Failure to Understanding

Failure to Understand

“Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.” – Burt Rutan

I was not feeling well this week, but regardless of my feelings I still have work to complete. This week our focus it's still towards formative assessment. Our seminar discussions were a continuation on the understanding of what formative assessment is, and how we can appropriately use it within the classroom to help guide student learning. Within our seminar, I voiced my opinion that assessment should be about the holistic aspect of a student and not just the paper to pen knowledge that we pass along to them.

I must say that I enjoy the two Frontline assignment for this week. The assignment on assessment drift reiterated the assessment creation project that we did earlier in the year. It proved to be a great reminder of how to properly create an assessment and to ensure that it serves its true purpose. This Frontline portion was a clear reminder of many of our standards, 4. H. 1 states that teachers use multiple effective ways to assess student learning and utilize the data to enhance student learning. The second Frontline assignment focus on three diverse types of assessing. Ipsative, Norm-referenced, and Criterion-referenced are three ways to assess student learning through assessment and data. Of the three assessment base approaches, I feel that the norm-referenced approach is a little too aggressive for the 21st-century approach we are using in schools today. These assessments are in line with our standards, mainly 3.a.2 and 5.a.1.

My Twitter account was abuzz with our second educational Twitter activity. The #games4ed crew came together to discuss teaching vocabulary in the classroom and ways to make it more technologically inviting for students. My input within the discussion was not as grand as others. I did gain a wealth of knowledge on effective ways of implementing technology towards my vocabulary assignments, and with help from some of my friends in this group, we will soon be looking for ways to implement these recent technologies according to the NCSCS. As soon as we have some of these locked in, I look forward to sharing them with my colleagues and professors.

While lying in bed hacking up a lung Friday afternoon, a thought dawned on me. I know I may be late to the party, but I realized something that I've been ignoring this complete process. We are currently learning to become effective North Carolina professional teachers, but it really came to me that standard 1.c is one of our crucial points for our education at Gardner-Webb University. As future professionals, we are putting the practice in now to improve ourselves through more professional development each week. This will help us to shape the lives of our future students and instill in us a desire to continue to improve as professionals to give the best quality performance we can always. Though I may not succeed as I always want to in every objective I'm given, the quote that we read in Frontline hit me in the heart and is what I will strive to remember from this point on.

That's all for now...

Always learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh  

It's My Turn?!

Its My Turn?!

 

In this week's class, we were to investigate the purpose and types of formal assessment. As we can learn formative assessment is any form of checking in for student understanding. This could happen in the beginning, middle, or end of a lesson. These types of check-ins are typically quick and are only centered around current or future learning. Formative assessments are not cumulative, they must be done while learning is taking place. They're helpful for teachers because they give an understanding of student knowledge at the time. As NCTCS number 1a2 states, educators know appropriate use of formative assessment and use data to identify the skills and abilities of students.

My week also included being the leader for the seminar to my surprise. Anyway, sticking with the theme of formative assessment, I was able to find an interesting article on the many forms of formative assessment available to teachers today. The conversation was geared towards understanding these forms of assessment, and how we would effectively use them within our prospective future classrooms. I also pulled from our Frontline assignment, and ask the question, "how can we overcome the limitations we will face with homework?"

I personally believe that the list of formative assessments covered in an article including but not limited to, Kahoot, Smart Lab, and Quizlet are all effective tools for assessing students within the classroom but also can be used outside of the classroom. I believe that with using these tools I could not only assessment students formatively, but also be able to overcome some of the limitations with homework from a technological aspect. I do know that there may be a few issues due to some students not having the technology available outside of school, but for a vast majority of students, this will not be a problem.

My learning continued outside of class with Twitter this week. The conversation centered around virtual reality devices and their use or lack thereof in the classroom. Since I never thought of using a VR device for any educational uses, I really had to sit back and observe the conversation rather than give input. I did learn that there is a lot of uses for VR, however, they use in the elementary classrooms is still in progress. There were no applications that were discussed that would be effective in any of the elementary education standards that I am aware of currently.

I would have to say this was a full week for me within this class. Revising and preparing for my upcoming lesson was also a big part of my week. I am looking forward to the opportunity to teach the lesson, but am extremely nervous and hopeful for a great outcome.

So until next time.....

"The Project From The Black Lagoon!"

It was a dark and wary night. I was I had completed all the assignments I had for the week until.....

