Forms of Assessment

Assessments are important because they help a teacher better understand the comprehension her students have gained from a lesson.  They are used to help monitor growth and evaluate the necessary pace of a lesson.  If assessments of a particular lesson are poor then the teacher would know not to begin a new concept.  The students also get a better understanding of the degree of their comprehension.  It is very easy to ask if everyone understands a concept and move on, but the possibilities of having an honest perspective are slim.  I like to assess individually as my children work in centers.  It is easier for me to assess my grade level with a checklist to make sure they are on task.  I also integrated that into my unit.  The teacher will be using a checklist as well as a KWL chart to see where their knowledge of the farming concept is.  We will also include a rubric to evaluate comprehension.  We need these forms of assessments in order to understand the children's comprehension and to decide if it is okay to move on to another lesson.

Me Portfolios

I enjoyed reading about "Me Portfolios" in Chapter 6 of Daniels and Bizar.  I like to do an "all about me" theme at the beginning of every year.  In  order for the children to learn about their new classmates we so several introduction activities.  Their favorite is when they are asked to fill a bag full of items that represent who each child is.  They put in items such as favorite colors, food, toy, movie, what they want to be when they grow up, etc.  They also draw a picture of themselves so that we can use it at the end of the year to compare their drawings to the beginning portraits.  We look at similiarities in the different children to see if any of them like the same things and then discuss differences.  It helps the children understand that everyone is different and that is Okay!!! "All About Me" is a very fun unit in getting to know one another!!!

Task 3

I would choose to do my lesson on the "Symbols of Life" retrieved from http://ncmoa.org/artnc/lesson.php?lessonPlanid=13.  I would target the 2nd grade because I feel like the students would need to be able to write their opinions.  The students would be asked to write a story or a blog about what they see in the picture.  After reading the story to the class, they would do a group discussion on what other types of still life could have been included.  We will do a web of the different ideas.  The students will then be asked to draw their own depictions of a "symbol of life" from their interpretations of the pictures.  At home or in their community they will find one example of a "symbol of life" and bring it to school for homework the next day.  We will review the items brought and write a class story on using the symbols represented.

Task 2

I would choose to modify Strategy 7 on Developing Map Skills for my Pre-K classroom.  I think it would be interesting to have my students design their own maps of their homes and their communities.  I would love to see what it looks like in their minds.  I would start them out by showing them how I would make a map of our classroom related to our school.  They could then related to the immediate area outside.  I am sure that I would have to help most of my children draw their images, but having them dictate what they see would be very interesting.  They could work with their parents and create a map of their home so that we could put it on a school map of our area.  I would show them some local maps and areas both on paper and online.  They could create their map at home and then we could combine them all into one.  This might give them an idea of distance as well as the area of a community.  Sounds like it might be fun, as well as very interesting.

Task 1

I definitely got a better understanding of the differences between topics, themes, concepts, and big ideas from reading Chapter 4 in Shell & Fisher's book.  I remember a little bit about the Big Idea concept from taking the National Boards.  I use themes in my classroom where I can incorporate them into all of the subjects and centers.
We will be able to use big ideas in order to know what we want I end result to be.  We have to have an idea of the finished product in order to assign task.  We have already picked our topic and a theme that we want to follow and will be using different concepts to follow that theme.  It was interesting to read about all of Ben Franklin's Big Ideas.  It helped me have a clearer understanding of the differences in the concepts.