Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning & Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

I think one of the biggest challenges I will face as a teacher is assessing and evaluating students based on the goals and learning objectives that are established. The handout article “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning” has helped me understand the point of evaluation. In the article, they mentioned that evaluation should help students understand what they are doing and how well are they executing it, show students how they can improve, and “ways of self-assessing so that they determine what they need to do to improve. This article mentions different ways to evaluate and teach students how to do self-evaluations. The method I found to be most appealing was “using portfolios to evaluate growth and reflection.” Portfolios help students see their growth over time, and “by comparing students’ performance over time, you could then determine the degree to which students were changing.” This not only shows students their growth over time, but it gives students and idea of how they can continue to grow as well.

              The online article had a sentence that really stood out to me – “When a student makes progress they feel motivated and more successful because enhancing perceived competence is motivating in and of itself.” I really like this quote because of its value. People in general tend to make progress when they feel confident in their work. This leads to the motivation and drive to continue. The online article I found to be a very insightful tool for parents or future teachers because it thoroughly explains how grading works, and what is the point of it. To me, grading and report cards can be discouraging for students. I don’t think that grades define a student. Every student has a different learning style, and some students may not benefit in homework or some students don’t preform well on tests. But, to grade each student the same way is not fair to every student, but then how do we grade students accordingly?

California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

This article was really helpful in understanding what steps are needed to take in order to help students underand and comprehend what they are reading. This article started of by saying “prereading” is essential for students to comprehend what they read. I also think it’s incredibly important to get students to think about what they are going to be reading and the necessary techniques and tools needed to have a successful understanding of the reading. For instance, the article mentions students can be successful in their reading if they think about what they think the article could be about and why it might be important, and also what is the author’s purpose? Also, helping students make personal connections to their own experiences or understandings help students feel more connected and more likely to engage in the reading. I also found it important to help students with tricky vocab and teaching them the necessary tools to independently define vocabulary. These tools include practicing defining words by the contest clues within the text.

The part of the article I found most important to me was the Importance of summarizing in responding. I feel summarizing is important when it comes to reading because you’re able to reflect in your own words and list the important key concepts of what was read. Responding shows they have an actual understanding of what they read and are able to put their learning into own words. Responding also encourages students to think in more depth about what they read as well. In the article they mention a technique to help students reflect is to “Right open ended questions that can be used as a basis for a class discussion” which I found to be a really great tool because it would help students engage in their own discussion and learn from each other.

English Language Arts - Common Core State Standards

Common Core State Standards intimidate me for numerous reasons. I have little to no understanding of what the common core standards are for language arts. I’m also afraid of not knowing how to implement them in my teaching, which would lead to students not being engaged and not understanding what they are supposed to be learning. In the article we were given, it is mentioned that “a standards-based approach can result in the homogenization of instruction in which teachers teach the same content using the same methods regardless of differences in their classroom contexts or students.” Standards are difficult because these standards can come across as enforcing the same goals and learning on all students, when all students have different learning styles, abilities, skills, etcetera. Teachers also run into the problem of “teaching to the test” where teachers being “narrowing the curriculum, focusing on limited skills, reducing complex and meaningful questions, and closing students out of the critical task of constructing knowledge.

My question is then how do we, as teachers, teach common core standards while keeping students engaged and actively learning? Also, how do we intertwine common core standards, which are basically the same across the board, while being mindful of student’s different learning styles and abilities?

Graphic Novels in the Classroom

I think graphic novels should be used in the classroom because they are very useful for students who have a hard time focusing on reading short stories or novels that may be dry or hard to understand. By using graphic novels, students are able to see images and connect it to what they are reading. Graphic novels can be relevant, engaging, and positive. I read an article on the opinions of different teachers and professors on the use of graphic novels in the classroom, and one professor said graphic novels “are relevant, engaging, and positive. It is easier for students to relate to a text when they can see it. It captures student interest in this increasingly visual world, which then also increases student motivation and desire to keep reading because they can be successful at it, therefore promoting a positive association to reading.” Students, especially visual learners, are able to understand, relate, and be entertained by graphic novels, and with that being said, students are more likely to stay engaged in their reading. Graphic novels help give students the confidence to tackle a piece of difficult literature, such as Shakespeare or “The Odyssey”. Students may not be able to understand the foreign like words they read, but with the images along with the story they are able to come to and understanding of what they read. Graphic novels are also really beneficial to ELL readers. ELL readers can read words they are unfamiliar with and connect them to the text. These students are then able to define new words with their own definition based on what they see in the images and increase English proficiency. Graphic novels are a useful tool that combines the written elements of a novel with the visual images that give the impression of movement like a film.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

I really was able to connect to this article because I think discussion within the classroom between students, with students, with parents, and with faculty is important. When we engage in discussion, we can better shape our thoughts and opinions with the influence of other people’s ideas. I want to show my students that it’s important to keep an open mind, and respect the thoughts and opinions of others, even if it’s not identical to their own. This article has provided a plethora of techniques and strategies I can use to get my students to engage in a successful discussion.

 The part I found most important in this article was the different reasons why discussions fail, and the reasons that stood out to me the most were students not being prepared, and students not having an example of how discussions work. Each example that was provided in this article avoids the problem or students being unprepared by allowing students a few minutes solidarity to gather their ideas and thoughts. Also, to avoid students being unprepared, I think it’s important, as a teacher, to begin the discussion with students. This way they have an example of how their own discussions should look like.

The strategy that I found most interesting was the critical debate example. I really enjoy the concept of debates because each side of the debate must gather factual arguments, while being mindful of their opponents’ arguments as well. Debates are a great tool to help students learn to think with an open mind and take in consideration of the arguments of other’s in order to make your own argument stronger. This exercise also includes a reflection at the end as well, which helps students review how successful/unsuccessful were their strategies, what new learnings did they achieve, and did their thoughts or opinions change and why.