Formative assessment is a way to assess students work in an informal way after each lesson.

The purpose of formative assessments are to see where students are struggle and help them, if no one gets it the you must reteach the lesson.

I did a unit in science that had a summative assessment but I could have several formative assessments to make the summative assessment. When studying plant and animal habitats. Have the students come up with a creature and a plant every day the student should journal about how the plant and animal (creature) survive in the same habitat based on what they learned that day. They should include climate, adaption, shelter, food and so on. At the end of the lesson the student can man dioramas of the habitat along with their two creations.

In my placement we studied landforms. The students then made their own islands including each land form. The students were given a list and after we taught them to make the dough. We had the students look at a model for while and then left then to their own devices. Before we the dough was dry we asked the students to point out their landforms. We then reminded them what the landforms they missed looked like and sent them to add them. The islands dried over night we add the water (blue paint) then land (brown paint). The final day of painting, we added grass (green) and lava (red). The last day the students were given a card and number stickers. The card had the list of landforms numbered. They labeled each one and then brought it to my host teacher or me. We read off the list and had them point to where the landform was this was their assessment grade for this lesson along with a few points for participation.

Some strategies for making an effective formative assessment are use manageable chunks assess and then move on to the next task. Provide detailed feedback that helps the students understand their strength. Finally don’t hover and assess when needed instead of over or under assessing.

High quality formative assessment help the teacher identify students who need more help and their misconceptions. It encourages students to engage in more complex thinking and problem solving.

Challenges are they take time to complete and perform. Many teachers don’t know how to use high quality formative assessment.

Student Observation

I get to the school at 10:15
I wanted to see in the first ten minutes how many times the student would be distracted by what was going on in the back of the room. The student looked back 13 times, that observed as I poured paints into cups. When the students began I handed her paint first. As the other student began to paint she watched as I walked around the room. I attended to other students and walked around the room as the students began to finish their project she was the last to finish. I noticed that she was tuned into other peoples conversations and looked up at everyone who walked their completed project to the back.
I was then sent to help another class and then took half the class outside for reading followed by going to the star-buck store. When I returned to the class they were doing grammar worksheets. I watched in the back and helped students that raised their hand. I helped her a few times but then I realized she knew the answer to all the questions she need me to talk too. I pulled her and another student to the back one that needed help seeing the things on the board so I copied them and her to keep her focus. I tried to catch her every time she lost her focus but every time I moved or helped the other student. By the end of the day I was exhausted from trying not to catch her eye to much.

"They invent scenes and stories, solve problems, and negotiate their way through social roadblocks. They know what they want to do and work diligently to do it. Because their motivation comes from within, they learn the powerful lesson of pursuing their own ideas to a successful conclusion. "


"Research comparing 50 play-based classes with 50 early-learning centers found that by age ten the children who had played in kindergarten excelled over the others in a host of ways. They were more advanced in reading and mathematics and they were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and "industry."


"The creation of a healthy balance described above has been blocked by current policies and government-imposed practices and programs, including No Child Left Behind and Reading First. These well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed mandates rely on testing and on didactic and scripted approaches—especially for teaching children from low-income backgrounds—in spite of the fact that these practices are not well supported by research evidence. Indeed, many of the current approaches to kindergarten education are based on unfounded assumptions and preconceptions about what is best for children and schools."

I picked these because I strongly agree with them. Play is important not only as a child but as an adult too for many of the same reasons. Children have become so programmed to believing that their is one right answer and one way to do things, that they are lost when you let them be creative. One of the girls in my third grade class, is so smart but when we color or paint she is lost. She sho usually is done and helping other students has to have some help her or they finish painting for her because she wants to quit. I think that the NCLB limits teachers and prinicals. I see it all the time especially now because WESTest is coming up. Teachers change their lessons to more reading and english because this is what they "need" to learn so that they keep their jobs. It's there to prevent teacher from not doing their job but it keeps teacher from excelling at their job and reaching out to the student that really need help. There is so much drill and kill going on and the student that haven't been doing well still aren't and they won't test well but enough of the students that have been doing fine or better will keep them from being in trouble.

