May+4,+2013+online+class

1. This week's online class will be much like the last one... Keep working on your chapter 3.
2. **Respond to the following questions developed buy Christen from the assessment text (see below)**

**3. As we discussed at our 4/13 class, you are to send me an email detailing what you plan to learn/do related to the "What Constitutes Good Assessment in a Differentiated Classroom" (see handout with list). Recall that we decided that you would work toward meeting at least one of the principles on that list (which is from the text on pp. 39-41) by June 1. Please send that email to me by Friday May 10th so we can discuss it face to face/one on one on Saturday.**

1. Based on your own teaching philosophy…do you feel it is important to tier assignments and assessments? If so, why? If not, why not?
====Yes I feel that is important to tier assignments and assessments. The reason that I think so is because not all students learn the same way and by tiering it helps the student be able to accomplish his or her goals. I believe that as a teacher I want to see my students succeed instead of fail at everything they do because they don't know how. Not all children are capable of testing with others around so giving them the opportunity to test alone do have less problems to do is one example of my tiering.~Tiaa====

Yes, I definitely believe in tiering for assignments. I believe in tiering for assessments as well, which I feel is more difficult to do. Tiering allows students to be successful at learning a skill or concept and then applying that skill or concept at their own level. Tiering meets the needs of all of the students in your classroom, and it helps to focus students who act out because an assignment is too hard or too easy. Tiering does take extra time and work in preparing lessons but it is worth it. Students gain confidence in their skills and realize that it's okay that their classmates are at different level of abilities when applying skills. ~Caryn

2. Give an example of a lesson you have tiered and how you tiered it. ** Also **, give an example of an assessment you have tiered and how you tiered it.
====One example of a lesson that I have tiered is a card game that is called higher or lower. In this game the children are to work in pairs and decided who has the higher and lower card. I tiered this lesson by taking out all of the face cards because I didn't think the children would know which card was higher and lower in the face cards. I also only had the children to decide which card was the higher of the two instead of which was higher and lower. I thought that was a bit to much for them. An assessment that I tiered is having the children match the upper case letter to the lower case letter. for the children who struggle with their letters I gave them a smaller amount of letters so that they would not get frustrated with seeing all of the letters of the alphabet.~Tiaa====

During my reading block, I try to create activities that have been tiered around one skill or concept and place them into my reading stations. One station in particular is in the word work/phonics station. I have three activities at different leveIs which empasses that one specific skill or concept. A specific concept or skill is learning that oo, ou, and ew all can make the same sound in certain words. So, I included 3 levels of acticitives. All students had to match pictures with words that had oo, ou, and ew sounds. Students had to record their matches. Students who are above level had to use each word in sentence and alphabetize the words. Students who were working on level were asked to use each word in a sentence. Students who are working below level were asked to match oo, ou, and ew words and pictures and record their answers. ~Caryn Assessing what students have learned can be as easy as changing the number of questions that students have to answer, have questions and answer choices read to studenst who are working below level, or changing the numbers in math assessments: below level studenst would receive lower numbers, and higher student can work with higher numbers. An assessment created to test science knowledge could include drawing and diagraming, multiple choice questions, and essay questions. This type of assessment allows for all students to be able to show what they know in more than one way or in the way that best suites their way of learning.~Caryn

Not sure.~Tiaa
The adjective that I would use to describe my grading practices is FAIR. We use a scale with these ratings: 4-above level, 3- Proficient, 2- Basic, and 1- Working below grade level expectations. I put a percentage on each rating scale because my parents always want to know what letter grade the scale is comparable to. There were so many other teachers that were receiving the same questions that we decided on 4= (A)100%- 90%, 3= (B) 89%- 80%, 2= (C) 79%-70%, and 1=(D) 69% and lower. I use the word FAIR because telling a parent that their child is making a 4, 3, 2, or 1 really doesn’t say much. If I were a parent I would need more information than that, and when conferencing with parents, I try to have as many samples of their child’s work to support why they received that number grade. ~Caryn

I think that the best type of test or assessments for my students would be "Keep it Short." When I give my students less questions they tend to do better then when i give them more.~Tiaa
For the range of skills that my students have, I feel that assessments which are both traditional and nontraditional such as: multiple choice questions, essay questions, pictures that can be labeled or drawn to show knowledge are the best types of assessments as well as tests. I feel this way because using a variety of test questions can appeal to all types of learning styles of my students. There is a catch with the essay portion of the test and that is that a rubric is needed to grade the depth of each students answers. ~ Caryn

2. Do you think a test should be objective? Why?
This is a question that I have been thinking about. I am not sure I guess since i have to answer it I would say yes but im not sure why i say yes. It maybe because of the fact that im a kindergarten teacher and we don't do a whole lot of testing.~Tiaa

This is a hard question. I feel that a good mix of objectivity and subjectivity can be used to accurately grade the skills and abilities for the whole child for specific subjects. I think using scores and percentages are used when a teacher needs to be objective in certain part of the curriculum such as math. In other areas rubrics can be used, but this is when subjective grading happens and different teachers may see a child’s work different than another teacher might. ~ Caryn