I really
enjoyed the readings because they gave me insight on how to asses students
differently from the traditional test and quizzes that are often seen in the
classroom. Back in grade school, I was never the student who scored 100 on math
exams because I was not a good test taker. Most times I would understand the
material that we were being tested on, however I may have forgotten a step or
two or used a positive instead of a negative and it cost me the grade that I
wanted. Standardize test are also one of those things I did not do well on,
either because I was nervous, or didn’t feel it was important because it didn’t
affect my grade in the class. Both standardize and traditional test I feel do
not always display a students understanding of a skill. After reading the NCTM
Assessment book, I feel that the assessment that I would most use are performance-based
assessments. This is because students are allowed to display their learning in
an authentic manner. Many students do not know that they are being tested when
these types of assessments are being done, so I feel that many students may
perform better because of that fact. Performance assessments can also give
students the opportunity to display learning with out trying to think of the
written vocabulary that best describes their learning. With written test or
quizzes a correct numerical answer may not always demonstrate that a students
understands the problem. In the Stylianou reading it showed that a student
could come up with the correct numerical answer and use faulty reasoning and
errors in the arithmetic, therefore these assessments are not always the best
way to show a students understanding.
One thing
that can be difficult for a teacher to asses with these type of assessments is
that they have to pay attention to the one key component that they are assessing
while so many other things are happening in the learning. With a written or
traditional assessment the teacher can identify whether or not a student
understands a concept immediately through their correct written response and arithmetic
solution, with a performance assessment it does not seem as though students
have many opportunities for revision.
For this reason a question that I would pose to my peers is, can a
student have the opportunity to revise their thinking in a performance
assessment?
When I
think of performance assessments I think of group work or students individually
demonstrating their knowledge through the use of manipulative. After speaking
with my MT, she does not have these opportunities for her students; they are
only confined to paper/pencil test. As for my lesson objective in the lesson
study project, I feel that a good performance assessment would be for students
to verbally explain why they use certain objects to measure with and
demonstrate it with the manipulative provided and show why others would not
work as well. Seeing that I am focusing on one idea, posing a question would
help me to better understand the students learning and reasoning.
To answer your question Tatianna, I feel that the students are capable of revising their work in a performance assessment. If you think about it the students are constantly revising their work, in a way, because when they are SHOWING you what they are trying to solve that means they're constantly thinking and revising in their head how they are solving the problem. If you do a standardized test, students aren't allowed or you can't see their revising work. The only work you see when you give students a standardized tests are the final answer. I believe if you watch a student during a performance assessment then you will see that as they are trying to solve the problem they are showing HOW they are solving the problem and WHY they are solving it that way. I definitely believe that just simply by making it a performance assessment, it allows you to see the work from start to finish during the assessment which I believe is also allowing them to revise.
ReplyDeleteI agree that when you have standardized tests you do not really get the students full academic ability because of the pressure the students are under. The NCTM reading allowed me to understand that the performance assessment allow the teacher to take some pressure off the students and allow the students to show their full potential ability. Since the students are doing these assessments through DOING then i feel they find less stress because it's not a written test. Performance assessments allow the students to show their work and work through the problems they are assigned. These assessments also really benefit the teachers! If we have these types of assessments, we as teachers can take the results and observations during the assessment and apply this to our understanding of how the student works on their math work.
In our lesson study group i believe we are conducting a performance assessment for the students to do. The students will go around the room and measure certain objects with different tools like M&Ms, straws, and paperclips. By doing this, we allow the students to show us what they know about measurement and understand WHY they solved the solution the way they did. I think the only negative to our assessment would be that the students will be doing this measuring activity in groups. So we do not necessarily get to see the work of individuals but rather group work so we would have to do a separate assessment that students did individually to really understand their performance ability.
Like Tatianna's MT, my MT only assesses the children with written or standardized tests. The students hate these written tests and moan when they have to complete them. My MT does not do any other type of assessment so the students only know standardized tests. During the assessments the students will always ask for help and ask questions. They always say "I don't get it" or "how do i start?". This worries me because the students should know how to start the assessments or how to answer the problems but it tells me that my MT doesn't take enough time with them to help them understand the problems and obviously my MT needs to do a different activity or assessment otherwise her students will continue to be confused and disengaged.
