Module 2 Reflection

This module has helped me think about using standards, CFQ's or formative assessment in the following ways:

I see teachers using standards all the time being the elementary technology coordinator at our school and working with tech integration as well as projects in the technology classroom. I find that being in a private school though there is much more freedom in teaching standards. I was hired a year and a half ago and when I met with my mentor about lessons etc the one thing that I was told is "just make sure you look on ALEX and hit those standards. you can hit them however you want just so you cover them in some form or fashion." I look at what we are working towards here at my school and think yes we have freedom but so many teachers before this year did very little formative assessment. We still do not do as much as we probably should but we have in math moved to a combined numerical and standards based math grading system. This has had a huge impact on our kids. Those that got it when it was first presented or knew it before being taught it can now advance on and be pushed while those that struggle can go back and keep covering until they do get it. I feel like if we did more formative assessment in other subjects and maybe even standards based grading we could better gauge what our students know and what they don't know sooner. Those that have struggled have done significantly better because they aren't being "left behind".

I really want to push for more standards based grading and think we will be seeing more subjects added into this as we go along each year. There was a lot of kick back to this because it is "more work". I think if you are following your standards and teaching those standards the only difference and maybe more work is that you are providing differentiated instruction and are engaging more students because they aren't frustrated or bored. I really want there to be an emphasis on concepts using twenty first century skill and higher order thinking. We are able to assess throughout the unit because we are having checks to see if they are "mastering", "progressing" or "not mastering" the standards.

I think one place we , as my school, can improve on as well as myself doing projects in my technology class is to really put the curriculum framing questions out there for the students. We want to promote interest , relevance and understanding. We tend to give them more of the content questions and objectives but nothing as a real hook to spark that initial interest, to get them excited about it and thinking about it before hand.