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.....