PLAY=LEARNING

BENEFITS OF PLAY

Journal 8

Some challenges with inquiry based approach is that students can't design meaningful or "driving questions and so it doesn''t need much investigation. Also teacher have trouble understanding and carrying out the method. Therefore they don't scaffold or assess properly. Students have trouble developing logical arguments and finding evidence to support their claim. Students have trouble with working together and time mangement. Inquiry approach is tough on teacher because of all the role the have to play.

Simulations and games

Like project based learning, simulations and games add variety of ways for the students to learn. the more students use multiple systems of representing knowledge, the better they are able to think about and recall what they have learned (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Simulations often provide students with a real world experience. They get the chance to visualize and model what they are learning. Games and modeling activities can elicit curiosity, create a demand for knowledge, and enable students to discover knowledge through exploration (Edelson, 1998). Games becoming more geared to a goal rather than pure excitement. I have alsways believe games help the student want to learn so they can be better players of the game and at being a teammate.

Cooperative Grouping

Cooperative learning is similiar to project based learning because the student have to do more than just know the information they have to share it with their students. Effective cooperative learning occurs when students work together to accomplish shared goals and when positive structures are in place to support that process (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). The teacher must put the student in a group that they will succeed in order to do the teacher must examine different aspect of the childs learning style, gender, friendships, and possible things that could go wrong. Students need to be in groups with a variety of learning levels and each student has been assigned a task. If one student fails they all fail or don't do as well. This drives student to break barriers and help without one person ending up with all the work which often happens in group work.

Cues, questions and Advance organizers

This is a much different approach to learning. This is one that is already in place and with a little bit of fine tuning can be very effective. Cues and questions are a way of prompting students responses. The article for advanced organizers give k-w-l charts. I disagree with that example but there are several other graphic organizers that help students. Such a alphabet vocabulary, making a book or magazine, making 3-d trinagles and cube and then writing about them on the shape. Asking questions and prompting students' replies with cues are strategies that come naturally to most teachers. In fact, some 80 percent of student-teacher interactions involve cues and questions (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). This should definitely not be the only strategy in your classroom.

It takes a lot of stragegies to make a successful classroom. These are just a few to look through but you have to find ones that work for you and your students.

What does the research say about the impact of negative teacher attitudes about students ethnicity and language variations on student learning?

The teacher attitude toward students difference with culture and language are deeply connected to students performance. When a student feels disconnect do to the othering effect placed on them by the teacher they do not participate. Participation is part of learning that some are okay with missing it's not their personality so they can still achieve by listening to the conversations in class but when someone is learning a new language or dialect their input and active engage in the classroom are needed. Teacher with negative attitudes put these student in the back of the class. It's hard to be engage when you are in the back.
These student are not only struggling to find their identity in the classroom but at home too. They need their teacher to be a driving force in their learning and fitting in. Students being grouped into this other category begin to give up and become a self -fulfilling prophesy in which they believe they are outcast and can't succeed.

What are some assessment pitfalls?


Assessment are very one sided and do not take the child's background into consideration. Also a teachers pre-judgements about students hinder how they feel a student will do. Teachers even the best have a way they feel about students that make it hard for them to see passed that. two strategies I learned was hiding the name and grading papers or using a very specific rubric and grading what they have not what you think they meant.

What three approaches can be used to transform students’ dialectal diversity into an asset (funds of knowledge) rather than a liability (cultural deficit).

Take a course in lingustic diversity or cultural awareness the reading compares learning to deal with diversities like taking math and science course you take these course to learn to deal with the problems that will arise and learn to teach one thing many ways so your students understand them. Bialectal instruction in another approach that leads to less mistakes caused by non stadard dialect student can see the difference and correct mistakes on their own without the inference of their dialect confusing the situation. This approach leads to the last approach I liked which was to take a second language course it changes your attitude when you can put yourself into the situation of your student. I think back to high school taking foreign languages and I took another one in college. Trying to learn the words and then how put them in a sentence it was such a struggle. Then I try to imagine if the whole class was speaking the language and I was trying learn science, my hardest subject, instead of just the language and my head is ready to explode. These are children dealing the same situation. It changes my attitude just to think about it.