I know that is not a typical start to a Blog, but I wanted to give myself a little break mentally from the rigors of this week's assignments. We were to create an assessment, quite literally from scratch. At first, I thought this would be a piece of cake, as I have helped with making simple spelling test for students before. However, quality assessment creation he's a very painstaking process. But if you want something done correctly, you will take the time to do it. With the help of the article, "Is This A Trick Question," I was able to fully understand the thoughtfulness that must go into the multiple forms of assessment.

 With creating an assessment from an original thought, you must first figure the standards that are to be assessed. Next, comes how to teach the standards and the source from which to teach it. Next, comes the aspect of creating the assessment and any other tools necessary for the assessment, including a rubric, alignment chart, and data collection source. Lastly, and this is of extreme importance, the assessment must have a way to prove its validity and reliability as an instrument of education.

It did not take me long to realize, that this entire process ties into a few of our standards we look to meet as teacher candidates. Standard 1.e states that we are to demonstrate high ethical standards. With our assessments, it is best practice to create them with integrity and within the laws that govern education in the state of North Carolina. By following through with validity and reliability on the assessment tools and data, there is a great chance you wll be in alignment with these ethical standards. Looking at Standard 3, the creation of the assessment, the content, and material used to teach students must all fall in alignment to what the educator knows. The educator also needs to know how to teach the content that's appropriate, make changes as necessary for the students, and find ways to connect content to other aspects as well. Though this project connects to many of the NCTCS, another important one to point out is Standard 4.h. Through creating this assessment, I could see first-hand the numerous indicators we can put in place to assess student understanding. The assessment and its parts are said indicators and are influential and making sure we get students in the direction they need to go.

Since a few of my friends from East Iredell are suppose to visit my page this week, I wanted to share with them my post from seminar this week. It goes with our project and confirms our processes.

As we discussed in class this week, assessments have to be valid and reliable. The validity of a product by definition means to have a sound basis in a fact or logic. Being consistently good in quality or performance with great trust is also the definition of reliability. This is true when these two words are used to describe assessment. For any test to be valid, it must measure the objectives that were taught up to the actual assessment. As stated in class a valid assessment will measure what was taught and be consistent, reliable, to this information. The data from the assessment should be reliable because it only tested The content that was provided. It is up to the teacher to make sure that these two aspects are met within every form of testing that they give. This may sound funny but I wouldn’t grade and apple on the taste of an orange. They are both fruits, but the contents of both are different and I’m not being fair if I’m not grading the apple based off of the contents and definition of an apple.

With validity and reliability of the assessment ensured, then the assessment should be proof that the teacher is “meeting the needs of learners” and “design with the learners, content, and goals in mind,” which is a key focus in our conceptual framework.

All right, until next time……

Always Learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh  

Here I am again...

Here I Am Again

Another action-packed week is almost in the books. And while my head is spinning from all the information, I must say the words assessment and feedback will never leave my brain as long as I live. In class, this week our objectives were to focus on creating, analyzing, and implementing assessments and understanding and implementing feedback. Assessment is general used to judge student understanding of the content they have learned. The data from the assessment can be used to make quality decisions on the direction learning could go. The other aspect of effective assessment is to provide feedback. Feedback is the way in which a teacher communicates the achievement of students' learning back to the student based on rubric, playlist, or checklist of the assignment; both of these actions are the epitome of standard V. Teachers are reflective on their practice. Feedback helps students understand their effectiveness at the assignment and if they reached their goal. You want to make sure the feedback is not criticizing but encouraging and helps the student reflect.

My professional development continued in Frontline with the introduction of “Monitoring student learning” and “Checklist and Rubric: Student Assessment. “I found it intriguing how various teachers where able to establish rubrics and checklist as a culture within their classroom. This shows me another example of teachers knowing the way learning should take place, i.e. Standard IV. The rubrics make clear the information that must be delivered and how the process should take place to insure a successful assessment.  I hope to use these effective learning tools within my future classroom. The difficulty of tracking student learning has been eased back a bit for me after completing the PD on Frontline. This program helped me to understand the effectiveness of formative assessment to track progress. Questioning is an effective way to gauge student learning, and when done properly, it will give the teacher leader a clear picture to where student understanding is. I plan to use the rubric within this lesson as a means to gather understanding of student responses.

