tests and not perform as well as they should have. I also think that this was effective because it showed her exactly what she needed to know. She was able to find out that more than half of the kids were unsure of what to do. This type of assessment was relatively simple to do because the teacher was able to observe the class for about twenty five minutes. She was then able to adjust her previous lesson because she may have realized that it may not have been very effective.