How prepared do you feel to teach in a culturally diverse classroom?



I feel completely unprepared to teach in a culturally diverse classroom although I have strategies and and reading, i learn beast by doing and we just don't have very diverse classes. I think that is one thing I learned through the Where I am project. We are all different but we have many similarities. I want to be more prepared but I think it a learning by doing type experience such as with the teacher under assessment who found her self even though she believed she was ready, stereotype and black student.

The PowerPoint activity was very frustrating it did not take into account what people had access to or allow for creative difference. I had non linguistic representation to reflect on. "Learners store knowledge in two primary ways: linguistic and non linguistic. They need both.(Marzano, Pickering and Pollock 2001)." This did do some non linguist representation by add pictures instead of just words to the PowerPoint and colorful text and background. It would have been more helpful if the directions were the same way. The directions were also confusing and so needed to be read twice maybe more. It was ironic that what we were creating was a great learning tool but the way we were learning to make it was very one dimensional. Another suggestion would be to have us work in groups. We were not allowed to ask our partners questions. In the reading it says to "have students work in small group when creating visual representations... discussion will help them communicate and refine their thinking." And last section is the assignment could have been modeled showing us how to use the tools would keep everyone on the same page. "Models, graphs, imagery, and other tools enable students to engage in actively constructing representations of their understanding."

Blog 4

Dominant paradigm is when something becomes widely accepted in a culture and become the model for furute generations.


-(Shepherd (1998) The students got to find a solution to a real problem. It made ideas more concrete and so the students research was apparently better and the class felt better about what they learned because it was real-life. More than a few children need real experience to make their learning stick stay.
-Student can support themselve clearly. It's important not only to know what you know but be able to share it with other and others be able to understand.
(Stepien, Gallagher, & Workman, 1993),
-In one of previous blog post, I spoke of boy who couldn't do classwork but was good with his hands. Students that don't do well tradionally excel in PBL.
(Boaler, 1997; Meyer, Turner, & Spencer, 1997; Rosenfeld & Rosenfeld, 1998).



-(Vernon & Blake, 1993; Albanese & Mitchell, 1993) Students faced with list of given facts use research and their own knowledge to come up with a solution. This model a real situation they may face in their careers. Student test higher on qualifying clinical exams'
-Studies have demonstrated that students who participated in problem-based experiences are better able to generate accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations (Hmelo,1998b; Schmidt et al., 1996)

-Kolodner (2000) Students get the information and understand it better by modeling real life things. Student not only know they also are be to use higher order thinking skills that can be assessed in a variety of ways.
-Hmelo and colleagues (2000) When students provide feedback and collaborate, they can go back and try other things which reinforce their learning.
-Fortus and colleagues (2004) Learning by design bridges a gap between higher and lower achieving student with success and progress for both groups.

Project based learning the student are actively engaged. They do many small things that help to come up with possible solution to a real life problem.
Problem-based learning is way for student to use problem solving skills and research to actively come up with an answer to the problem.
Learning by design is when the teacher has to set up ordinary learning experience and make them more engaging and hands on.

I think the most important benefit to all these approaches is that all student succeed. Students who normally feel defeated by classroom activities excel with these approaches. These approaches also don't stunt the growth of the students who are already excel; if anything they are finally challenged.

Where I'm from..