Since one of the essential parts of the Frontline PD use on homework, I decided to discuss the information with my lead teacher at work. As stated, it is difficult to ensure that the homework that is to be assigned was completed independently by the student. So, we collaborated on an effective way to do homework this half of the year. We decided to only send home reading assignments; while “homework” is to be completed with me, the TA, during small group time. This is to make sure students complete the work while receiving the appropriate amount of help on the assignment. We will also use this time to practice for benchmarks and the process of district standard testing will occur.

This week, my learning has opened my eyes to the endless possibilities to help my future students learning as well as improve my facilitating of learning as well. Since Standard IV of the NCTCS, clearly states that teachers should provide instruction appropriate to the students’ level. Through the use of checklist and rubrics, I can clearly state the expectations of all the standards to the students as well as parents and administration, and be able to gauge the student’s growth throughout the lesson, unit, or course. By using the rubric, I can also have a basis by which to evaluate all assessments the same and be able to give proper feedback in a timely manner. This also provides evidence that I have knowledge of the content I am providing as required by NCTCS III. The need to make adjustments to rubric will ensure for a class that is inclusive to all students, standard II.

Well, this wraps up week number 4, and we are rolling in EDU 410. Until next time…This is your reporting future candidate

Always Learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh  

My World Is Rocked

Reflecting

Welcome to another exciting chapter in my adventures with EDU 410. Have you ever thought that you were completely understanding something only to have your world shattered and the repair? This is the intersection I am at with assessment and education within my own little world. Through my studies this week on assessment, I was introduced to the process called instructional decision making. This is a mind shifting concept that has caused me to reflect on my understanding of data, decision-making, and effectiveness, hello standard V. As I am still grasping the complete concept, I learned that the cycle consists of five aspects: assess, plan, teach, and reflect. If you are beginning a new year, the information you can start with from the assessment aspect would be the data from the previous year. Each part of the cycle coincides with some aspect of the North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards. Assessment and plan are aligned with standard IV, facilitating student learning; teach coincides with standard III, this states the teachers know their content; and reflect is self-explanatory as it goes together with standard V, teachers are reflective of their practice. One more aspect that was covered in the academic week was comprehensive assessment. Using the five keys to comprehensive assessment; goals and measures, formative assessment, summative assessment, and student ownership, a teacher can try to develop a student-centered classroom. This is one of the key components for 21^st century learners.

Starting this week, I am doing a Twitter Chat for my EDU 410 class. After participating in my first chat, I realized this chat is beneficial for my current and future classrooms. #Games4ed was my preferred a room for this week, and the focus in this chat was on scavenger and treasure hunts. We discussed many applications and subjects that can collaborate and create innovative lessons. One take away I plan to use this year is to make QR codes for my students in third grade. Each year we do a wax museum project and students pick a personality to represent. I would like to record three short videos and a long introductory video for each student describing the identity of the person they are representing. We allow the students to do the research and record the videos, but we the teachers make sure that the QR codes are made and are accurate for the project. I think this type of innovation is needed for our classrooms and a project as this.

The big picture for my future is starting to shape up. My future students and parents can look forward to having a teacher who is willing to be as innovative as possible but not vary too far from the NCSCOS. I want to try and make the class student centered by reflecting over the data from all forms of assessment that we use. I even hope to have the students take part in the assessment themselves, as was described in my front-line lesson from this week. After doing an assessment of the students, I hope to do an assessment of myself in the reflection, to ensure that I am giving them what they need. Planning for the students and facilitating the learning of the new or repeated content must be a focal point. Our goal is to score a figurative touchdown each week or each lesson and ensure that we are prepared for the future we must face. Touchdown… Go Pats!