I completely agree with Kate. I think that students are able to revise and learn from their own thinking when taking performance-based assessments. These assessments are not usually summative, so students have time to reflect on what they have done. I would also use these types of assessments over formal, more standardized assessments. It is important that teachers use them, because they can learn more about the students' thought processes. The NCTM reading had a lot of good information about the advantages and disadvantages of constructive rubrics. What I found to be very important was that the rubrics need to evaluate several qualities of a students' performance, so that they are able to think critically about their own work. This is important because, instead of just looking at the answers, teachers gain knowledge about what the students know and the process behind how they solved a task.
ReplyDeleteWhen students are forced to take standardized tests, they are being asked to complete questions that they may, or may not, have gone over on their entire school-career. In addition, teachers are made to take time out of their daily lesson plans, to teach their students as much as they can about the topics that come up on these exams. The pressure placed on everyone, as a result of these types of tests, are completely unnecessary. Many students check out, at this point, because they are overwhelmed by the significance of the test, or because they do not feel confident about their performance.
In my placement, my mentor teacher gives the students running records and weekly spelling tests. For mathematics, she has them complete math worksheets that are comprehensive of the lesson topic. I do not abhor this assessment method, however, I think that there are more informal ways that she can assess how the students are coming along with the information. For example, she can walk around and ask the students individual questions about specific (focus, advancing, and assessing) problems on their handouts. This way she can, better, gauge their understanding. This is also a good way for her to evaluate her own teaching. If there are a lot of students who have trouble understanding a certain idea, then she knows that further clarification is needed.
For our lesson study project, there was a lot of discussion involved. Having the students come up and go over their solution methods was a good way to learn about their thought process. When there were misconceptions, they were thoroughly explained, so that the other students understand what made those solutions incorrect.
I also agree with Kate and Valand and believe that students can revise their thinking in a performance assessment. This makes me think of when I worked with a tutor my sophomore year of math during my algebra class. Every concept that we learned seemed to go right over my head and when I would complete the tests my teacher would write huge question marks next to my answers. Rather than ask me about my thinking or try to clarify any of my ideas, she simply drew red question marks all over my paper. Luckily, the tutor I worked with was more willing to help me work through my ideas to try and help me understand. She asked me to show her how I was thinking about working through a problem and why I thought this. By doing so, I was able to monitor my ideas and actually hear that my ideas were not making sense. It’s amazing what talking through a problem can do in terms of helping you understand!
ReplyDeleteIn our lesson study groups, we were able to observe some students’ thinking by the questions that they were asking. At first the students would simply say, “I don’t get this” or “I need help because I don’t know what to do,” but when they were asked questions to push their thinking or asked what they were thinking, they began to talk through their ideas and other students were able to contribute to make sense of thought processes that were being shared. This to me has a vast amount of value compared to written answers at the end of a lesson that usually do not show how a student was thinking about a problem. We can even compare this to the written exit slip we gave to the 5th graders at the end of the lesson study; although some of them gave great reasoning, others did not provide reasoning so we were unsure if those students truly understood or if they simply guessed.
In my placement I’ve seen a lot of math games played and one math exam on fractions. The fractions exam was open-note, open-book so it really did not assess the way students were thinking about their understanding of fractions. Instead, this open-note and open-book test was a better way to test if students know how to learn from text and examples to provide correct answers on a test. This was really unfortunate to me since my MT spends a lot of time finding great activities and games for the students to do during their math time. The problem with all of these fun math activities is that usually they are played before students really have a strong understanding of the concept they are learning about; therefore, these games are more of a “guess and check to see if I get the highest score” type of activity rather than a way to supplement learning and act as a review.
I’d like to know what might be a way for my MT to use these great activities that she finds in a way that could assess how her students are thinking, rather than a way for them to practice material that they barely know?