Poem

I am from the white house on the hill next to the middle school from backyard football games, high school rivalry and backyard brawls.
I am from the home of pepperoni rolls, the first father’s day and Dunbar High Alumni.
I am from the church every Sunday, the love of family by blood and by heart.
I am from celebrating every birthday with family and helping anyone in need, from Meades and Bonners and Turners.
I am from the occasional absent mindedness and never giving in. From “it’s more important to be proud of yourself” and lullabies and bedtime stories
I am from Methodist, Baptist and Christianity.
I'm from Akron Toledo, Ohio and Fairmont W.Va., Great Grandma’s pudding cake and Mom’s baked Mac and Cheese.
From the Uncle Bill graduating high school at 114 pounds underweight for the Navy and waiting a year, gaining four pounds and joining the Army, the Aunt Charlotte Graduating college not being able to get a job because of the color of her skin moving to Toledo and coming back to receive the Milken award.

I didn't know there were studying going on about teaching english as almost a second language to english. I like that she doesn't want to take away there dialect but I find that in some occupations if your dialect is broken english or messing up simple subject verb agreement it acts as a handicap. Also in teaching, I think you should model good English language usage thats is the way we learn. I would love too see this study drawn out to where students don't lose themselves but use better professional conversation speech since it already started in just a year. "Many who speak it say they are proud of their cultural heritage, yet they are aware of the stigma surrounding their home speech or "speech of comfort." ' I find this interesting I would think if there is something that you are aware of that is making life harder for the next generation based on bias you would try to correct it. I speak to my family and close friends differently than I do a professor and stranger. As you may know, we speak differently to groups for example friends versus co-workers, that's just human nature so children should be aware of it. I wouldn't speak to a professional the way I speak to my family because I have been taught better. I know who I am just know I have more than one or two dimensions to me. I think of the saying "It's imporant to know where you come from but you have to be prepared for where your going."
I am from fairmont so there's not to much diversity we all speak the same way but in high school we got two foreign exchange students. It was so "weird" and cool everone wanted to know there language and speak to them so they were paired up alot and they by speaking to other their broken english became more fluent and the other student learned their language and their culture. It was really a successful experience for everyone who was part of it.
Her approach was not to tell the students they were wrong but teach them a different way. By doing that, the student learned so much better and probably were more open to the experience.

Text a new english dialect?

Quote:
" I had to ask what the school was doing about this. How were they dealing with the experiential difference so that his learning could proceed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not only were they failing to address this experiential difference...they were also seemingly unconcerned about his failure to learn. How could this be?....I knew that teachers, specialists, and administrators would have created quite a big fuss if any middle-class child finished first grade knowing how to read only one word. Parents would be called and consulted, assuming they hadn't already been haunting the school corridors, testing would have been recommended and carried out, the instruction and teaching would have been questioned and examined, and elaborate educational plans drawn up to re mediate this issue would have been drawn up."

Reaction:

There were a lot of things that bothered me in the assigned passage. I come from a low income family my mother and father never finished college, so this was important to me while unlike my Donny’s parents my parents are literate and encouraged me, they had no idea the question to ask a teacher or school system to help them. I have also had the pleasure of tutoring and most of the children come from low income families. They far from unaware or unable to learn and it sickens me that these children get pushed aside.
My experience and my siblings’ was different from most low income families. My great aunt, like my grandma, is a retired English teacher I was surround by book and read to by the time I was an infant. I never struggled in school until third grade when I had a teacher who refused to change and didn’t mind that I was failing. I was eventually, in the fourth grade, put in a catch up class because of my grades and they pointed out there was no reason for it because I was reading above grade level after the summer and once again had all A’s. The fact that I scored well on the Standford 9, the equivalitant of today’s WESTEST, in third grade, the school completely ignored my grades.My mom was concerned but I think that parents who don’t know what questions to ask accepts when the teacher says that your child is lazy, incapable and needs more help. I also saw my friends with parent who didn’t care like Donny’s mother they thought that there’s child’s education was not important. They believe that their child’s life skills would be learned at home. Regardless of the parents attitudes, a teacher responsibility is to find a way to help them value education and reading.
My sister on the other hand was another story the education system failed her she tested above the level to receive any help and my mother had the school test her over and but she test right above the level everytime until high school. If she had recieved help or not been passed along although she was not at grade level in every test before then she most likely would’ve been able to to much better in high school. The fact that he was unable to complete what was asked of him at that level is unsettling, too many children are just pass along barely making it through like this.
Children especially low income children that struggle need to know they have more options than to follow in the parents footsteps. Chrildren can sense when you have gave up on them I find I see this in tutoring. The children tell me some of the remarks their teacher make and once have heard this for awhile they believe that is what they are. I think my mom and aunt made that very apparent to me and I attribute my success in school to them and teachers who pushed me and let me know they were watching and cared.
Top Colleges, Don't look for low income
Not surprising but interesting since they should be losing money for their stereotypes.


