jessicaturco_journal3

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February 13, 2009

Assessment Journal # 3 Today was a special day in my first grade classroom- it was the 100th day of school! Gearing up for this special day, the students have spent the entire week studying things in groups of 100. They practiced counting to 100 by 1s, 2s and 10s and even showed their counting skills to their Principle. At the beginning of the week, my cooperating teacher told her class how exciting it would be if the entire class read 100 books by Friday, the 100th day. Excited and willing to attempt this challenge, the first grade did some simple counting to figure out how many books they would have to read each day in order to reach their goal of 100 books. They soon discovered that in order to read 100 books, the class of 19 would have to read at least 20 books a day. If each child read a book a day, the goal was in reach!

Throughout the week, the teacher used an affective assessment strategy. An affective assessment strategy is one that a teacher uses to engage their students learning in the lesson and assess that the material taught is effectively learned. To make her students excited to read 100 books, the teacher created a book worm that would be posted around the room. The teacher, symbolizing the beginning of the students’ reading, created the head of the book worm. Each morning, the teacher would have blank copies of the book worm’s body available for the students to fill out and complete for each book they read. The worksheet had lines where the student would write their name, the title of the book, as well as their favorite part of the book. After the students filled out a part of the book worm’s body, they would color and cut out the segment and hand it in to the teacher to add to the body of the book worm.

When I came into class today, the book worm’s body filled the wall. The teacher announced in the morning that as a class, they had read 92 books! The class was very excited, and when the teacher asked how many books they had to read in order to reach 100, they all replied with large grins on their faces, “Eight more books!” To go along with their 100 books, the teacher read two books that had to do with “100 things”. The first book dealt with baking 100 different food items while the other was about students who had to bring in 100 things to school on their 100th day. Just like the book with bringing 100 things to school, the teacher had her students bring in 100 of their own choice! The teacher’s only rules were the 100 things had to be somewhat small, had to fit in a paper bag, just like the rules from the story. After the teacher read the book, she had her students get their paper bags and count out there 100 things to show her. Each child was very excited to show their teacher their 100 things.

I really enjoyed watching my teacher’s affective assessment strategy put into action this today. She not only had a fun celebration celebrating the 100th day of school, but she was able to include math and reading into her lesson. Cross planning subjects is a great way to teach a lesson. Many teachers use this technique when they create their lesson plans. Touching upon different subjects allows students to use what they know and apply it to something new. Overall, I think my teacher did a great job teaching on the 100th day of school by including so many 100 themed things!