The Learning House

In class, we were asked to reflect on our own views of teaching and learning. Dr. Smirnova asked the class to build a learning house with the following components: assessment, instruction, standards/content/curriculum, and learning. My learning house that I build is shown below.

The Learning House

I constructed this house with the standards at the base. I believe that the standards and curriculum form the base for what we are going to teach. We take our ideas that we are going to teach from the curriculum. The walls of the house are composed of assessment and instruction. I feel that these two go hand in hand when teaching. Assessment should be ongoing rather than just at the end of a lesson. Lastly, at the roof of the house, I have learning. I believe that the ultimate goal of providing instruction and assessing students' understanding of the content is for the students to learn. 

As I mentioned before, assessment should take place as instruction is going on. There are three types of assessment that are to be used throughout the lesson. The first type of assessment is diagnostic assessment. This type of assessment allows for the teacher to see where the students are in understanding before instruction takes place. I think that this form of instruction can be very beneficial when planning lessons for your class because you can assess where the students are in their knowledge of the content and then use that information to know what to cover in your lessons. The next type of assessment is formative assessment. This type of assessment is ongoing and takes place throughout the lesson. The teacher should constantly  be assessing the students understanding as the lesson is taking place and adjusting the lesson to help the students grasp the concepts. Lastly, summative assessment can be used as a final check for understanding. For class, we were asked to fill out a graphic organizer based on our findings about assessment. In my reflection, I explained that there are several things that I had learned that can be applied to my future teaching. However, I really feel that it is important to understand the idea that instruction and assessment work together. As teachers, we should remember to assess our students and adjust our instruction based on the needs of our students. 

In the video, Assessing Students' Learning, I was able to observe teachers demonstrating various types of instruction and assessment in their classrooms. When assessing students, teachers should consider the following:

1. process
2. what 
3. purpose 
4. criteria
5. criteria in advance 
6. student awareness 
7. type of feedback 
8. opportunity to revise 
9. clue for teacher 

I think that these ideas are important to consider when assessing the students' knowledge and can create meaningful and successful assessments. 

One teacher that I enjoyed watching was Ms. Gonzalez. I liked how she brought up a previous topic that was learned in school and encouraged the students to draw connections at a personal level. She also was constantly assessing the students' knowledge and understanding as the lesson was going on. A more informal assessment occurred when Ms. Gonzalez led a class discussion. However, during this time, she did not give the students the correct answers. Rather, she allowed the students to make their own connections and come to an answer based on those connections. During this assessment, Ms. Gonzalez was assessing the students' understanding of needs and wants and some of the things that are necessary to live. After this informal assessment, Ms. Gonzalez asked the students to create a chart with needs on one side and wants on the other. This provided a more formal assessment for the students to show their understanding of the idea behind needs and wants. I thought that this activity was well structured and that the positive feedback provided as the charts were being created was helpful in the students' understanding.

In class this week, we also learned about creating good test items. We were also asked to create our own test for our peers to take that assessed our understanding on how to create the different types of questions. If you are interested in taking the test that I created, it can be found here. As I was taking my peers' tests, I found that there were some questions that encouraged reasoning and thinking. However, on the other hand, some of the questions assessed declarative knowledge. By creating my own test, I felt that it further developed my understanding of creating good test items.