Questions:
What is literacy knowledge? Give examples of both print and non print literacy knowledge.
How do stereotypes interfere with literacy instruction?
It's hard almost impossible to change someone's beliefs. Stereotype are almost like a handicap, they are hard to overcome, as someone who believes them and someone who has to rise above them. If someone believes you can't do something to prove them wrong to often you have to do better then others. If they believe you're lazy as a student that's the hardest to overcome because often they are unwilling to help which leads to you giving up.
How do schools and teachers contribute to poor literacy instruction in school?
Often schools are more about looking good so they let student pass that need more help but fail to give that help, instead focusing on "smarter students"
What is the relationship between language, social class, and the denial of educational opportunity?
The belief that education is an equalizer is unfair. Just like people find art different and music. People are different is these simple things have to different for people education does too.
What are some misconceptions about the relationship between language and literacy?
Just because someone speaks a different language doesn't mean they aren't literate. I had the hardest time last semester trying not lower my lessons for an ELL but instead find a way to help them learn and test them on the same level I was assessing other student, not the same way.
What can schools and teachers do to improve literacy instruction?
Find different ways. For example I read a book in less than a week if I wasn't interested or it was like a textbook, I doubt I would have ever finished. Teacher have to find more ways to reach students find things they like and are interested in.
How do you feel about use of the term "Proper English"?
I don't think anyone uses the English language properly. I think it make you seem educated and it's important to learn certain rules but there are geniuses that are never going to speak "Proper English"

Quote
"In the 1870's, there was no ''Appalachia.'' At that time, this mountainous stretch of the country from West Virginia to northern Georgia was one of the most prosperous agricultural areas in America."

Reactions
I never thought of my self as a hillbilly or mountain folk until leaving the state. I thought everyone was like me and the people I was around. I visited Ohio ever year and got along with the kids there and honestly didn't notice that it was much flatter other than I liked riding my bike there much better. When I was about thirteen I was allowed to explore a little more and met different people there first questions for me were: Are you near Richmond? Do you live on a farm? Do you come here to buy shoes? and my favorite which I still get "Are the only black people?". I find it amusing that the land was prosperous until the area was stripped and rob of it's resources.
Hillbilly news
I think these are silly but a serious stereotype problem that relates to both

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and think critically. Intelligence plus character...that's the goal of true education. -Martin Luther King Jr.

Inclusion means to include everyone. The practice of inclusion is making sure you reach every student academic needs. Example of students that inclusion is geared to would be physically handicapped, multiple intelligence, subject deficiencies and bilingual students.
Characteristic of inclusive school are have student take on more more responsibility in their community. They also realize that teachers aren't going to be able to everything and invite community members and parents to volunteer as tutors, mentors, and support. An example of children help schools be inclusive is an example of cooperative learning. In cooperative learning students all take have roles and responsibilities. They work together to problem solve.


http://youtu.be/xtyn-kNb0iM


I choose this video because it got me thinking about how as a society, we have idea of what normal is but really have no clue. I loved the activity in this video.

http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/cooplear.html

I believe strongly in using cooperative learning verses group work in the classroom. When each student assume a responsibility along with positive peer pressure and a less restrictive environment they may feel at ease to participate and express themselves.

Balkcom, S. (n.d.). Archived: Cooperative Learning. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved January 18, 2012, from http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/


I Am Norm in Four Easy Steps - YouTube . (n.d.). YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . Retrieved January 18, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtyn-kNb0iM&feature=related