Jan 29th – ECS 410

This week started off with a conversation about diagnostic tools and we made a list in class. Some of these tools included oral questions, think/pair/share, KWL chart, journal entry, or an exam that is not for marks, just diagnostic purposes. Before this class, I never really thought about diagnostic assessment and how beneficial it can be for a teacher who is planning the lessons to meet the needs of their students. Teachers can learn where their students are at, and plan on from there. These diagnostic tools can become routines in a classroom, to the point where students know what is going on, and know how to do it without instructions. This could be as simple as an exit slip after each week to know where the students are at when it comes to a particular topic. Now that we have discussed diagnostic assessment in great detail, I see the importance of it, and know that I will be using it in the future when I teach.

After we discussed diagnostic assessment, we began to discuss Chapter 3 of our textbook with the question: What should success look like? When I first heard this question I had no idea how to answer it, and after some further discussion, I realised that this was the point of the question. I am just learning to become a teacher; I am not going to know right off the bat what success looks like in my particular subject area. I am going to have to talk to other teachers in my subject area to get examples from there. I am going to have to create a group of people who I can go to for advice on what I am teaching. I am not alone in what I am doing; there is many other teachers out there to help. I can also go online to find out these kinds of things about what success may look like. With technology advancing so fast, there is bound to be something on the internet about what success looks like in every subject area.

Chapter 3 is called “Beginning With the End in Mind”. This chapter talks about how students are more likely to achieve and be successful when they know what they are working towards, when they know where they are going. Teachers have to involve students in the assessment process so that students know what is going on, and what they need to do to be successful. The textbook suggests that teachers should put the outcomes and indicators in a kind of language where students and parents can understand. I agree with this 100% because sometimes I cannot even understand some of the outcomes, and I have to work through them to make them become more understandable. I think this is where our outcome plan assignment comes into more focus with the “I Can” statements. It is a way of putting the outcomes in a clearer language that students are able to understand and use. It sometimes makes me wonder why the curriculum is written in difficult language. I think students and parents should be able to look at the curriculum and understand what is there, but sometimes it is not that easy because it is difficult to understand.

Chapter 4 is called “Describing Success”. This chapter is about the idea of showing students what success looks like by giving them models to look at. I really like this idea. However, being an English major, sometimes showing a model doesn’t help because it scares the students. You give them a finished, polished product with no grammatical errors, and it can be seen as intimidating. When you give them this finished product, you are not showing them the steps that it took to get to the finished product. This is something that we are learning in my ELNG 351 class right now. That if we are going to show what success is like, we are going to have to show the steps as well to get to success. This may not be true in all subjects, but I know it is true in English. So I do agree with the textbook that we have to show what success looks like, but I think we also have to demonstrate the steps it takes to be successful.

Also with this chapter came the question about common assessment and if we like it. Common assessment is when teachers in an area, whether it is school, school divisions, or maybe province, come together and make up a common summative assessment in a certain subject area and grade. At first I didn’t know what to think of this. It seems like it would be a lot of work to do, but after discussing it in class, I formed an opinion on it. In some ways I think it would be beneficial because you can get together with like-minded people in your subject area to come up with a common assessment that works. You get to collaborate and learn new ideas from other people. However, I also think it may be a challenge because you may not get with like-minded people who do not see the same way you do. I am thinking in the terms of English because English is so flexible for the kinds of literature that you can use in a classroom, so coming up with a common text for assessment may be challenging. This is something that I want to continue to look into and learn more about.

Next we learned how to come up with “I Can” statements. This is an idea that is somewhat new to me because we learned the “Students will be able to” method. However, learning it this night, and how to change indicators, was very informational, and I think it helped a lot. This is something I will use in my own classroom so that students are able to know what they are going to learn.

Lastly, we go our class composition for our outcome plan assignment. 27 students. 2 require enrichment, one of which is diagnoses autistic. 3 students below grade reading levels. 1 student who is FAS. And 1 student who is ADHD. This put into perspective of how real this assignment is going to be. We are going to have classes like this, possibly with even more challenges, and we are going to have to deal with learning how to assess each student properly. I am excited to see where this assignment takes me in my learnings.