1. Description of a method of understanding prior-knowledge of students.
One method to understand the prior-knowledge of the students is to do a small activity and gauge their responses. For example, the KWL activity reveals to the teacher what the students already know and wonder about. Not all students will be at the same place, so this shows the teacher if s/he needs to do a review lesson on background knowledge or if only a couple students who could be reached individually need extra help.
2. Discussion on the importance of establishing anchors for a project.
Establishing anchors gives the teacher a feel as to where the students are going to begin in the project and how far they will have to stretch themselves to get to the end goals. With this sense, teachers will be prepared to give projects that aren't so difficult that they overwhelm the student's starting point and are impossible for them to complete but that are also not so easy and don't require much on the part of the students.
3. Description of several ways to assess what students learned during the project.
- Asking students what they learned: A teacher can simply ask the students to reflect on their projects and what they felt that they learned. This can not only help the teacher see how the students improved but also give them insight on ways to improve their teaching (ex. how the students in the chapter mentioned they really liked the use of podcasts).
- Having the students create something new: This will force the students to either summarize or demonstrate what they learned. For example, all of us are creating our websites with everything we have created and learned this semester. This is our professor's way of assessing us instead of something traditional such as a multiple choice exam.
- Modeling real-world assessment: Assess the students the way that they would be assessed in the field that their project was in. For example, if the students did a science project, assess them like how scientists are assessed, and if they created something like a graphic art, assess them like how those in the field would be assessed.
- Enter a contest/submit for publication: This motivates students to really put forth their best effort, and this is point-blank real world assessment. For example, if they make a business plan, have them pitch it in a business plan competition.
4. Discussion on how concepts in this chapter relate to your topic/project.
One of the connections I made early was how we're creating an over-arching website for our project as a final exam and how we're witnessing one of the ways of assessment in action. We also need to incorporate checks for background knowledge and ways to establish anchors in our project so we will be prepared to do this in the future.
I like the connection you made between our class and this chapter. The concept of us making our group websites is a way to show everything we learned this semester and its the way our professors is assessing us on what we learned.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the importance of establishing anchors for projects. I feel as though some teachers don't do this enough and end up creating projects that the students are not able to understand. I like how you mentioned that students need to stretch themselves to get the goal--but we still want the goal to be attainable.
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