All right, until next time……

Always Learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh  

Round Two

Round Two

Here we are for week two of EDUC 410 adventures, and I’m your host William Alspaugh. This week was a tough one for me as we are starting another school year full throttle. The rigors of being a full-time employee for ISS and a full-time student, have caught up to me at the tail end of the week, but I will endure. Speaking of enduring, when it comes to the laws that govern assessment and education, there have been a ton of civil public laws passed. As the focus of our studies this week, I’ve been digging and digging all throughout Google and every online site possible, that has been verified, to delve into the laws governing assessment. To my surprise, and utter lack of memory, I realized that most of the policies and laws that are applicable to assessment and even education are mostly at the state level, #The10^thamendment. With federal laws,” what’s old is new again,” as the new Every Student Succeeds Act(ESSA) is really a rebirth of the previous Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); with some major focus equality, gap closure, and accountability. The beautiful state of North Carolina is responsible for making sure that it’s students, be it preschool to doctoral programs, excel and achieve two great levels that are satisfactory to what the federal government and world are looking for. Basically, the NCTC Standards that we constantly referred to and embed in our minds are small summaries of the expectations that the state has based on the laws and policies the legislation came up with. To get more in depth with my local area, adding some outside research and talk to one of the testing coordinator’s in the central office area. She was able to provide me with some information that startled me. For the County for which I work, their focus is to be as close to the state laws and policies as possible therefore they really don't have specific direct individual laws, but policy implementations that reflect state General Statues. Now I'm still doing research to find out if she was factually correct with her statement. I am seeing through researching the ISS Board Polices that there are many governing principles but only redirections to NC G.S. When it comes pure assessment, the code of ethics must be at the forefront and always on your mind.

So, what does all this mean now and for the future? If I’m not mistaken him, as I said before the Teacher Candidate Standards direct us to make sure that we are being affective in following the code of ethics and state guidelines to ensure we are properly testing a student and providing them with the best overall education that we can. At the reduce some of the laws and statues myself, I can see where we may have dropped the ball as a country at times. By not accommodating to the needs of the students or seeing students as individuals and not generalizing every option or path to success. I want to say I can ashore my students and future parents that I will strive to make sure I don’t get that; however, I am going to have to make sure I still stay within the guidelines that the county, state, and even federal government provide.

Before I depart, I wanted to bring up the interview that we all studied this week. Mr. Grant Wiggins, an expert in assessment, brought to life some of the most intriguing view points in his view of assessment. What stuck out for me the most was his statement about “backward design.” It connected for me some of the processes I’ve seen other educators follow when it comes to teaching and assessment. In the future, I want to make sure I “begin with the end in mind,” in any of the processes I do when I comes to the assessing of my students and striving with them in success. Knowing how the end it should work will make it easier for me to possibly teach the subject matter and know that they understand because they will discover the finished product. The previous page before the interview provided here, https://www.edutopia.org/assessment-guide-importance, had a section “When assessment works best, it does the follow.” This is a great follow-up to what Mr. Wiggins were saying and how we need to really evaluate our sales when it comes to assessment and helping students achieve the standards that they have set before him. If no one else chooses to take up this charge, rest assured I will give my best to accomplish the task. My students deserve it, their parents deserve it, the world deserves it, and I want to achieve it.

All right, until next time……

Always learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh  

And It Begins

And It Beings

Late August has arrived and it is a new school year. Not just for myself at Gardner Webb University, but also Statesville/Iredell County Schools, which includes my beloved East Iredell Elementary. Each academic year I enter with a refreshed mind. The trend is to set a high bar for myself, even though I have a very active life outside of both schools. A 4.0 semester is always the expectation and has happened a few times in my life. But as I’ve learned as a teacher assistant, you must set wildly imaginative goals each year for what you expect to happen. You must also set goals based off your previous work and make them achievable with steps. The goal for the 2017/18 academic year is to reach the level of accomplished or distinguished in all area within my job description. With this being a yearly part of my life academically, I can see how it would be one of the best practices I can use in my future classroom with my students. If you look at the North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards, the first standard states teachers must demonstrate leadership. By making sure that I set goals for myself yearly, I should be able to instill a similar process in my students. To have a sense of achievement for themselves in the classroom but also in their current and future lives outside of academia. If I'm not mistaken the 21st-century mandate is calling for students to be built for success academically but also in the world abroad. “Begin with the end in mind,” as my Seven Habits training rings in my head now.

This week is also brought in a new learning path for myself. For the 2017/18 year we embark on implementing more blended learning within our school. Over the last few days we have sat in many a meeting, sometimes grasping immediately and other times feeling bewildered and lost in the jungle. It is a stark reminder of how some of my first-graders feel every year; when it comes to counting to 100 and then going past 100 the first couple of days, LOL. These new practices that are being installed within our school, will help to make sure that learning is facilitated properly, make lessons diversified for all the learners we reach, and give the potential for adequate growth for all. Like we were discussing with Dr. Clark this week, it’s exactly a tie-in to standards I-V we have as potential candidates. Well, this is the first of many post I will be doing this semester. I hope not to bore your patience but to enlighten you to all the connections that I encounter in the classroom and for my future classroom. Until next time my friends.

Always learning, Always Growing;

William B. A. Alspaugh